The Poverty and Education Reader

A Call for Equity in Many Voices

Paul C. Gorski, Julie Landsman, Paul C. Gorski, Julie Landsman

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781579228613
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Through a rich mix of essays, memoirs, and poetry, the contributors to The Poverty and Education Reader bring to the fore the schooling experiences of poor and working class students, highlighting the resiliency, creativity, and educational aspirations of low-income families. They showcase proven strategies that imaginative teachers and schools have adopted for closing the opportunity gap, demonstrating how they have succeeded by working in partnership with low-income families, and despite growing class sizes, the imposition of rote pedagogical models, and teach-to-the-test mandates. The contributors—teachers, students, parents, educational activists, and scholars—repudiate the prevalent, but too rarely discussed, deficit views of students and families in poverty. Rather than focusing on how to "fix" poor and working class youth, they challenge us to acknowledge the ways these youth and their families are disenfranchised by educational policies and practices that deny them the opportunities enjoyed by their wealthier peers. Just as importantly, they offer effective school and classroom strategies to mitigate the effects of educational inequality on students in poverty. Rejecting the simplistic notion that a single program, policy, or pedagogy can undo social or educational inequalities, this Reader inspires and equips educators to challenge the disparities to which underserved communities are subjected. It is a positive resource for students of education and for teachers, principals, social workers, community organizers, and policy makers who want to make the promise of educational equality a reality.

PART ONE

Counterstories
Insiders’ Views on Poverty and Schooling

1

FIRST GRADE LESSON

Sandy Nesbit Tracy

Rain left a puddle in the schoolyard—
shiny, flat water reflecting tall green trees
and two-story red brick building
in Springdale, Arkansas, in 1951.

That September morning dawned cool.
I wore a flour-sack dress my mother made,
white socks handed down from my sisters,
too-small brown sandals with buckled straps.

Margaret and Connie were in the yard
in their store-bought dresses with white collars.
Margaret’s was pale pink with a ruffle;
Connie’s was light blue and yellow plaid.
Margaret’s socks were pink;
Connie’s were blue with yellow flowers.
They both wore new saddle shoes.

“Walk through the puddle,” they dared me.
I hesitated.
“Watch us—we’ll walk through the water.”
I watched.

I started walking through the water.
The cold wet soaked into my socks.
The bell rang.
Margaret and Connie hurried away.
I lagged behind.

Slosh, slosh, slosh sounded my
wet socks in my sandals.

“Sandra, why are your socks all wet?”
said Miss Jean Clinkscales,
tall, thin teacher of first and second grade.

“I walked through the puddle in the front yard.
Margaret and Connie told me to.”
Miss Jean looked down at me.
My face burned.
“They did it, too.”

Miss Jean sniffed.
“It’s all right for Margaret and Connie to walk through the puddle.
See how substantial their shoes are.
But you—[she sniffed again]
you only have on those flimsy sandals.
Now take off your socks.”

I unbuckled my sandals and pulled off the muddy wet socks.

Miss Jean gingerly picked them up
and hung them on top of the tall windows
above the blinds
for all to see.

2

ON LILACS, TAP-DANCING, AND CHILDREN OF POVERTY

Bobby Ann Starnes

Every spring, I turn over a new leaf (so to speak), vowing that this year I will garden. Last Saturday, the warm sunshine and light breeze made it the perfect day to make good on this year’s promise. So I donned my rubber gardening shoes, pulled out my color-coordinated gardening tools, and headed out to plant flowers along the bank of the creek that runs through my yard. I suppose that in the spirit of full disclosure I should say that “creek” is the word my landlord uses to describe the little stream of muddy water. A cartographer would more likely refer to it as a drainage ditch. Whichever name is more accurate, I’d decided to plant day lilies along its bank. I dug carefully spaced holes to exactly the depth prescribed by the planting instructions and then packed dirt around each flower. After repeating the process several times, I stood to admire my work. Looking at the meager amount of work completed and pondering all the holes yet to be dug, I wondered why I had ever thought this was a good idea. Just then, something brought me to an abrupt stop.

It was the lilacs. A gentle wind had carried their aroma across the creek. Seemingly overnight the buds had transformed from the promise of bloom into full, thick blossoms. As my lungs filled, my body sank to the ground, and I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the lilacs’ magic. I was transported back in time and found myself standing in front of the three-room tar-paper house on Ottello Avenue where I grew up.

It was not a happy place, and I was not a happy child. Life was full of extremes—too many people in too little space, never enough to go around, but far too much for a child to experience far too soon. There was little safety to be found on Ottello Avenue. But there were the lilac bushes. It was safe there.

About four feet from our house, a long row of lilac bushes separated our yard from our neighbor’s. Those lilacs flourished there where it seemed nothing else could. Untended, their branches grew wildly and, heavy with blooms, drooped to the ground, creating a hideaway for two young children. There, surrounded by thick, rich lilac bushes, my brother and I spent long days immune to all that occurred outside their boundaries.

My mother worked all night in the fireworks factory, and my father worked all day operating an elevator in the local General Motors plant. Their schedules left my brother and me on our own. Long before the term latchkey was invented, we took care of ourselves from early morning until late in the evening.

The image of that house was hard for me to revisit, but the lilac bushes reached out for me and invited me inside. My imagination pulled a lilac-laden branch aside, and I peeked in. That’s when my mind gave me the gift of a memory so real it was as though I could reach out and touch it. I could see us, my brother, Tom, and me, there in all our childish glory. My blond hair jutted out wildly, as was its tendency, especially on mornings when I couldn’t find a comb to provide its curls at least some guidance. And there was Tommy standing shirtless and barefoot, his blond hair cut close to his head, his cotton shorts twisted crookedly around his waist. I smiled at the memory. He was always such a dork. Yet Tommy was a remarkable person. At 4, he was a regular reader of Superman comic books and could reasonably explain how archenemy Mr. Mxyzptlk traveled from the fifth dimension to torment the Man of Steel. As for me, well, I had managed to finish the first grade without learning to read much of anything. But I had other skills. One was preparing escape routes.

On that day, we were deeply engaged in one of my favorite escape scenarios—the Hollywood discovery. I’d heard stories of people like us who were just minding their own business when a talent scout happened upon them and bing-bang-boom, those people were rich and famous. I wanted us to be ready when the scout showed up on our little street in Dayton, Ohio.

Tommy and I held long sticks that we called canes, and we were deep in conversation. His eyes were sharp and clear, and his attention was focused completely on me as I choreographed the dance we would perform for the talent scout. As I enthusiastically pointed my “cane” here and there, Tommy nodded his head obediently. My brilliant plan fully articulated, we began.

Standing side by side, we wildly twirled and whirled. And as we tap-danced ourselves into a frenzy—or did what we thought was tap-dancing—we began to sing a song we had practiced hundreds of times before. It was our song, and we knew every word.

“Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money,” we sang more loudly than well. “Maybe we’re ragged and funny. But we’ll travel along, singin’ a song, side by side.” I watched with anticipation for the big finish I knew was coming. “Through all kinds of weather,” we sang in unison as we planted our canes firmly on the ground in front of us and came to a hard stop in our routine.

“But, Bobby,” Tommy said seriously, “what if the sky should fall?”

“Oh, Tommy,” I replied in feigned amusement. Then we sang the last line together with all the gusto we could muster: “As long as we’re together, you know it really doesn’t matter at all.” We ended our song and dance with the two of us standing, legs apart, bent at the waist, our chins resting on the top of our canes.

“Oh, it was beautiful,” we told ourselves, certain that when we were discovered, our performance would delight audiences everywhere. But we did not rest on our laurels. We practiced over and over again for days and weeks to come—two barefoot children together, hidden from a hard world under the lilac bushes.

The future had seemed so distant, but the dream of a better life sustained us. I thought Tom and I would always be side by side, but a few years back, the sky did fall when Tom died unexpectedly.

As I thought about those two children and what lay ahead of them, my mind drifted to a conversation I’d had with Marsha, a teacher friend, after she attended a Ruby Payne workshop. Ruby Payne wrote the highly popular and heavily criticized Framework for Understanding Poverty and parlayed it and the ideas it espouses into a highly lucrative consulting business. Today she and those who work for her offer hundreds of workshops for teachers, administrators, and community members around the country every year.

I remembered Marsha telling me that the workshop had changed everything for her. At last she understood something about the children she had been teaching for more than 26 years. Her students’ families experience extreme financial stress and are of a cultural and ethnic minority. Having grown up in a middle-class, White family, Marsha has always struggled to understand the community, families, and children she teaches and has always been frustrated that she could not. Still, she has always tried. Marsha tells me she has even prayed for understanding.

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that Marsha and teachers like her are seduced by Payne. She promises clarity—a clarity even Marsha’s prayers have failed to deliver. And it is so simple. Payne has mapped out all the strategies for Marsha. The trick, Payne’s approach says, is to teach children in poverty to play by middle-class rules. So if Marsha follows Payne’s directions, she can “solve the problem” of poverty and the families who live in it. All she has to do is to “un-teach” the “hidden rules of poverty” that prevent her kids from succeeding. Why wouldn’t Marsha try? She really loves the kids she teaches. She wants their lives to be richer, fuller, less troubled. If only it were that easy.

Much has been written about Payne’s work. Critics point out that she never addresses the unequal education poor kids receive and that she preaches a deficit model. We don’t have to change society or schooling—just poor people. Sitting there on the bank, I realized that my real concern about this message is that it never could account for those two tap-dancing children, the promise that existed for their futures, or the ways we could help them prepare. I don’t recognize the families Payne uses as “case studies” in her books, except as the stereotypes I have fought most of my life.

The thing is, I told myself, economic distress and the situations it creates are as varied and complex as the children who experience them. In the place where I grew up, no one expected children to leave the neighborhood. Teachers knew—or thought they knew—what we needed, and they were determined to guide us along their path of low expectations. Fortunately for Tom and me, we didn’t know that our future had been mapped out for us. We were lucky that way.

Payne seems to say that the best thing we can do is teach poor kids to act middle class. If we can only “fix” them, then the world will open up for them. But the real fix lies not in the children but in the inequalities and societal norms that prevent children from having equal access. In the small world of our classrooms, we can get to know our children as complex individuals living unique lives and help them to build their dreams and achieve their goals, not—as Payne suggests—our middle-class expectations of success.

Lost in my thoughts, with clarity seemingly only moments away, I was snapped back into the present by the phone ringing in my kitchen. Many more day lilies needed my attention, but I’d had enough. I picked up my gardening tools and headed toward the house. “So much for that new leaf,” I thought. “No wonder I don’t do this more often.” But after a few steps, I ignored the phone and walked across the creek to the lilac bush, gathered a branch laden with blooms into my arms, and buried my face into its blossoms. And for just an instant, it was as though I were hugging Tommy once more in the safety of our lilac fortress.

Note

Reprinted with permission of Phi Delta Kappa International, www.pdkintl.org. All rights reserved. Starnes, B. A. (2008). On lilacs, tap-dancing, and children of poverty. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(10), 779–780.

3

CLASS, RACE, AND THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF SCHOOLS

Buffy Smith

My students rarely out themselves as being poor. You could not tell they struggle financially by the papers they turn in to me or by what they say when we discuss things in my sociology classes at the University of St. Thomas. During office hours, however, students reveal to me that they grew up poor, and often they tell me that they are the first person from their family to go to college. They talk about the social distance they feel from their peers who have money. They tell me they often hang out with other poor students to avoid being reminded of what they simply don’t have. Many low-income students do not own cars. They are less likely to dine at off-campus restaurants or to have an entire wardrobe of brand-name clothes. They do not go to vacation resorts on spring break. They get tired of being reminded of these differences when they are with wealthier students.

The same unease students feel with their more affluent peers can transfer over to their professors. They may not reach out to their professors when they are performing poorly in the class, fearing that they will be judged as lacking in the ability to succeed in school.

Starting in kindergarten, schools rarely reward poor students for the qualities they bring to their schools: their perseverance, compassion, flexibility, patience, and creativity, just to name a few. Instead they are judged on qualities determined by dominant cultural norms: the attitudes, preferences, tastes, mannerisms, and abilities valued by a system that never was designed to meet their needs (Apple, 1982, 1990). They find themselves at a disadvantage in such a system, and this extends into college experiences. Their teachers and college professors rarely reward them for their diversity of attitudes, preferences, tastes, mannerisms, and abilities or encourage them to draw on their own experiences to achieve in school. Social justice is rarely a subject introduced as part of their education.

The Unrecognized Strength of My Home

My own story provides an example of the complex way such a situation plays out in schools. My older brother and I grew up in a single-parent household. I was shaped and nurtured by my mother and grandmother. My mother graduated from a Mississippi high school, and while she eventually earned a certificate in early childhood education from a community college in Milwaukee, she primarily worked at jobs that paid minimum wage. My grandmother, who had only a sixth-grade education, was a former sharecropper and domestic servant in Mississippi. They raised me to respect adults and people in authority. I was socialized to say “ma’am” and “sir” when addressing my elders. I was a quiet and shy child, and for the most part, I followed adults’ instructions and rules. In this way I was raised to be compliant, one element of the hidden curriculum in our schools. This insistence on compliance is also one aspect of schooling that keeps some students from feeling they can challenge the very structures that repress them. They often feel silenced and alienated from public education at an early age.

In my household, we did not have many books. I believe my lack of books contributed to my below average reading test scores. In third grade I was reading at a second-grade level. Research indicates that social class can influence cognitive abilities because a lack of money results in fewer experiences at museums and traveling, fewer books in the home, and less access to preschool education (Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Good & Brophy, 1987). My teacher, Ms. Skinner, recommended that my mother make sure I read during the summer to improve my skills. My mother responded by taking me to the public library every week during the summer. She made sure I read three or four books each week. She also purchased a set of encyclopedias and dictionaries for our home. The following year, I was placed in the fourth-grade-reading-level class. This is what I brought to school: the support of a strong, persistent mother and grandmother. In descriptions of poor children, such remarkable families are rarely mentioned. They run counter to the deficit descriptions of poverty educators are used to hearing.

My mother and grandmother instilled in me a faith in God. They provided me with an abundance of love. But there were some things they simply could not do to prepare me to succeed in a public school geared toward middle-class and wealthier students.

The Complexity of Racism and Classism

As a youth, I was psychologically equipped to confront racism in school. I was taught by my mother to stand up for myself when people used racial slurs. She consistently reminded my brother and me that we should never feel inferior because of the color of our skin. However, I was not adequately prepared to address classism in the education system. There was no pride in being poor. In fact, I did not know anyone who marched in the streets with their fist in the air saying, “Poor is beautiful.” I loved being Black, but I hated being poor.

In my early years, I was bussed with other Black students to a predominantly White school in order to further integration. For the first time, I noticed racial and class differences. Most of us who were bussed received “free lunch” tickets. White students made jokes about Black students being poor and wearing off-brand clothes and shoes. I also heard my White “friend” Steve call Rebecca, another Black girl, a “nigger.” I asked why he called Rebecca a nigger. He responded, “Because she is one, but don’t worry, Buffy, you are not, you are Black.” The only distinction between Rebecca and me that I can remember is that Rebecca would speak loudly. She hung out exclusively with the other few Black students in school. Although I socialized with both Black and White students, I self-identified as “Black.” After the name-calling, and after I realized the students who were not compliant and submissive were the ones who were ridiculed, I questioned my friendships with White students.

According to some scholars, the school system privileges individuals who comply with dominant culture, like that of middle-class and upper-middle-class teachers, ...