‘A Framework for Understanding Poverty’

from The Richmond Register

Bryan Marshall
Register News Writer

A 35-year veteran in education, Rita Pierson does not like the term “at-risk students” because “We’re all at risk for something.”

“If I gain one more pound, it won’t be pretty. I’m at risk of explosion,” she said Thursday to a large group of educators at Eastern Kentucky University’s Perkins Building. “Some of you are at risk of losing one more hair and being bald. Empty your mind of all that junk because you’ll go to school believing it. When you believe that, you lower your expectations for children.”

Pierson, of Houston, Texas, led a one-day “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” workshop, sponsored by EKU’s College of Education, about how individuals from poverty think and act differently from people from the middle and upper economic classes.

A professional educator since 1972, Pierson has served numerous roles, including elementary regular and special education teacher, junior high school teacher, counselor, assistant principal, director, testing coordinator and consultant.

She also has developed and implemented a school/community involvement program for a large urban elementary school, as well as organized and trained an in-school crisis team for students in need of immediate intervention.

While at a large urban school in Houston with a free and reduced lunch rate of 98 percent, the school was able to reach her goal of equaling that percentage in reading and math test scores.

“Everybody wanted to come and look because they said we must be cheating because we were poor,” she said. “You see how crazy that is? They would say, ‘Oh, at-risk kids on an at-risk campus.’ Yeah, we were at risk of being marvelous.”

Race and class are not the same thing, although people have lumped them together for ages, Pierson said.

“I admit to having some fallacies in that area, as well,” she said. “When I close my eyes and think of rich people, black people just don’t jump into my head. So, what happens is, we confuse race and class because we never associate certain races with certain economic levels. Therefore, we tend to think of black and brown as poor people and white as wealthy folks. We have to almost dump our original mindset so we can think along different lines.”

In order to be a successful student, one must have at their disposal resources other than intelligence or money or they are destined to fail, Pierson said.

“Those boys that killed those people in Littleton, Colo., were smart,” she said. “They had money, but something else was missing or they wouldn’t have done all those things.”

“Stop spending so much time blaming where the child is raised for the product you get,” Pierson said later. “If (a student’s) dad is in jail, what does that have to do with him? You don’t want him to go to jail, so you better give him some parameters and boundaries.”

Teachers also need to get back to correcting children’s grammar and “developing a spine” when disciplining their students, she said.

While it is fine that some people say children should be allowed to speak in the language of their community, Pierson said “It’s not on the test or in the textbook.”

“They say correcting their grammar will lower their self-esteem,” she said. “Well, your self-esteem gets lowered when you go apply for a job and say, ‘Ain’t, you all got nothing.’ and they say, ‘No, we sure ain’t.’”

Welcoming the attendees to the workshop, Bill Phillips, dean of EKU’s College of Education, stressed that there still is nothing more important to the future of Kentucky than the education of its young people.

“I believe it is our sacred responsibility to make sure we are reaching the entire spectrum, including those who come from homes where the harsh conditions are anything but conducive to educational success or personal growth,” he said. “If we do not reach these students, the consequences could be dire and the price steep. Nothing less than the future of our commonwealth and nation is at risk.”

“If we, as educators, do not understand why a student from an impoverished background is chronically acting out or not grasping a concept or that student does not understand what is expected of him or her, then we need to find the solutions and close the achievement gap,” Phillips said. “It is my hope and prayer that this conference fosters the continuing dialogue about how best to reach that student in all of our school districts.”

Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.