“Can I take him to the bathroom and
wash his ears?”
I turned to stare at the practicum
student teacher who had just asked the question. Maybe it was my ears that
needed to be washed. “I beg your
pardon?”
“His ears are filthy. Just filthy!
Actually, he’s filthy in general, but his ears…” She shuddered. She was not an early twenties student teacher
but a woman in her forties. She had come
to do a short-term teaching practicum in our classroom three weeks before the school year was over.
“No. You may not wash his ears. That
would be embarrassing to him. His family
is quite poor. I’m not even sure if they
have hot water--or water period--in their apartment.”
Her jaw dropped. Honestly, where do these people think they’re
teaching? Kenilworth? In fact, while the
vast majority of my students were from low income families, they were mostly
neat and clean. Only three types or kids were ever dirty: the “Pigpens,”
those children who were magnets for dirt, food, and any other spot-making substance; the poorest of poor; or the neglected. Unfortunately, the little seven year old with
dirty ears was both poor and a dirt magnet.
“Oh, that’s why his backpack is
broken. I can bring him a new one.” She was so very eager, just very eager in the
wrong way.
“It’s June! Everyone has a broken backpack. No one’s mom is going to replace it until
they go on sale in July. What you can do is help him find a book he can read
and work with him. The books in the blue
bin should be at his level.”
“But what about his ears?”
Sheesh! “Okay.
After lunch, you can tell him he has food on his face, because he
will. You can send him to the bathroom
to wash his face. You can even remind
him to use soap. Maybe some will splash into his ears. Otherwise, forget them. Don’t look at them.”
This boy was a wonderful spirit. He was always happy and ready to please. The odds of academic success were stacked
against him. His mom was at home with a
newborn baby. The stepdad had never been
very helpful, and he’d left before the baby was born. There were no books at home. I’m not sure what they ate at home. Very
little, I guessed. Another teacher told
me she had heard there were rats in their apartment. His mom told me she didn’t want to move
because our school was so wonderful with her children. She was right. We were.
Last week, there was a new study
released that discussed the direct correlation between poverty and lack of
academic success. It seems so “Well,
duh?” to me. I read several articles
about it with interest. One thing that
really caught my eye was a study done in 1966, The Coleman Report, that said one third of academic success were
in-school factors. The remaining
influences were family characteristics.
There have been several studies since then, most recently Class and Schools, 2004 which reaffirm
the Coleman Report.
In my grandiosity, I'd like to think I had more than a 33% impact on a child's academic success. Regardless, it is apparent what happens at home is very important to a child's learning.
In my grandiosity, I'd like to think I had more than a 33% impact on a child's academic success. Regardless, it is apparent what happens at home is very important to a child's learning.
Hmmm!
All the rhetoric over the last few years has been about teacher
performance. I don’t know about you but
it made me feel like Superman with a bunch of kryptonite scattered around the
classroom. I was supposed to be able to
do wonderful things and did do many. Somehow, the superhuman part of me just
never could override a child’s home life.
My experience was that kids who had
educated and/or involved parents were always among my top students. There were, of course, exceptions but those
were the exception not the rule.
I think of a beautiful Latina who came
to the US during first grade. She had no
school experience before her arrival.
After a few weeks of school, I met with her mother. I explained my concern about how far behind
she was in reading. Her mother told me,
with a very determined look, that she would fix it. After the meeting, the little girl and her
mom walked to the library, got a library card, and checked out a stack of
books. They read them all that night. Each day, after school, they’d drag their
huge bag of books back to the library and check out new ones. You know where this is going. Her reading took off and there was no looking
back. Her mom had added hours of reading
instruction to the few hours she got in the classroom.
I also remember another mother, who
got the same concerns from me about her daughter. She just shrugged her
shoulders and said with finality, “We don’t read much at home.” Guess the outcome of that one. She made gains but not what I would have liked.
The kids who do better often have more
life experience. They were often raised
in homes where they were read aloud to.
They traveled places. The had
family meals where they discussed life. All
these factors contribute to larger vocabularies. Vocabulary is a key component to academic
success.
I’m not judging parents. I’ve had bad parenting moments myself. I don’t even want to discuss my parenting
after my husband died. Life is not
always easy. Teachers don’t have magic
wands to make up for fights at home, loud partying, the death of a loved one,
or financial instability. All these
stressors affect children. Poor diet, anxiety, and lack of sleep affect all of us. If a child
fell asleep at his desk, I let him sleep. Did he learn much? Hardly, but if he
was that tired then he wasn’t going to learn anything anyway. You just had to
be ready with a tissue to quickly hand him when he woke. He would need it to wipe away the
drool.
A friend of mine taught second grade
on Chicago’s west side. One day he read Corduroy
to his class. After reading about
Corduroy’s lost button, he asked that proverbial higher level thinking
question, “What do you think happened next?”
He called on a boy who was excitedly waving his hand.
“He was offed!” Certainly, nothing in
the book would lead you to believe Corduroy would be murdered. It seemed logical to a child in a
neighborhood where people routinely and randomly die.
Please, don’t tell me family dynamics
and socio-economic factors don’t strongly impact learning. It is the kryptonite of the classroom.
Here are some
articles I found interesting on this topic:
Schools
poverty teaching cps Chicago teaching teachers
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