Entry #3

Good afternoon!

First and foremost, thank you for being here and sending me so many wonderful comments! I'm extremely grateful for the number of you who have shared links to the blog on social media, have asked questions about my research, and bother reading what I have to say in the first place. My ego is inflated, and I'm having a blast chatting with you!

Today, I'd actually like to elaborate on a couple of points that I touched on in my last two entries. The whole point of this blog is to start a conversation about what it will take for us to be better, kinder, and more cognizant teachers, particularly for students who may be experiencing poverty. With that goal in mind, I spoke in my first entry about pre-service teachers wanting to feel prepared going into this career. How can we be ready, when we don't know what to be ready for? Is feeling ready even a good thing, knowing how many complications there are out there? Then, in my second entry, I mentioned that making harsh assumptions about our students or buying into “deficit thinking” (Parker, 2017, p.4) completely derails the preparation process, because if we forget to question why students who experience poverty are the way that they are through a lens of understanding, we aren’t really doing our best to teach them in the first place. 

For more information, please visit:
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/nova-scotia-child-poverty-report-card-2013

Now that we're on the same page, my question to you is this: if you’re the greatest teacher in the world – you rock your students' socks off with knowledge on a daily basis, you’re inclusive, and you have assessment strategies that blow your colleagues’ minds – can you fix the achievement gap? Even a little bit? I mean, assuming you’re doing everything right, you should at least be able to fix it in your own classroom, right? If you’re a good teacher, shouldn’t you being making such an impact on your students that you can bring your entire class to an outstanding level of academic achievement, regardless of their personal lives, interests, or skills?

I mean, no, that’s crazy – even typing it felt kind of dumb.

Teachers, for the most part, have one year to work with a group of students who they barely know, if at all. And, if you want to be a good teacher, I think that knowing your students is probably an obvious first step. But even knowing them doesn't guarantee you can reach them, or that you can help them reach their goals within a year, especially if we're talking about literacy. Reading and writing skills aren't pulled out of thin air and handed out as gifts, they take a lot of practice! Teachers try to reach all of their students and help everyone be their best - of course - but there are a lot of variables that prevent them from making their academic classes capable of writing university papers by the end of January.

But even though we know that teachers can't magically impose advanced reading and writing skills on students, we also know that there are a whole lot of people out there who think that that's how it should be. “If our teachers knew what they were doing, our kids would all be doctors!” They naively assume that a good, qualified teacher, who’s responsible for 25+ students at a time, should be able to just make the achievement gap and any struggle with reading disappear forever. That’s a lot of pressure though, because as much as teachers are there to teach, they're also mitigating classroom dynamics and students' personal histories. I think people also forget the amount of tension there is for students around academic identity - students who have been told that they're incapable or need support with reading are naturally going to view it differently than someone who has excelled at it all along. The older students get, the more stock they put into the labels that are associated with their learning, so if they’re labelled as “struggling,” chances are, their efforts will mirror what teachers think they’re capable of (Learned, 2016, p. 370). Even students who don’t fall into the self-fulfilling prophecy trap tend to be marred with insecurity, as they feel that they are defined by their need for support (Colyar & Stich, 2011, p. 136).  Even though teachers work desperately hard to bring their students to a level of proficiency, it's a real challenge when you think about all the barriers there are in such a diverse room of students.

These thoughts followed me during the Inter-University Research Network Symposium last week, May 24th and 25th. The event was hosted for researchers who received research funding from the NS Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. This funding is for research that looks specifically at supporting the learning conditions for Mi’kmaq learners, African Nova Scotians, and learners who experience poverty in schools. It was a two-day long conference in Truro where researchers met to share their work and discuss achievement gap in Nova Scotia, and I was happy to hear a lot of my questions being posed and discussed. What resources will assist teachers in helping struggling students? How do we increase a student's confidence? What makes a “helpful teacher” in the first place? What works, what doesn't work? How do we mobilize and develop these ideas? It was fascinating - all these accomplished people were gathered in the same room, comparing notes and acknowledging each other's contributions to a much-needed area of research. 

If you're interested in any of those research presentations (these brilliant, BRILLIANT presentations), the following is a list pulled from the IURN agenda detailing the speakers and their talks:

• “Closing the Achievement Gap through Early Social Emotional Learning: Building a Foundation with Early Childhood Educators in a Professional Learning Community.” Dr. Elizabeth Munroe, St. Francis Xavier University, Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac, Dalhousie University, and Dr. Jean Hughes, Dalhousie University
• The purpose of this study was to establish a Professional Learning Community (PLC) regarding social-emotional learning for early childhood educators. It was important that these teachers had a chance to be able to build knowledge through inquiry and shared understanding, and to better understand Social Emotional Learning (SEL) itself: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

• Reading Comprehension: Addressing the Achievement Gap for Children from Lower Socio-Economic Backgrounds.” Dr. Jamie Metsala, Mount Saint Vincent University 
• The purpose of this research was to examine factors that contribute to reading comprehension in young students: which aspects of oral language comprehension in fall contribute to spring reading comprehension? Do these change over the grades examined? Is there evidence of this developmental shift over grades 1-3?

• “Redressing the Achievement Gap with Vulnerable Populations at a Vulnerable Age: Identification of classroom-level Middle Schools literacy practices to address the Achievement Gap.” Dr. Anne Murray-Orr & Dr. Jennifer Mitton, St. Francis Xavier University”
• The purpose of this work was to investigate the literacy practices of teachers in grades 5-8. There was a focus on culturally relevant pedagogy and its intersections with critical race theory, being mindful of what teachers are doing to mindfully think about privilege and pedagogy.

• “Promising Practices for Supporting Achievement Gap Students – Promising schools based pedagogical practices to support the academic achievement of rural students affected by poverty.” Dr. Ann Vibert & Joanne Tompkins, Acadia University
• The purpose of this study was to examine the unsung accomplishments of teachers working in high-poverty schools – critical theory and critical pedagogy and relations to literacy. The focus of the work was on developing schools that supported student-centered academic success and being resourceful rather than be distracted by deficit.

• “Culturally Based Inquiry to Support Mathematics Achievement: Student achievement in middle school mathematics through an evaluation of “Show Me Your Math,” a program designed to address the achievement gap in math among Mi’kmaw students.” Dr. Lisa Lunney-Borden, St. Francis Xavier University
• The purpose of this research was to emphasize the value of inquiry projects and collective sharing – “coming together to learn together.” By creating math projects that celebrate Mi'kmaw heritage language and historic terminology, curriculum outcomes can be met, and the work can be made more relevant to students.

The presentations were incredibly well done, and I was grateful just to sit and listen. There was one moment in particular during these presentations that’s really stayed with me, though. While I was listening to her presentation with Dr. Joanne Tompkins, Dr. Ann Vibert from Acadia made a powerful statement that I think sums up what I’ve been trying to articulate in those post so far:

“We can’t out-teach poverty.”

Dr. Jennifer Mitton-Kukner and Dr Anne Murray-Orr
from St. Francis Xavier University presenting at the
Inter-University Research Network Symposium.

Though it shocked me for a moment, she’s absolutely right. She wisely pointed out that poverty is a socioeconomic situation that pervades every aspect of life and access for children and parents. What schools do, or should do, is provide better academic support for kids coming from poverty, and therefore, provide a source of hope. There’s so much more to addressing the issue of poverty than what teachers can do, especially in a country like Canada, but there are spots of light in Nova Scotia for supporting these kids who need help. Dr. Ann Vibert was really getting at the fact that poverty is a systemic issue, and that systemic issues have systemic solutions. Teachers can help, but they can’t fix, despite their best efforts.

Now, before you get upset with me for being a pessimist, understand that positive change is happening. Of course it’s frustrating that we can’t change the world overnight, but, in the meantime, there is a whole lot of good that can be done to support students closer to home that makes an impact. It’s been proven that implementing a breakfast program in a school improves academic achievement for all students, but especially those who come from low-income families (Rampersaud, 2005, p. 754). According to Greenhow (2009), students who experience poverty benefit from explicit instruction in internet use, as they tend to be less confident in their skills compared to high-income students (p. 69). Goddard (2000) also found that teachers who exhibit collective teacher efficacy – “the perception that the efforts of the faculty as a whole will have a positive effect on students” (p.480) – is positively associated with student success (p. 501). There are practices and programs that schools and their students can benefit from, beacons of support and opportunity that absolutely impact the lives of students who experience poverty. Can teachers destroy poverty with scented markers and dioramas? No, probably not. But we can be there for our students. We can be kind, we can create safe spaces, and we can generate opportunities that will potentially benefit their self-esteem and academic success.

 All in all, my point is this: even if you're the greatest teacher the world has ever seen, you can't turn the world on its head within a week of stepping into a classroom. Poverty is such a pervasive force in our society, it's unreasonable to expect teachers to be the only champions of change. Teacher burnout is real folks - it happens when teachers overwork themselves trying desperately to help students be their best, trying to please people who think that all students should be scholars by the end of Christmas. Instead, what needs to happen is a collaboration between teachers on local, perhaps provincial level. Talk with fellow teachers about effective practice, about implementing school programs, and how to make some waves that will benefit your students. 

Again, thank you for reading! I realize that thinking about poverty in this way isn't exactly inspiring or exciting, but I think it was still an important thing to discuss. Please leave me a comment - tell me what you think, what you've done in your classroom to be more equitable, or anything at all! 

Talk soon,

Savannah MacDonald

...

Colyar, J., & Stich, A. (2011). Discourses of Remediation: Low-Income Students and Academic Identities. The American Behavioral Scientist, 55(2), 121-141.

Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Hoy, A. W. (2000). Collective teacher efficacy: Its meaning, measure, and impact on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 479-507.

Greenhow, C., Walker, J. D., & Kim, S. (2009). Millennial learners and net-savvy teens? Examining Internet use among low-income students. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 26(2), 63-68.

Learned, J. E. (2016). “Feeling Like I'm Slow Because I'm in This Class”: Secondary School Contexts and the Identification and Construction of Struggling Readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 51(4), 367-371.

Parker, D. C. (2017). The impact of professional development on poverty, schooling, and literacy practices: Teacher narratives and reformation of mindset. Cogent Education, 4(1),1279381.

Rampersaud, G. C., Pereira, M. A., Girard, B. L., Adams, J., & Metzl, J. D. (2005). Breakfast habits, nutritional status, body weight, and academic performance in children and adolescents. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 105(5), 743-760.

Entry #2

Hello again,

I've been thinking hard over the last few days, unsure of what to write about in this entry. This last week, I've read empirical study after empirical study assessing the ways that poverty impacts literacy, and with so much information, it can be difficult to narrow down what's important. That being said, I've had one thought that's stuck out to me lately, and that is the question of why. Why do students who experience poverty tend to have a harder time in school? What is it exactly that hinders their success, and what in the world can we do about it? I think answering this question will help us broaden the way we think about students who experience poverty, and may provide some helpful insights.

Let me start by telling you a story.

When I was in elementary school, I struggled with reading. In first or second grade, our teacher gave each of us a "word box," a small plastic container with about 50 slips of paper inside. On these slips of paper were, you guessed it, words - a combination of simple pronouns and short words that we had to be able to recognize when we were reading. I hated that box with every fiber of my being. I remember, clear as day, sitting with my dad at the kitchen table practicing the words in that stupid box. He would hold up one for me to read, and I would stare it, knowing fully well that I had no idea what I was looking at. I felt stupid. I'd get frustrated and start crying while he patiently went over the word with me, and moved on to the next one. I had a really hard time, but despite my struggles, my parents helped me through it. Both of them motivated me to practice, they comforted me when I was frustrated, and they made me a better reader. But, what if I hadn't had their help? What if, when I came home from school, there was no one there to help me. What if my my parents couldn't read themselves, and when they tried to help, became frustrated and upset themselves? Would I be able to read today? Would I be in university, or be pursuing this career?

According to Fiester (2011), reading proficiently by the end of Grade 3 can "make-or-break" a child's educational development as it marks the turning point between "learning to read" and "reading to learn" (p. 9). This becomes even more complicated when a child experiences poverty. The relationship between poverty and academic challenges is often attributed to the structures of students' family lives, particularly "the extent to which parents read and engage their children cognitively", and their ability to assist children with schoolwork at home (Milner, 2013, p. 44). To make matters worse, poverty often means that a child's family is restricted in their ability to purchase "resources and goods, food, housing, and safe environments necessary for development" (Yoshikawa, 2012, p. 275). These influences can make an already challenging period of learning seem impossible — without access to food and home security, it's hard to make school a priority. 

My family! My sister is the red-headed kiddo, and
I'm the other, less adorable one.

If I'm honest, I've always thought of my childhood experience with reading as being kind of funny. After all, what's more paradoxical than an English teacher who at one point couldn't read? Now though, I don't know. Reading these statistics and studies has been something of a double-edged sword. On one hand, I understand the struggle. I remember it very well, I've seen it in the students I met during practicum, and I'm eager to learn how I can be of help. But, on the other, how could I possibly really understand it? My personal understanding happened over the span of, what, a year? Maybe two? Students who experience poverty usually struggle for their entire academic careers, so what do I know, if anything at all? The story just isn't as funny when it doesn't have a punchline.

Chances are, if my parents weren't around to help me learn to read before the "make-or-break" 3rd Grade, I wouldn't be able to read today, and  wouldn't be pursuing a teaching career. I can picture myself in Grade 1 sitting at the kitchen table, alone, stuttering and unable to decipher the words in that dumb box, but if we're being realistic, that's a likely scenario for children experiencing poverty. Those children's parents are at work, doing their best to pay their bills and keep food in the fridge, and try as they might to help their kids with getting their schoolwork done, making ends meet is just more important. Plain and simple.  

I'm throwing a lot of information at you, I know, but there's a lot to think about here, because while I've been talking mostly about literacy and poverty for young children, the research I'm focusing on this summer is about high school students. There's been plenty of research assessing poverty's influence on elementary students' academic achievement, as I've laid out, but there is very little that examines how poverty impacts the learning achievement of high school adolescents, particularly those who have been struggling to read and write proficiently for more than 10 years. I don't think that's fair, because when I think about high school and how much I hated it (and trust me, I hated high school with great passion), I can't even begin to imagine how much worse it would have been to sit through if I wasn't about to read and write proficiently. So, why don't we know more about helping adolescents who struggle to read? Why don't we have more strategies for helping high school students who experience poverty? What do those students need in their classrooms, and what do they value about their educational journey? What's the keystone to their success?

My hope is that by thinking about the question of why, we can be better people, and better teachers. It's so easy to make assumptions, and shrug off the things that make us uncomfortable, but that's not the way to help our students. "Then what is the way, fearless leader?" In my non-expert opinion, one of the best things we can do is simply be cognizant. We need to remember that not all students are as blessed as I was to have parents at home who could help me, or have the resources to teach themselves. It's not the fault of these students for lacking those resources, and it's not their parents' fault either. It's no one's fault. Living in poverty is complex, unimaginably difficult, and different for everyone who experiences it. To assume that the inability to read or write is about laziness or stupidity isn't fair, and it isn't supported by research literature (for all you skeptics out there), so I think it's time we all think long and hard about what we can do to be a little more open-minded, a little more aware of our surroundings, and a little more reflective about our own privilege.  

If you've made it this far through my ramblings, thank you for sticking around! Though this blogging thing is fairly new, I'm having a lot of fun writing it. If I could ask anything of you wonderful people, it's you drop a comment or start a discussion - part of the purpose of this blog is to engage with other B. Ed students and teachers about the subject, and I want to chat with you anyway! I've also started an Instagram (savannah_research) and Twitter (@savsresearch), as another way to get the word out. Please, comment, follow, ask me anything!

Until next time,

Savannah MacDonald

...

Fiester, L. (2010). Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters. KIDS COUNT Special Report. Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Milner IV, H. R. (2013). Analyzing poverty, learning, and teaching through a critical race theory lens. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 1-53.

Yoshikawa, H., Aber, J. L., & Beardslee, W. R. (2012). The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: implications for prevention. American Psychologist, 67(4), 272.

Entry #1

Hey there!

For those who don't know me, my name is Savannah MacDonald, and I am from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. I completed my Bachelor of Arts Degree with a Major in English and Minor in Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University, and am entering my second year in StFX’s Bachelor of Education program

While training to become a high school English teacher means that I have to put up with a lot of punctuation jokes, it also means that I get to pursue a career engaging with my favourite things: stories. Stories are everything! We tell them, we watch them, we listen to them. They're engaging and interesting, but also track what we know as a society, and what we hope to be. When people ask me why I want to teach, I usually just make a joke about having summers off, but the truth is, I want to work with students who to love literature and writing as much as I do. Better yet, I want to work with students who hate reading, so that I can potentially be the one to show them how reading and exploring the realm of storytelling is important and relevant to our daily lives.

“So, why are we here?” you ask, looking bored. Well, I’ve always wanted to be a teacher like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society or Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers - someone who inspired students to be their best. But, now that I've completed my first year and am about to dive into my second, I'm starting to panic a little. How do I inspire students like they did? How do I help them learn to love reading and writing? Can I even expect that of them? And how can I be like Robin Williams or Hilary Swank when I don't even know how to work the school's copier? I think as pre-service teachers, we’re all worrying about similar things. We want to be great teachers, and we want to be sure that we’re doing everything we can to prepare ourselves for what’s to come.

A central focus in StFX's Education program is learning how to make a classroom more inclusive, and how implementing teaching practices that benefit all students makes for a more comfortable classroom environment. It also helps to nail down your priorities as an educator, and work on them day by day, year by year. As a future English teacher, I know I want to make my future classroom one that supports readers and writers of varying skill levels. I know I want to make my classroom engaging and make use of as many pop-culture references as possible to keep content relevant and relatable (which means a lot ofStar Wars, like, too much, probably). I know what kind of classroom I want, down to how many bookshelves I’ll have behind my desk, and I think knowing what you want helps put everything into perspective, and helps you evaluate what kind of educator you want to be.

But what about the things that we can’t know or control? It’s scary to think about, but no matter how ready we feel, or how well read we are, there are things as teachers that we just can’t prepare for. Our students bring their personal lives to school with them, lives we know nothing about. How can we mitigate that? Well, the purpose of this blog is actually to address one of the more major external influences that will impact our students and their academic success – poverty. Despite our efforts to be inspiring and empathetic teachers, poverty impacts every aspect of a student's life, and changes their schooling experience at its core.

This summer, I'll be working at StFX as Dr. Mitton-Kükner's research assistant to study this very subject - exploring the ways in which poverty hinders student success in terms of literacy. In particular, I want to inquire more deeply into why poverty negatively impacts literacy, and what can be done to help struggling students become proficient in reading and writing. So, here I am! I'll be using this blog to chronicle the things I learn through my research this summer, and will reflect on the ways in which my findings can be applied to educational practice. Though I'll primarily be reading and discussing my research through an ELA lens, I think that this is a subject that can be applied to all content areas. It doesn't matter if you teach Math, Physical Education, or Family Studies - students who experience poverty experience more academic challenges than those about the poverty line. This is a phenomenon that all teachers should collectively think about, work to understand, and change.

While this is an international problem, it's a notably significant one here in Nova Scotia. The rates of child poverty in Nova Scotia are over 30% (Frank, 2017, p.12), and Stack (2006) found that "poverty in Atlantic Canada contributed to the low performance rate" (p.61) of learners. Research literature repeatedly shows the high rate of poverty in Nova Scotia impacts student success. I think this is a well-known problem, but it's one that I worry people shrug off. Big problems, people assume, can only be changed by big personalities or big changes, but in this case, I think it has to start with the people who witness its effects everyday - teachers!

If there are any other aspiring Robin Williams or Hilary Swank type teachers out there, I hope you stick around! I’m sure this research will uncover some much needed truths about helping students who experience poverty, and that’s information that I think all teachers can benefit from. Literacy skills are an integral element of academic success no matter what class a student is taking, and they are skills that every student should have the opportunity to improve on.

Anyway, I can't wait to start sharing my finds, and take you all along on this journey with me! We have an opportunity to take in as much information and collect as many resources as possible before we join the ranks of veteran teachers, and I'm grateful to explore this particularly important subject with you all.

Until next time,

Savannah MacDonald

...

Frank, L. & Saulnier, C. (2017). 2017 report card on child and family poverty in Nova Scotia. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

Stack, M. (2006). Testing, testing, read all about it: Canadian press coverage of the PISA results. Canadian Journal of Education/ Revue Canadienne de l'education, 49-69.