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).
The balance between being appropriately supportive and excessively sympathetic is so hard to achieve. It's easy to say, "Well, he has trouble at home so I'll give him a break." This desire to be understanding and fair can easily lead to a lowering of expectations and goals. It's so hard to get this right!
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