Still, I have a bigger vision for our coat closet. I would love for our school to organize a coat swap where families could bring in outgrown jackets and shoes and swap them for better-fitting coats brought in by another family. I would love to see a “coat store” in the spirit of the Christmas Store program run by Mile High Ministries here in Denver. For twenty-three years, the Christmas Store has partnered with families in need to provide Christmas presents to kids. Referred families pick out and pay for gifts at steeply discounted prices. In this way the school can empower the community to use its own resources to meet its own needs, and with a little help and facilitation, families can provide warm clothes for their children.
In the end, our schools need to recognize that students come to us with needs that must be met for learning to occur. The needs your students display might be different from mine. Your students might need calculators to do their homework, or backpacks. Adolescent girls might need access to feminine hygiene products. Some families might need help facilitating transportation to and from school.
As teachers we can find ways to fill the gaps for our students. Talking about it is certainly easier than doing it, but find out what your students need and then find ways to connect them with resources and support. When our schools take steps to meet the needs of our students in every aspect of their lives, we ensure they have the resources to learn.
While we are doing all this hard work, we need to ensure that the reality we see is not hidden by the walls of our classrooms. Our governments, our school districts, and the public need to know what it is really like to be a student living in poverty, so they can enact policies and deliver services that support our students. This is not something over and above the scope of our duty as educators. It is our duty.
3. Community Supplies
At the beginning of the school year, teachers across America pass out lists of school supplies that families are expected to purchase for their children. But have you ever figured out how much it costs to buy all the supplies you put on your list? How much exactly? How much will that pack of markers cost if the family can’t shop around for the best price? How much will a binder cost if the only store a family has access to is a local drugstore? For older students, do you know the cost of supplies for their combined classes? If you don’t know, you should.
As a former student candidly put it, “The problem wasn’t the one spiral notebook my history teacher said I needed. It was that every class asked for one. With three kids in our family, it would have been thirty dollars’ worth of notebooks. That was the cost of one of our bills. So, every day I said I forgot my notebook and asked my friends to rip out a page for me. It was embarrassing.”
As a child, I never knew how much school supplies cost. Not having access to school supplies was never an issue for me growing up and I gave little thought to it. Like many teachers, I typed up my list of requested supplies and sent it home with students at the beginning of each school year. The policy of a neighboring school, College View Elementary, caused me to rethink my approach. Teachers there do not send long lists of school supplies home with kids. They simply ask each family to contribute a set amount, like $20.
At first that seemed like a lot to me, but then I started asking my students’ parents how much they currently paid for school supplies. I’m sure it is not shocking to anyone who has ever taken that crumpled school supply list to the store, but I was surprised when parents told me they were spending $70 to $80 to purchase all the listed supplies for just one student in my class. The numbers parents reported to me are blown out of the water by the Backpack Index annually compiled by Huntington Bank. In 2015, they found that the average cost for supplies and extracurricular school activities for an elementary school student was $649. For middle school students it was $941 and for high school students the cost was $1,402.
In light of this, my grade-level team decided to try the “we get the supplies” approach and families unanimously love it. On the family’s end, they save time and money. On my end, as a teacher I can get the exact supplies that work for my class. And when I’m buying for thirty students I can get a much better deal. Plus, a class set of rulers or scissors can last years without my having to repurchase.
In addition, all the supplies in my classroom are “community supplies,” which means we pool the pencils and crayons in one place so they are available for everyone. This helps create a sense of community and teaches students about shared resources. If one students bites off the erasers from all the pencils (and, yes, this has happened!) then the whole class is affected. On a more practical level, having community supplies cuts down on waste. Glue sticks go dry less often when we all take care of them.
Similarly, our basketball team requests a “recommended donation” instead of a sign-up fee. Families are also happy to contribute in nonmonetary ways by washing uniforms or setting out chairs before our games. Most students turn in the recommended donation, but another remarkable thing happens. Without any solicitation, some families give over and above the recommended donation and cover the costs of students not able to contribute any funding. It is another example of the community supporting itself.
The idea of community supplies may not be revolutionary, but I hope it illuminates how teachers can examine age-old school policies in order to make meaningful changes. I encourage you to try out the technique of community supplies. Small but important changes like this one, when added up, challenge the status quo and support our students.
4. Breakfast in the Classroom
Another age-old practice that is beginning to be reexamined is how we serve children food. Many of my students have enough food at home, but the truth is so many children in my classroom do not have the food they need to fuel their bodies. I have students whose only meals are provided at school, which means that after lunch their next meal is breakfast the following day. That is if they actually eat those meals.
Through the school lunch program, schools are able to provide both free lunches and free breakfasts to students who qualify and have completed the necessary paperwork. At our school in particular, we knew students in need were eating lunch, but few were eating breakfast. When we examined the issue more closely, we realized there were significant barriers to our students getting access to breakfast.
First, breakfast was served before school, so if students wanted to eat they had to arrive early. Second, when students arrived at school they were given the option of going into the cafeteria and eating breakfast or going outside and playing with their friends before the school bell rang. As you may guess, many kids chose to skip cereal and a banana in order to play tetherball. That choice might mean a six-year-old could be hungry and unfocused for an entire morning of learning. The final barrier was social. Even though so many of our students struggled with food insecurity, very few felt comfortable exposing themselves as being in need. By being one of the few students to go through the food line at breakfast, students publicly admitted they were hungry.
In 2010, some of these barriers to eating breakfast were removed for our nation’s students. Legislators reauthorized the National School Lunch Program and titled it the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. One key component was updating the nutritional requirements, but the act also included the Community Eligibility Provision that “allows high-poverty schools to offer breakfast and lunch free of charge to all students.” Any individual school, group of schools, or entire school district with 40 percent or more of students who are “already identified,” meaning their family already receives government assistance, can participate in this program. But it is optional, which means that for many students nothing changed.
In 2013, Colorado’s state legislature followed the lead of states like Texas and Arkansas and passed a bill mandating breakfast and lunch be universally offered in schools like mine that have 80 percent or more students qualifying for FRL. In addition, breakfast would be served after the school bell rang.
With this policy change, I saw the impa
ct on my students’ learning firsthand. My students can now eat breakfast in our classroom under the Breakfast in the Classroom model, which means all of my students are eating a nutritious morning meal every day.
Our school went from serving less than 200 breakfast meals a day to serving more than 450 breakfast meals a day. Think about that impact! That’s more than 250 students eating breakfast each day who might not have eaten before. On any given morning in my classroom, you will see focused students flipping the pages of their books as they methodically munch on an apple. The ripple effects go beyond quieting the rumbling in their bellies. I now send fewer students to the school nurse with stomachaches or headaches, which means more student learning time. Students have also learned responsibility and teamwork by setting up and cleaning up after their daily community meal.
Research on the impact of Breakfast in the Classroom compiled by the Food Research and Action Center confirms my observations. They cite studies that found “students with improved nutrient intake as a result of a program of school breakfast offered free to all students report decreases in symptoms of hunger.” The impact of these programs extends even further: students who participate in breakfast programs show “greater improvements in math scores, attendance, punctuality, depression, anxiety, and hyperactivity.”
Most of my Teacher Tools focus on strategies teachers can implement in their classrooms, and I understand that rolling out a Breakfast in the Classroom program will take a collaborative effort by an entire school or community. But I feel so passionately about this program that I want every teacher who serves students struggling with food insecurity to advocate for it in their classrooms, especially since the Community Eligibility Provision gives schools a real opportunity to serve students better.
As schools, we are perfectly positioned to fight childhood hunger. I encourage teachers and schools to investigate the realities of food insecurity among their students and treat it as the learning problem it is. As teachers, let’s use our voices to advocate for the barriers to healthful meals to be broken down and eliminated.
5. Empathetic Questions, Individualized Interventions
One year around the holidays, a community member offered to “adopt a family” and buy them Christmas presents. When our school psychologist called the family to find out what type of presents they would like, she asked the mother to think of something for herself. The mother replied, “Laundry detergent.” As it turned out, one of her children, who had significant physical needs, often wet the bed. She did not have enough laundry detergent to wash the soiled sheets and to also wash the children’s school clothes. Unintentionally, we had discovered that the root cause of her children’s frequent absences from school was as simple as her not being able to wash their clothes. This taught me an important lesson about asking empathetic questions.
When our students struggle in school, we need to find the root of the problem, and to do this the first step is often asking an empathetic question. Think of a child who arrives late to school. Greeting the child with disappointment, hostility, or sarcasm makes the child feel they are the problem.
A true inspiration in my life as an educator is local hero Emily Griffith, who started an innovative school in Denver in 1908 “for all who wish to learn,” which still survives today. In her Opportunity School she hung a sign that read ENTER YOUR CLASSES WHENEVER YOU CAN GET HERE. WE KNOW YOU TRY TO BE ON TIME. If educators start with a “we know you try” attitude we can work from this place to solve the problem. We must try to seek understanding and provide the necessary support, instead of automatically being punitive.
We teachers should work to discover the root cause of why a student is tardy. Focus on identifying what has become a barrier for the student. It could be as simple as “What makes it hard to get to school on time?” This question is solution focused instead of accusatory. There is a big difference between that and “Why are you always late?” If you want to know what circumstances are contributing to a problem, a good rule of thumb is to take the “you” out of the question.
Asking an empathetic question often provides a wealth of information. Maybe the student does not have reliable transportation to school. As the teacher, you can help facilitate a carpool or help figure out a bus route. Perhaps the child just needs help waking up. The school might be able to provide an alarm clock, find an app that can play a loud alarm, or ask a reliable neighbor to knock on their apartment door in the morning. Maybe the child needs earplugs so they can get a restful night’s sleep. You can see how asking empathetic questions can open up a world of solutions adaptable to individual needs.
Poverty manifests itself in different ways. Geography, family dynamics, availability of resources, and each family’s strengths can all dramatically impact a student’s experiences. Even within the same community, one student’s needs can be vastly different from another’s. We cannot find out what supports each of our students needs until we have the right information.
Most of my students, like more than half of all children in American schools, live in poverty. Beyond lacking certain resources, this truth takes a very real emotional and physical toll. But let me be perfectly clear: there is no need to feel sorry for my students. My eight-year-old students perform Shakespeare, write computer code, and launch citywide book-drive campaigns. Each student in my classes, year after year, has enormous potential. I wholeheartedly believe a day will come when I will be working for one of my students or even voting for one of them.
As teachers, we need to continuously avoid the temptation to make assumptions and instead take active steps to understand our students’ lives. Teachers play an important role when we educate ourselves in the realities our students face when they live in poverty. We can equip ourselves with knowledge of how poverty in American schools fits into a national context, and we can become advocates to provide the resources and support our students need.
Teachers are truly on the front lines of poverty. We have a responsibility to do everything we can to ensure all of our students have equal access to a quality education. Understanding the realities of our students’ lives may not always be comfortable for everyone, but facing these issues head on is the best way to understand and help our students. If our good intentions backfire, we need to reflect and make improvements.
As individual teachers, we may feel that the scope of poverty is too big and anything we do will barely make a dent. But when you consider that each of us has the opportunity to affect and improve the lives of so many children each school year, it’s easy to see how our collective impact could change the world. But it’s up to each of us, in every classroom, to work toward that change.
3.
All Families Count
Including Families in All Their Forms
When it comes to families, our classrooms play a major role in reflecting the larger culture and accepted norms. Family plays an essential role in all children’s lives and therefore families, in all their forms, need to be included in every classroom.
Creating a classroom environment that does not merely tolerate all families but actively includes every definition of a family helps students feel valued and supported. I strive to move my classroom away from a culture of allowing for perceived abnormalities into a classroom culture where all families are universally included.
Let’s be clear. The ideal of a Norman Rockwell family with a mom, dad, two kids, and a dog that was once prominent in our country is not the reality for the majority of Americans. Between the 2000 and 2010 US Censuses, husband-wife family households continued a downward trend and officially became the minority, with only 48.4 percent of families having this traditional makeup.
Modern families exist in a variety of forms. According to the New York Times, families are more “ethnically, racially, religiously, and stylistically diverse than a half generation ago—than even a half year ago.” Consider these statistics: More than 40 percent of American babies are born to single mothers. Gay and lesbian parents are becom
ing more common; recent estimates show that one out of every thirty-seven children goes home to two moms or two dads. The number of unmarried yet cohabiting parents is rising as marriage rates decline.
And some family units aren’t technically “family” by traditional definitions. When I worked in District of Columbia Public Schools, the idea of “play cousins” was prominent. Even though two children were not biological cousins, this term was used to describe a stronger bond than that of just friend or neighbor. In my school, it is now common for my students to describe older females close to the family as tías, or “aunties,” even if it is not technically true.
A recent study at the University of Puget Sound explored how over one hundred participants developed deep relationships and ties to people who weren’t blood relatives. The researchers found that there are several types of so-called voluntary kin who can constitute a family. Although not technically “kin” by law or genetics, these types of relationships can be just as real and meaningful to students as they might be with blood relatives.
Another way a family makeup can change is through divorce. Recent statistics cited in the New York Times and the Huffington Post demonstrate the divorce rate is on the decline and could dip as low as 30 percent due to several factors; these include cohabitation before marriage, couples choosing to cohabit instead of getting married, and delaying marriage until couples are in their midtwenties or later. Teachers need to be aware that students being raised by a married couple is not a given.
I Wish My Teacher Knew Page 6