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The Pedagogy of Poverty
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27 thoughts on “The Pedagogy of Poverty”
The comments above aren’t mine, but a colleague’s, who sent the article to me. I thought it had a lot of similarities with what Stephen Krashen is saying about poverty’s results in our education system, but here it presents a cycle that develops and persists. There are a lot of moments in the article that explain the frustrations that some of us have been having with student attitudes in the face of requiring interaction and creativity. There are also a lot of pieces we could take as supporting TPRS.
I haven’t actually checked…but it looks like this article has been around for a while. Maybe it is worth sending on to forward thinkers in our communities.
I just sent it to my principal, my area AP, my department chair, Diana Noonan, and other CI people in Denver. I can tell there is truth here. Are we perhaps being overly cavalier in our thinking?
I don’t think that it is “overly”. When the same model/method/approach doesn’t work we have to change it. If it still doesn’t work think differently, deconstruct, rebuild.
The article was printed in the Phi Delta Kappan in December 1991. I don’t know if that was the first publishing or a re-print. Here’s the URL to a copy –
http://www.ithaca.edu/compass/pdf/pedagogy.pdf
“Whenever students are actively involved, it is likely that good teaching is going on. Doing an experiment is infinitely better than watching one or reading about one. Participating as a reporter, a role player, or an actor can be educational. Constructing things can be a vital activity.” TCI people get this.
The 14 core functions of urban teaching reminds me of the way a textbook scope and sequence grammar syllabus is “covered”.
“He further characterized them as ahistorical, cruel and lacking in compassion, uneasy with intimacy and candor, materialistic, dependent, and passive — although they frequently mask the last two traits with a surface bravado.”
I have seen these behaviors in some young people at my privileged school.
“Unfortunately, we must recognize that it may no longer be possible to give up the present authoritarianism. The incentives for the various constituencies involved may well have conditioned them to derive strong benefits from the pedagogy of poverty and to see only unknown risk in the options.”
In this era of high stakes testing, is anyone surprised that the only option that some educators see is the falsification of test results?
“Whenever students are involved in planning what they will be doing, it is likely that good teaching is going on.”
Sabrina, this sounds like your great idea on S/S Clarification post.
Thanks Ben for this article. It seems along the lines of critical pedagogy type of reading. I have yet to read Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed that so many of my friends read while in college.
“The students’ stake in maintaining the pedagogy of poverty is of the strongest possible kind: it absolves them of responsibility for learning and puts the burden on the teachers, who must be accountable for making them learn. ”
This important to consider that as a result of continuous mistreatment of students in urban schools, they have internalized the way the system works. They truly believe they are bad kids. They will perpetuate the behavior provided by them. They will also fear of letting that go.
The movie Coach Carter has a cool line: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. “
“The students’ stake in maintaining the pedagogy of poverty is of the strongest possible kind: it absolves them of responsibility for learning and puts the burden on the teachers, who must be accountable for making them learn. ”
This quote, to me, explains the experiences I’ve had many times thus far at my school, involving me fishing for good details for a story and getting coldness and blank stares in return. This just happened today in fact. It’s awful to stand up there and feel “trapped” by the students. They don’t want to play my game, the game in which THEY get to choose what the lesson’s about that day. This quote hit that feeling right on the head.
I have this poem, you all reference above, taped to my desk. It’s from Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.
We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
Ben references this often; there is a vibration, a humanity to teaching this way. It can make some students feel too much and they act out or shut down. They are not used to being playful, trusted and celebrated. It takes some time to develop a reputation where students love you back. This may be the first time they have ever been asked to contribute.
I have a bunch of recordings of Marianne speaking out there in churches in LA in the very early days. I listened to them on my daily commutes for years and years. They helped me through. This is not a profession for the weak.
It’s like somebody on CNN said last nite about how we can hate Trump but we can’t hate those who support him. We can hate the system that turned these kids into dead people, but we can’t hate the kids.
One thing to do is to hit ’em where it would wake them up – with two or three quick quizzes in each class. As soon as your quiz writer has one ready during a tableau or story, give the quiz.
Such “machine gun quizzes” could be given every ten minutes! All you need is five questions on the CI from those ten minutes of class. The quiz writers, who are usual stalwart allies and support what you are doing, seem to love writing them. You can give up to four in one block period. It’s worth the extra grading for its shock value with some of those kids who really stare.
Good call about the quick quizzes. I ended up taking 3 grades today, a quick quiz, dictation, and translation quiz as we made it around the star, but it was tough. I was mainly just keeping them occupied because I was tired of the “Bueller? Bueller?” moments. I threatened the book and they got more vocal. Good reminder about system v. kids. That’s a good daily reminder.
Your next move is to make sure they know that they got three more grades in the hopper yesterday. And three more today. And three more the next day, etc. Soon the kid with a B has a C. That kid may (usually) have parents who say, “As long as you keep your B average we’re ok.” Then you have the little talk with the kids about how you can’t do anything – it’s the computer that is averaging those grades, not you. And next – whenever needed and every day if the class is a really bad Buehler class – you play the big rubric card at 65% and bam, they are magically and suddenly responding.
And then another thing you can do, of course, is enforce the jGR or Carly’s (the one in the new book) rubric on a daily basis. One of the heaviest hitter weapons we have – daily rubric evaluation – is rarely used.
Teachers need to enforce the rubric bc it is 65% of their grade. If they aren’t weighing the rubric at that percent, they are losing leverage in the game. Between the quick quizzes and the rubric, much power is gained. Why give up power to kids who need to see a genuinely powerful teacher in their buildings for a change?
But NONE of that (quick quizzes and rubric) are even needed if you prevent them from even becoming a Buehler class in the first weeks of the year by building community and trust and using WBYT – classes that are properly normed in the first two weeks just don’t ever become Buehler classes.
Now is not too early to start pointing to the first weeks of the year next year. Be ready. Don’t try to teach the language as your primary goal. Guarantee yourself a great year by doing what you need to do next August. Don’t play around next time. You only have, really speaking, one week to make or break your year. Don’t mess it up.
“You only have, really speaking, one week to make or break your year. Don’t mess it up.”
This quote makes me nervous. Looking back at the beginning of the year, I had 2 classes out of 5 that dropped atomic bombs on my classes within the first 2 days. The ones that did not do that, turned out much better. I was unprepared for such extreme behaviors which put me in panic mode. If this were to happen again, I think I would have a better idea of what to do, but I don’t feel prepared for everything that could happen, and I don’t feel experienced enough to handle those curve balls that will inevitably be thrown at me. That’s what makes me the most nervous about screwing it up. It just seems so fragile to begin with, and I have to have all the answers from the outset, which I don’t have.
I feel ya. My only advice is to just keep on keeping on. The longer you teach the better prepared you will be and the better your intuition will be regarding how to handle the unexpected. There aren’t re-dos to start from scratch, but every day is a new day to start from wherever you are. If one class runs itself but another needs constant renorming then that’s just the way it is.
Thank you for the honesty, Carly. What do you mean by “renorming”?
If I may answer for Carly (she is at a conference all day), renorming is a term we have used here for many years to describe getting unruly classes refocused on the Classroom Rules and expected behaviors. It’s like redirecting small children as per Hazrat Inyat Khan. Instead of punishing, you redirect until they can do the new behaviors. It’s just Mr. Rogers 101. Love, don’t judge. Win them over by getting them more engaged via CI, not by threatening their dear little hearts.
I feel this. No one really talks about how the first days are crucial to your success. It needs to be hammered home! The honeymoon phase dies early October and that’s it. That’s your class. renorming is retraining to your classroom policies. Reminding them how we act in class, how we ask questions, how we come in, how we leave… some classes have daily amnesia. Some students have hourly amnesia. Sometimes we have amnesia. Bless us all. Keep on keepin on, like wise Carly. One class at a time.
As per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/yearly-planning-5-october/
Jake said:
…I don’t feel experienced enough to handle those curve balls that will inevitably be thrown at me…..
Then get some more experience. This is not a game we are playing. We are teachers because we are at ground zero for what I consider one of the greatest social shifts in the history of mankind. This is not just a shift, it’s a paradigm shift. Teachers may look ineffective but each time they deal with the kind of emotional pain you describe above, a little step is taken in the direction of healing, of healing kids, of making them believe in life again. That is what the CI movement to me is all about and I know having worked with you in private emails all year that you can do this work.
The Love and Logic Book on Classroom Management is really good as is Ben’s Classroom Management book.
If you implement both of those you can handle curve balls.
Do I have a book on Classroom Management? Or are you referring to the segment in A Natural Approach to the Year? I’ve been thinking of writing one now that the Invisibles is over. Teacher’s Discovery is publishing the Invisibles this spring finally. It took me that long to get it the way I want it.
I am referring to the “Bite Sized Book of Classroom Management”. Here it is on your site from a Google Search
https://benslavic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/The-Bite-Size-Book-of-Classroom-Management-Plan-E-Edition.pdf
Yes that is a great little book. I’m glad you put the link there so PLC members can have it for free if they want it.