Senior Project Post #4

3/29/15                        Senior Project Post #4

In the section of reading I did this past week in Teaching with Poverty in Mind still focuses a lot on the problems that acute and chronic stress has on students. Being overly stressed as a student is debilitating. It increases the likely hood of have excessive anxiety, hopelessness, and distancing/detachment. “Students from low-income families...who lack a measure of connectedness--to family, to the community, or to a religious affiliation--demonstrate increased hopelessness over time. This is sometimes reflected in low socioeconomic students in school through passiveness, acting out, or disinterest. This hopeless mindset is the process known as “learned helplessness. Students with learned helplessness are more likely to drop out of school and become pregnant as a teenager. “Each stressor builds on and exacerbates other stressors and slowly changes the student. It is this cumulative effect of all the stressors that often makes life miserable for poor students”. Brains are designed to change. So while that means that students can be negatively impacted by stress, it also means that students can bring positive change to their brains by being supported through out school. Until low SES students are provided with the support they need, the education system will remain an unleveled playing field.

Senior Project Post #3

3/22/15

Blog Post 3

This section starts out with emotional and social challenges that students of low socioeconomic status face. Poor families are more likely to experience teen motherhood, depression, and lower quality healthcare. These factors tend to result in a child receiving less nurturing, which later tends to lead to poor academic performance and behavior. In many low SES homes, parents tend to be overworked, stressed, and authoritarian. Passed through the generations, this harshness fails to form healthy relationships. With difficult situations at home, it is understandable that students may not come to school with the best attitude. Poverty is an indicator of teen depression. Teachers may read these emotional and social deficits as disrespectful, but it is important to be empathetic (not sympathetic), and to “lay out clear behavioral expectations without sarcasm or resentment ... it is much easier to condemn a student’s behavior and demand that he or she change it than it is to help the student change it”. Rather than showing students that you are rejecting them for their behavior, be the stability they may need and or lack at home. Forming a relationship based on trust is key to helping students grow (I personally believe that is true for all, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, and all other factors).

Senior Project Post 2

3/15/15                               Senior Project Blog Post 2

This week I was bale to borrow a copy of Teaching With Poverty In Mind by Eric Jensen.  This book looks at the relationship between academic achievement and low socioeconomic status (SES for short). Jensen starts off by making a couple of claims. First, “chronic exposure to poverty causes the brain to physically change in a detrimental manner”. Second, “because the brain is designed to adapt to experience, it can also change for the better”, meaning that it is very possible for poor children to success emotionally, socially, and academically. There are many theories as to why low SES students underachieve in school, many focus on the home/living situation. However in truth, the most crucial variables exist in school. The four main risk factors affecting low SES families are emotional and social challenges, acute and chronic stressors, cognitive lags, and health and safety issues. Students of low SES have much more difficult social and physical environments than their well-off peers. Poorer neighborhoods have greater traffics volume, higher crime rates, and have less green space for playgrounds. “Children in poverty tend to spend less time finding out about the world around them and more time struggling to survive in it” (8).

Post 1 Senior Project

Blog Post #1 

3/8/15 

In the 1930s, the method of tracking began in schools. Students are tracked into courses that will fit their academic ability, IQ, and other standards. At the high school you see tracking in the divisions of AP, Honors, and Standard classes. As you climb the scale in the rigor of the courses you find more white affluent students in the AP and Honors courses, and more low income and minority students in the lower tracks. This has become a large controversy, as it seems to benefit the high income students and restrict the lower income students. In the higher tracks, the courses tend to be more engaging and challenging. Where as in the lower tracks good behavior and basic skills are emphasized. It is widely known that low socio-economic status correlates with lower education, poverty, lack of resources and poor health. Those disparities are all vital to receiving a decent education. For my senior project, I want to look specifically into Brookline Special Education to see how prevalent this is at the high school. Tracking is not simply choosing between AP, Honors, and Standard. There are many programs that focus on “behavioral” needs and academic support at the high school. I’m going to look into the body of students that compose these programs.