[Illinois] Poverty issues are focus for QPS teachers

from The Quincy Herald Whig

By Holly Wagner

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

Children with backgrounds of poverty bring unique needs to the classroom.

"It doesn't mean that they can't learn (or) they're less intelligent," said Maria Dunstan, principal of Edison School in Macomb. "They just may not have had some of the experiences, the exposure."

Dunstan spoke earlier this year to teachers at Quincy Junior High School on the Ruby Payne framework for understanding poverty. Three QJHS teachers attended a Ruby Payne workshop this spring where the focus was on hands-on methods for making up these deficits.

Payne is an educator whose experiences have given her an unusual insight into the cultural differences between the wealthy, the middle class and the poor. She believes each has its own "unwritten rules" and language styles, and teachers can improve students' learning by understanding these differences.

In the Quincy School District, 44.5 percent of students were considered low income in the 2004-05 school year, compared with 40 percent statewide. That low-income number ranges in Quincy's schools from 89.7 percent at Washington School and 85.3 percent at Irving School to 20.1 percent at Monroe School. The percentage is 48.2 at QJHS and falls to 30.9 percent at Quincy Senior High School.

Officials say eligible students often do not turn in applications for free and reduced lunch, which is used as an indicator of low income.

The number of low-income students is rising, Dunstan said. "We've become more communities of haves and have-nots. That's a nationwide trend," she said.

Teachers must address the various needs students bring to the classroom, whether they are a result of poverty, a learning disability or a second language. Since schools operate with middle class values, children from backgrounds of generational poverty will bring different attitudes toward authority, may lack the ability to plan ahead and usually have a different vocabulary and understanding of verbal organization.

To give these children the keys to success in school and life, teachers "have to strike early, often and with as many interventions as possible," Dunstan said. Teachers also need to provide the mental models to link from the concrete to the abstract.

"Education is all abstract, but many of these children come to school with only a concrete base," she said.

Alexis Engelbrecht, a ninth-grade literacy teacher; Kim Dinkheller, a ninth-grade history teacher; and Cheryl Koenig, an English teacher, all attended a

workshop to learn how to address the special needs of low-income students.

In a QJHS classroom, teaching those mental models may start with a drawing. Drawing pictures of new concepts helps children understand them better and enables them to take their discussions to a higher level. The teachers also learned about helping children "own" their learning by having them write their own questions about the material. They learned to approach the material in small sections, focusing on the theme for each, and then combining them to come up with the overall idea.

They also focused on organization and planning. Along with assignments, students would "work backward" with a calendar to see how they needed to organize their work. They also learned to be very clear in expressing their expectations for conduct.

"What was amazing was how many kids (these techniques do) reach," Dinkheller said.

These concepts help children make connections between the classroom and real life, Engelbrecht said. Understanding complex reading makes them a smarter adult. "No one will be able to take advantage of them," she said, explaining they'll become life-long learners and make better decisions and better choices.

The three teachers shared these ideas in a school improvement day, and teachers instantly put them to use, Dinkheller said. The techniques were "very informative, very real" with immediate, practical applications, she said.

"You know it's what's best for all kids," whatever their background, she said.