To quote Paul Gorski “We talk about education being the great equalizer, yet our poorest students are in the least equipped schools. We don’t need to fix poor people. We need to fix the system” (Teaching Tolerance). Poverty is an increasingly common issue in American public schools and teachers need to know how to respond. There are strategies teachers can employ to help their students and while there are limitations as to what teachers can do there are still realistic ways in which teachers can help. To begin, poverty is not a new problem in America, however it is an increasingly new problem in the suburbs in America. Atlanta provides an example of this. It was reported that 88% of Atlanta’s poor lived in the suburbs and the suburban poor
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To begin, what I feel is most important is to be empathetic and understanding of the situations students are in (Teaching Tolerance). Teachers need to attempt to see what might be going on in students’ lives while also accepting the fact that they do not know everything that may be affecting their students. Teachers should look for signs that students are struggling outside of school, by noticing their appearance and watching for sudden changes in grades or mood, and if they expect something may be wrong they could ask the student how things are going while not singling them out (Teaching Tolerance). Teachers should look for these changes because they have better chances of helping when they know who is struggling (Zehr). I also believe it would be a good idea for teachers to take all of the students supplies and combine them into a community bin, especially in younger grades. This is something I have experienced in school and, speaking from experience, it worked well. Not only does it allow all the students to have equal access to supplies, which could help to minimize the achievement gap, it also encourages sharing (Gorski). For older grades this is not as effective since they often do not need supplies that could be shared so teachers would have less opportunities for evening the playing field in this
To begin, what I feel is most important is to be empathetic and understanding of the situations students are in (Teaching Tolerance). Teachers need to attempt to see what might be going on in students’ lives while also accepting the fact that they do not know everything that may be affecting their students. Teachers should look for signs that students are struggling outside of school, by noticing their appearance and watching for sudden changes in grades or mood, and if they expect something may be wrong they could ask the student how things are going while not singling them out (Teaching Tolerance). Teachers should look for these changes because they have better chances of helping when they know who is struggling (Zehr). I also believe it would be a good idea for teachers to take all of the students supplies and combine them into a community bin, especially in younger grades. This is something I have experienced in school and, speaking from experience, it worked well. Not only does it allow all the students to have equal access to supplies, which could help to minimize the achievement gap, it also encourages sharing (Gorski). For older grades this is not as effective since they often do not need supplies that could be shared so teachers would have less opportunities for evening the playing field in this