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.