Generational Poverty

Here is a follow-up to the column above. It is a review I wrote for my Multiply site that I sent to the other teachers at my school and put on our school's website. It contains links to some of Dr. Payne's articles.

As teachers, we don't always get the best from all of our staff developments. Sometimes that's because of weak presenters, sometimes it's our own attitudes or preconceptions. More often than not it's simply because we just don't have the time, support, or resources to implement what we've learned in meaningful ways. My hope is that this article review will help supplement one of our professional development areas for you.

I was first captivated by the Aha Process company's work on generational poverty when my wife, an elementary guidance counselor in another district, told me about a workshop she had attended. Our administrators echoed her enthusiasm at Leadership team meetings, after they had attended similar seminars.

Because I taught at a parochial school in Los Angeles before coming to Iowa, many people ask me about the cultural differences. Actually, neither going from Church school to public school or from West coast to Midwest was as traumatic as going from a private school of mostly (not entirely) middle-class to a public school with part middle-class and a large proportion of severely poor students. It was a greater difference than going from a multi-cultural/multi-lingual school to a mostly homogeneous one. At L.A. Lutheran, even the poorest, and the most dysfunctional families (not synonymous) still had to scrape up their monthly tuition- that could, on occasion, have leverage when it came to behavior and learning.

Ruby K. Payne Ph.D. has written a series of four articles for teachers and educators to help them get a grasp of her framework for understanding generational poverty. I read them and listened to recorded readings of them and found them very helpful. In any school district with a reported free-and-reduced lunch rate in the forty percentile like ours, any strategies we can muster will be valuable.

The first article reviews the 8 assets needed to escape poverty and the "secret rules" of surviving in poverty, the middle-class, and wealth.

The second article focuses on the 5 registers of communications and how children of generational poverty need "mediation," or language plot-structures as an infrastructure for helping them move from concrete thinking to the abstract reasoning that is necessary for academic success.

The third article is a tremendous help in understanding what to expect from students of generational poverty and strategies for classroom management and discipline. This article includes the 3 voices; child, parent, and adult. I think that much of what she writes about fits well with the principles of "Love & Logic" espoused by other experts like Jim and Charles Fay.

Finally the fourth article suggests school-wide strategies including the use of lots of graphic organizers. I think this is where our emphasis on literacy and vocabulary can integrate well across the curriculum and in every discipline.

Download pod-casts of each of Payne's four articles for listening to on your computer or your MP3 player. Free from Payne's website.

First Article

Second Article

Third Article

Fourth Article

Download a PDF of all four articles to read for yourself free from Payne's website.

Visit Payne's website to explore other resources, including an opportunity to purchase her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty.

I haven't read it yet myself, but I'm thinking seriously about it. Trends may come and go, God willing NCLB will at least evolve, even if we can't get rid of it, but poverty will always be with us. All our students suffer, so long as there are two tiers of learners. I believe we have to do whatever we can to help kids be able to succeed in the middle class morass that is school and work. Dr. Payne's articles will at least be a powerful start.

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http://ted.mallory.googlepages.com/home.html
http://tmal.multiply.com

"The gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." ~Garrison Keillor

What ever happened to childhood?

What ever happened to childhood?
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, December 7, 2006 – Page 3

Last summer a reader gave me a suggestion for a column, but I hedged on writing it because I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. I’m still not sure.

The reader was concerned about how over-scheduled kids’ lives have become and how everyone’s lives in the community seem to be dominated by school sports.

When the reader gave me this idea, the C.O.U. Lady Bobcats were on their perennial march to the state softball tournaments. I didn’t want to look like I was trying to criticize their Coach and Athletic Director or any of the players or their parents.

I was afraid that some people would think that since I’ve served as a church youth group counsellor I was just having sour grapes about having to compete for kids’ time with “open gym,” sports and play practices, 4-H, FFA, band, work etc. Sure, it does make it a chore and plenty of people miss the days when Wednesday nights and all of Sunday were off-limits, but that’s not the real problem either.

By waiting till now to address the issue, I certainly don’t want it to look like I’m complaining about my own A.D. at Boyer Valley about how many basketball games we have to deal with (I coach cheerleading).

I never have understood why they get a season done in ten or eleven games in football, but basketball takes more than 22. I really feel sorry for kids who play JV and Varsity and the people who serve as Assistant Coaches for Varsity who are also basically the head coaches for JV- these people end up having at least 30 or more games total.

But please understand that I’m not complaining about or blaming either of these school’s athletic directors. And even if I wanted to, scholastic sports scheduling isn’t something that’s done unilaterally. There are conference, district, regional and state levels of guidelines and planning.

No, this reader who thought I should write about how thinly-stretched kids’ lives have become wasn’t only worried about high school kids anyway. If I read them right, they were worried about all ages of kids.

The reason I finally decided to write about it here is that are two articles that I recently read in the Chicago Tribune.

One story from the Associated Press sites several child development experts who report finding more and more physical and behavior changes happening to 8-12 year-olds, “tweens” that used to occur during the teen years.

The other story told about the American Academy of Pediatric’s concerns that children are being over scheduled and need more time for unstructured play.

The first story explained that many 8-12 year olds go on dates, have their own cell phones, listen to sexually charged music, view R-rated movies, play mature-rated video games and spend time gossiping on MySpace.

They’re dressing and talking in more adult, sexually suggestive and casual and disrespectful ways.

But then, didn’t adults say that about is when we were kids?

When I was 8-12 we were still riding our bikes, playing cops and robbers, building things with legos, or making up stories with our Hotwheels cars or our Star Wars action figures. We explored wilderness areas near our homes or built forts and tree houses.

Among other things, peer-pressure, technology, consumerism and an accelerated pace of life are eating away at our childrens’ innocence.

The second story suggested that many parents hope to occupy their children’s time because parents aren’t always available or willing to supervise their kids’ free time. Other parents mistakenly assume that overloading their kids is the best way to insure that they will achieve.
But while we pour time and money into these activities or transportation to and from them, we may be sacrificing something far more precious.

Some children are suffering depression, exhaustion, anxiety, irritability and loss of sleep.
Meanwhile, not having time to fantasize, daydream, act out imaginary activities or just horse around deprives youngsters of a lot of cognitive, social, emotional and physical development.
Experts recommend limiting kids to no more than three extracurricular activities. For example: one sport, one music or fine art and one youth group.

Of course, if you’re like us, you have two or three kids, so that’s still six to nine activities to fit into a seven day week.

Good luck.

Lets make Bob Costas wear a John Deere Cap

One of the worst parts of coaching a predominantly women’s sport like cheerleading is having to overhear the girl talk.

“Omigawd, did you watch the Olympics last night?”

“Omigawd- Michael Phelps is SO HOT.”

“He’s like 6’4” and only like 150 pounds.”

“And his like, what do you call that? Arm span is like two feet longer than normal, or than it’s supposed to be.”

“Really? Wow. Did you know he has like size fourteen shoes?”

“Like NO WAY, Omigawd.”

I guess it’s to be expected and I just have to listen, the Olympics will be over in another few days anyway. After all, I have to admit, the summer before Freshman year of High School, I was head over heels for Mary Lou Retton. Sure, the red white and blue gymnastics leotards looked great on her, but I think it was mostly about the smile.

It’s surreal to see her interviewed today. She’s a mom who’s a spokesperson for pro-family Christian things like internet filters and stuff. You wouldn’t think of Wonder Woman or Supergirl or Cat Woman hauling her three kids around to school in a minivan twenty years after you first fell in love with them.

But that’s an important thing to remember about athletes and any celebrities for that matter, (especially politicians and preacher) they’re human beings. People just like you and me.

Well, Okay, not QUITE like us. Have you watched Olympic gymnastics lately? It’s phenomenal that any human being can do any of the things these kids do. That’s discipline, that’s pushing their bodies and the laws of physics to the limit.

But why do the men all look like college-aged, well, “men,” but all the women gymnasts look like 11 or 12 year old girls even though they’re supposedly anywhere from 16-23? Do they take anti-steroids? Is there something about the feats they’re performing that alters the physiology of guys and girls differently?

The Ancient Greeks used the original Olympics to showcase the beauty of the “perfect” human physiques. Today’s athletes are more like evolutionary mutants. Really, something must be up. You can’t tell me that male swimmers were 6’4” with over-long arms just 8 or 14 years ago.

American shot putters Adam Nelson and John Gadina look more like people you’d know, but only because they didn’t shave for their interviews on NBC. Their necks have to be thirty inches around. I can see that having to do with the nature of their sport, but I’ve see steroids do that too.

Not all Olympians are so different than the rest of us. I guess that shooters and archers don’t need performance enhancing drugs. That’s about it. I’m not sure why they have to build white-water coursed for canoes. Does Greece not have rivers? And how are badminton and synchronized diving Olympic sports?

19 year old Mariel Zagunis won America a gold in saber fencing. There’s a sport I’d like to take up. I’d like to see more And Javelin throwing- who does that anymore? Olympic sports that are more common to common people. Like men’s or co-ed softball. Or bowling. Why isn’t bowling an Olympic sport? Or golf, walking- how about walking? Darts, darts would be cool. I bet my brother and one of my wife’s cousins could be Olympic class dart-throwers. What about fishing? They have sailing and kayaking, why not fishing.

Of course, what the Olympic planning committee really needs to think about is NASCAR. No, we’re not all Bobbi Labonte, but we all drive cars. Wouldn’t it be cool to watch people excel at activities that we all do anyway? Although, I’d hate for America to only get bronze or silver in NASCAR.

Lets face it, we get carried away with ourselves sometimes. Take the U.S. Basketball team. All over paid NBA spotlight hogs. Not working on fundamentals, not working selflessly as a team-unit, un-coachable, spoiled millionaires. That’s why the Olympics used on only allow amateurs. But in our day and age of sport-drinks, designer shoes and clothes there are no amateurs anyway. I think it was the 1988 Olympics when Nike paid American diver thousands of dollars to sling a pair of shoes over his shoulder while cameras snapped. Did anybody notice that divers, like swimmers complete barefoot?

I think we should host the 2008 Olympics here in Iowa. There could be an Olympic tractor pull. Speed corn-husking could be introduced. Hog throwing has got to be as difficult as the discuss throw (not that I’d know personally, I admit). Think of the money. If RAGBRI participants enjoy fresh sweet corn and tomatoes?

At the risk of blowing my own horn, I think I could be a real contender in the coffee-drinking event. What we really need is an Olympic euchre tournament. And it we really wanted to have some fun with the foreigners, we could try to talk the Olympic Committee into a cow-tipping event.