Week One- Understanding what Poverty means

Melissa Rife- Vocabulary Vitalizer and Literary Luminator

Chapter 1 & 2

Week 1

Wouldn’t you like to know?

“Poverty”: The state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of    support; condition of being poor; indigence.

“Learning Disability”: The term "learning disabilities" is an umbrella term used to describe an array of learning disorders. An individual may have one learning disability or more than one co-occurring learning disability. A learning disability is a life-long neurobiological disorder that affects the manner in which individuals with potentially normal or above average intelligence select, retain and express information.

“Title I schools”: identifies a group of Title I public schools in New York City that are “Schools In Need of Improvement” (SINI). According to NCLB standards, these schools have not made “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP). They have not reached student achievement targets which are set for every school.

“Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP): Under NCLB, AYP is determined based on each school’s progress toward meeting the state proficiency level for all subjects and/or high school graduation rate. Schools are held accountable for the achievement of students of different races and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, students with limited English proficiency and low-income students. Schools must also have an average over two years of 95% of their students participating in State tests.

“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs”: These ideas were based on Maslow’s curiosity of human nature through observations. An interpretation of these needs was shown through pyramid key words such as Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem and Self- actualization.

Resources:  www. Dictionary.com

                   www. Wikipedia.com

                   http://schools.nyc.gov

                   www. Idanys.org

Showing the light…

Passage One: “It’s not that the poorest children are incapable of school learning; in most cases they just haven’t been exposed to the kinds of experiences that produce learning readiness.” (p. 8)

I appreciated this quote because of its simplicity of the words. This is a statement that all teachers should learn, know and repeat.

Passage Two: “When we place children in situations that don’t fit their prior experiences, for which their background has not prepared them, or just simply don’t interest them, they may develop a “reactive stupidity” that’s quite different from the way they think and act in their own homes and neighborhoods.” (p.21)

This particularly stood out to me because this is a reminder that we the teachers are accountable for all student learning.When we see a child not understanding or doing what is expected it could just be because they not comfortable with all that they are doing. Sometimes, teachers mistaken that for a learning or behavior problem. Before we bring a child to the referral process, we must examine closely the environment and readiness of students.

Passage Three: “The loss of education dollars due to mislabeling a child as LD is painful, but the loss of a child’s ability to believe in him- or herself is beyond computation.” (p. 27)

We need to start admitting that the realities that most of our students face in their own life is most certainly something we will never fully understand.  We also need to stop labeling and start considering strategies that will allow students to prosper in a class. Allowing opportunities for Low SES students is a goal.