by Ruby K Payne
But the mother or maternal grandmother tends to keep her biological children. Because of the violence in poverty, death tends to be a prominent part of the family history. But it is also part of the family present because the deceased plays such a role in the memories of the family. It is important to note when dealing with the family patterns who is alive and who is deadbecause in the discussions they are often still living (unless you, the listener, know differently).
Frequently, in the stories that are brought to school officials, the individual will tell the story in the episodic, random manner of the casual-register story structure. Key individuals are usually not referred to during the story because making reference to them isn't part of the story structure. The most important keys to understanding the story are often the omissions. For example, when someone says, "He left," you can pretty much predict who "he" will go stay with when there is trouble. If he is having trouble with his mother, he will go stay with an ex-wife or a girlfriend. If he is having trouble with his current wife, he will go stay with his mother. Women tend to go stay with their sisters and sometimes their mothers. Whether or not a mother or ex-wife is mentioned in the story, if the family is in generational poverty, you can be fairly certain that these are key players. You can also be fairly sure that the males are in and out-sometimes present, sometimes not, but not in any predictable pattern. Furthermore, you can know that as the male temporarily or permanently changes residences, the allegiances will change also.
Additionally within these families there tend to be multiple internal feuds. Allegiances may change overnight; favoritism is a way of life. Who children go to stay with after school, who stays with whom when there is trouble, and who is available to deal with school issues are dependent on the current alliances and relationships at that moment. For example, Ned comes home drunk and beats up his wife, Susan. She calls the police and escapes with the three kids to her mother's house. He goes to his mother's because she arranges to get him out of jail. His mother is not speaking to Susan because she called the cops on him and put him in jail. But Ned's mother usually keeps his kids after school until Susan gets home. Now it is Monday and Susan doesn't have any place to send the kids. So she tells them to go to her mother's house after school, which means they must go on a different bus because she doesn't know if Ned will show up at the house and be waiting for her. On Tuesday the kids again go to Susan's mom's house. But on Wednesday Ned's mom calls Susan and tells her that that no-good Ned got drunk last night and she kicked him out of her house. So now Susan and Ned's mother are good friends, and Ned is on the hot seat. So Ned goes to the apartment of his ex-wife, Jackie, because last week she decided she'd had enough of Jerry, and she was very glad to see Ned ... And so the story continues.
The key roles in these families are fighter/lover, caretaker/rescuer, worker, storyteller, and "keeper of the soul" (i.e., dispenser of penance and forgiveness). The family patterns in generational poverty are different from the middle class. In poverty the roles, the multiple relationships, the nature of the male identity, the ever-changing allegiances, the favoritism, and the matriarchal structure result in a different pattern.
The economic traits which are most characteristic of the culture of poverty include the constant struggle for survival, unemployment and underemployment, low wages, a miscellany of unskilled occupations, child labor, the absence of savings, a chronic shortage of cash, the absence of food reserves in the home, the pattern of frequent buying of small quantities of food many times a day as the need arises, the pawning of personal goods, borrowing from local money lenders at usurious rates of interest, spontaneous informal credit devices (tandas) organized by neighbors, and the use of second-hand clothing and furniture.
- Oscar Lewis, Four Horsemen
HOW THESE CHARACTERISTICS SURFACE WITH ADULTS AND STUDENTS FROM POVERTY
Place a check mark in front of the items that describe students or adults with whom you regularly interact. They ...
Also...
? Men socialize with men and women with women. Men tend to have two social outlets: bars and work. Women with children tend to stay at home and have only other female relatives as friends, unless they work outside the home. Men tend to be loners in any other social setting and avoid those social settings. When a man and a woman are together, it is usually about a private relationship.
? A real man is ruggedly good-looking, is a lover, can physically fight, works hard, takes no crap.
? A real woman takes care of her man by feeding him and downplaying his shortcomings.
NOTE: In generational poverty, the primary role of a real man is to physically work hard, to be a fighter, and to be a lover. In middle class, a real man is a provider. If one follows the implications of a male identity as one who is a fighter and a lover, then one can understand why the male who takes this identity (of fighter and lover as his own) cannot have a stable life. Of the three responses to life-to flee, flow, or fight-he can only fight or flee. So when the stress gets high, he fights, then flees from the law and the people closest to him, leaving his home. Either way he is gone. When the heat dies down, he returns-to an initial welcome, then more fights. The cycle begins again.
HOW THESE CHARACTERISTICS SURFACE AT SCHOOL
Place a check mark in front of the items that describe students with whom you regularly interact. They ...
GENERATIONAL POVERTY
One of the reasons it is getting more and more difficult to conduct school as we have in the past is that the students who bring the middle-class culture with them are decreasing in numbers, and the students who bring the poverty culture with them are increasing in numbers. As in any demographic switch, the prevailing rules and policies eventually give way to the group with the largest numbers.
In order to better serve these students, the next several chapters have ideas about ways in which we can work with students and adults. But to do so, we must fundamentally rethink the notions we have traditionally assigned to relationships and achievement.
WHAT DOES THIS INFORMATION MEAN IN THE SCHOOL OR WORK SETTING?
? An education is the key to getting out of, and staying out of, generational poverty. Individuals leave poverty for one of four reasons: a goal or vision of something they want to be or have; a situation that is so painful that anything would be better; someone who "sponsors" them (i.e., an educator or spouse or mentor or role model who shows them a different way or convinces them that they could live differently); or a specific talent or ability that provides an opportunity for them.
? Being in poverty is rarely about a lack of intelligence or ability.
? Many individuals stay in poverty because they don't know there is a choice-and if they do know that, have no one to teach them hidden rules or provide resources.
? Schools are virtually the only places where students can learn the choices and rules of the middle class.
The culture of poverty has some universal characteristics which transcend regional, rural-urban, and even national differences ... There are remarkable similarities in family structure, interpersonal relations, time orientations, value systems, spending patterns, and the sense of community in lower-class settlements in London, Glasgow, Paris, Harlem, and Mexico City.
- Oscar Lewis, Four Horsemen
CHAPTER 5
Role Models and
Emotional Resources
o understand the importance of role models and their part in the development of emotional resources, one must first briefly look at the notion of functional and dysfunctional systems. The following definitions will be used:
A SYSTEM is a group in which individuals have rules, roles, and relationships.
DYSFUNCTIONAL is the extent to which on individual cannot get his/her needs met within a system.
All systems are, to some extent, dysfunctional. A system is not equally functional or dysfunctional for each individual within a given system. The extent to which an individual must give up meeting his/her needs in order to meet
the needs of another person is the extent to which the situation is dysfunctional.
Michael Dumont (1994) gives a case study of a girl named Ellie.
ELLIE
Ellie's mother, Victoria, is bedridden with multiple sclerosis and her father, Larry, is a small storekeeper. Victoria, in her rage at the disease and her distrust of Larry, attempts suicide when Ellie is 9 years old. It is Ellie's job each day when she comes home from school to count her mother's pills to make certain they are all there-and to check to see if her mother is alive. Ellie tells Mr. Dumont that the worst part of her day is when she comes home from school and must check on her mother's well-being. When he tells Ellie that she is smart and asks her what she wants to be, she tells him she would like to be a secretary. At 13 Ellie becomes pregnant and drops out of school.
The situation is dysfunctional for Ellie because she must sublimate her needs to address the needs of her mother. In order for Ellie to have an appropriate developmental process emotionally, she needs to be a child, then an adolescent, then an adult. By being forced to take on an adult role earlier, she must in essence put her emotional development on hold while she functions in an adult role. Therefore, for the rest of her life, Ellie will seek to have her emotional needs met that were not met during her childhood. She almost certainly will not have the emotional resources and stamina necessary to function as an interdependent adult.
DEPENDENCE
INDEPENDENCE
INTERDEPENDENCE
To become a fully functioning adult, one moves developmentally from being dependent to being independent to being interdependent. Stephen Covey (1989) calls it the maturity continuum, and John Bradshaw (1988) refers to it as becoming whole. Regardless of the terminology, it basically means moving from being dependent on others to being able to work together with other adults, each independent of the other, but jointly, as equal partners.
Simply put, an individual operating in a dysfunctional setting is often forced to take an adult role early, and then as an adult, is literally caught between being dependent and independent. So one will see this fierce independence coupled with a crippling dependence that weakens the person to the point that he/she has few emotional resources. This roller-coaster ride up and down between dependence and independence takes a heavy toll. Bradshaw and others refer to this constant fluctuation between dependence and independence as co-dependency.
As Ellie's case study illustrates, the emotional resources come in part from the role models who are present for the child. When the appropriate role models are present, the child can go through the developmental stages at appropriate times and build emotional resources. Emotional resources are built in this fashion: The child watches the adult for emotional responses to a given situation and notes the continuum of behaviors that go with those responses. In Ellie's situation, her mother's response to her husband's infidelity was to create an even greater level of dependence-and to use the emotional ploy of guilt to manipulate Ellie. So what does Ellie do when she gets old enough? She creates a level of dependence on others as well (i.e., through pregnancy and going on welfare).
A child may decide that the role-model responses are not appropriate. Often what occurs then is that the child selects the opposite extreme from which to operate. What is problematic for the child is simply what is "normal"; an appropriate adult response is rarely observable. The child, therefore, is forced to guess at what "normal" or appropriate is.
Question: Why would emotional resouces have such importance in school and at work?
Answer: Emotional responses dictate behavior and, eventually, determine achievement.
Futhermore, in order to move from poverty to middle class or from middle class to wealth, one must trade off some relationships for achievement at least for a period of time. To do this, one needs emotional resources and stamina.
An emotional memory bank is defined as the emotions that are accessed habitually and "feel right." When a relationship is traded off for achievement, the emotional memory bank must be held in abeyance until the new "feel right" feeling can be obtained. That process sometimes take years. The driving force behind an individual holding the emotional memory bank in abeyance is usually one of four things: (1) The current situation is too painful for the individual to stay, (2) a compelling goal or vision of the future drives the individual, (3) a talent or skill takes the individual into new surroundings, or (4) a spouse or mentor provides an emotional comfort level while the individual learns the new skills/knowledge.
Emotional resources and stamina allow the individual to live with feelings other than those in the emotional memory bank. This allowance provides the individual the opportunity to seek options and examine other possibilities. As the case study shows, Ellie stays with her emotional memory bank and creates situations that "feel right."
HOW DO YOU PROVIDE EMOTIONAL RESOURCES WHEN THE STUDENT HAS NOT HAD ACCESS TO APPROPRIATE ROLE MODELS?
i. Through support systems.
2. By using appropriate discipline strategies and approaches.
3. By establishing long-term relationships (apprenticeships, mentorships) with adults who are appropriate.
4. By teaching the hidden rules.
5. By identifying options.
6. By increasing individuals' achievement level through appropriate instruction.
7. By teaching goal-setting.
WHAT DOES THIS INFORMATION MEAN IN THE SCHOOL OR WORK SETTING?
a Schools need to establish schedules and instructional arrangements that allow students to stay with the same teachers for two or more years-if mutually agreed upon.
w Teachers and administrators are much more important as role models than has previously been addressed.
? The development of emotional resources is crucial to student success. The greatest free resource available to schools is the rolemodeling provided by teachers, administrators, and staff.
CHAPTER 6
Support Systems
upport systems are the friends, family, and backup resources that can be accessed in times of need. These systems of support tend to fall into seven Jgeneral categories.
1. Coping Strategies
Coping strategies are the ways in which one copes with daily living: the disappointments, the tragedies, the triumphs. Coping strategies are ways to think about things, attitudes, self-talk, strategies for resolving conflicts, problem-solving techniques, and the avoidance of needless conflicts. Coping strategies are also ways of approaching tasks, setting priorities, and determining what one can live with and what one can live without.
2. Options During Problem-Solving
Options are all the ways to solve a problem. Even very capable adults often talk over a problem with another adult just in order to see other options they haven't considered.
3. Information and Know-How
This is a key aspect of a support system. When a child has homework, who in the support system knows enough math to help the child? Who knows the research process? Who knows the ropes for going to college or getting a newcar loan? Who knows how to talk to the insurance agent so the situation can be clarified? Who knows how to negotiate difficult situations with a teacher and come to a resolution? Who understands the court system, the school system? Information and know-how are crucial to success.
4. Temporary Relief from Emotional, Mental, Financial, and/or Time Constraints
When you are upset, who provides relief for you? When you aren't sure how you will get everything finished, who helps you? Who takes your children when you are desperate for a break? These people are all part of a support system.
5. Connections to Other People and Resources
When you don't have the information and know-how, who are the people you turn to for assistance? Those people are your connections. Connections to people and resources are an integral part of a healthy support system.
6. Positive Self-Talk
Everyone has a little voice inside his/her head that talks to him/her all the tim
e. This little voice gives encouraging messages. These encouraging messages help one finish tasks, complete projects, and get through difficult situations. If an individual does not listen to this encouraging little voice, the success rate is much lower.
7. Procedural Self-Talk
Procedural self-talk is the voice that talks an individual through a task. It is key to success. Many individuals in poverty have a very limited support system-and particularly missing is procedural self-talk. Many tasks are never finished. In numerous dealings with students, teachers and other school officials find that self-talk is simply not available to the student.
The following case study identifies what aspects of a support system would be beneficial to a student-and would promote success.
LAKEITHA
You are a high school social studies teacher in inner-city Houston. One of your students, LaKeitha, was so rude in your loth-grade class that you told her she could not return until you had a conversation with her mother. She calls her mother and tells you that her mom will be there at 7:3o a.m. the next day to meet with you. You are at school the next morning at 7:15 a.m. LaKeitha's mother doesn't show up.