Pedagogy of Poverty

Emily Dalgleish:

One of the things that got me thinking in this article was the apparent social construction of the pedagogy of poverty. Since, according to the author, this pedagogy has largely been socially constructed, then it follows that the solution would also lie in changing the minds of what parents, community, and the general public assume teaching to be.

This can be quite difficult, as my own experience has proven. While teaching second grade several years ago, our school used a phonics based “word study” program to serve as the students’ spelling curriculum. The parents had a great deal of difficulty adopting this new method, mostly because it did not look at all like the traditional themed word list with a Friday spelling test. It took many letters home, conferences, phone calls, and proven benefits in their children’s reading and writing before the parents were even partially onboard. I think part of what was so difficult for the parents was that they were used to the traditional format; after all, this is what they grew-up with. I expect reformers in the move against the pedagogy of poverty experience this resistance on a much grander scale.

After reflecting further on this article, another growing aspect the pedagogy of poverty is its implications in the suburban classroom as the school of choice initiative spreads. A friend and colleague of mine has experienced an ever-increasing number of urban students in her classroom, and with this new influx of students, she has also experienced an accompanying rise in the number of behavior problems. The pedagogy of poverty affects suburban teachers and students as well. Suburban teachers must not assume that because they are not in urban schools, they are not subject to these harmful and erroneous pedagogical beliefs as well.

Finally, the author mentions many signs of “good teaching”. One of these was the use of heterogeneous groupings, since students will experience this type of grouping most commonly in real-life situations. My question concerning implementation is how this might be done in the most effective way. For example, when grouping students for guided reading groups, it makes the most sense to group them homogeneously for instruction purposes. How do you use heterogeneous groups? How might they be most effectively implemented?

Sarah Melling:

_Introductory Biography:_ Sarah Melling is a graduate student at
Michigan State University. She is completing her second year of
teaching in a fourth grade classroom at a private school in Monroe,
Michigan. She started out at this school last year and has since,
been the literacy specialist as well as a classroom teacher.

_Blog Entry:_

Reading the article from Martin Haberman, “The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching”, I was surprised and
interested in the difficulties for reform in schools. The picture I
formed while reading this article of a classroom that follows the
pedagogy of poverty was one with the teacher as a dictator demanding respect and attention from the students. The students make few decisions and as long as they follow the instruction from the teacher, then they succeed. Haberman explained that this is not successful learning because the students are not involved in genuine learning activities. I also found it interesting that within the
pedagogy of poverty, students can actually control the power by either rewarding teachers through compliance or punishing teachers by resisting. (pg. 4)

There are many concerns that arise with reform of the
pedagogy of poverty. Students are accustomed to the burden of their learning to be placed on the teachers since teachers are held
accountable for student success and conformity. With the change of student engaged lessons and activities they complete, students become accountable and responsible for what they learn. The article made it sound common that students at urban schools accept the pedagogy of poverty and provide resistance to new genuine learning activities.
I agree with Emily’s post about the change in her
spelling program and the resistance that she met with parents. It
seems that people enjoy seeing what they are familiar with, much like the students in urban schools. Activities that require students to be hands on or to construct their own knowledge often appear to
demand more effort. I could see why Emily’s students (or more likely parents) and students, previously familiar with the pedagogy of poverty instruction, would resist. As teachers, we see the benefits of these hands-on, engaging lessons and I often feel we have to sell it to rest of the world.
I was also interested in the signs of good teaching
that Haberman suggested. Many of these suggestions allowed students choices in their learning and involvement with issues of concern.(pg. 6)

I became eager to know if after these suggestions are implemented are students more likely to let go of their previous roles, under the pedagogy of poverty, as compliant students following directions.
Another sign that was suggested was the use of heterogeneous groups. I also wondered, like Emily, how this would be done in the most effective way. I tend to group my students by similar reading abilities but I do add a diversity of culture. I value the fact that my students need to read the material at their level of comprehension and I wouldn’t want a student to struggle and miss the important ideas. I am interested to see the views of others on the topic of heterogeneous groups, as well.

Siming Hu:

I am very glad that we chose this article: the pedagogy of poverty. It criticizes many of the prevailing current teaching methods as “poverty”, such as: giving information, asking questions, giving directions, making assignments, monitoring seatwork, reviewing assignments and giving tests. As a Chinese teacher in elementary school level, I should say I have used many of these and has seen these ways happening all over in my schools. Sometimes they work, sometimes not, and people never question about whether they are helpful or not, teachers do it because of others all do the same way.

I agree with Habermas in that it is not only the teachers’ responsibility to change, but also the whole school faculty, the community. I would say maybe the whole country, the council of American education, which is to blame. Under the current educating system, which classroom teachers are assigned to fixed teacher materials and frequent tests to pass, it could be really hard for teachers to help students with developing to be a good citizen, or practice those “good teachings” Habermas mentioned. I have talked to many teachers in the lounge, and many of them complained that they do not have time to do what they really want to do, because they have to do what they are asked to do first. Unless the whole nation realizes the problems for poverty pedagogy, essentials changes will not happen.

Another point I agree with Habermas is that teachers seem to be “decision makers”, tell students what to do, how to do it and allotting time and tasks, but in fact they are exhausted after one day’s teaching for the enormous energy they have to expose( voice, stares, directions) everyday. It is sarcastic but true that teachers are actually fragile as hostages: they are constantly judged by students by their compliance or non-compliance. One thing I always believe in life and teaching is that everything great must happen naturally rather than deliberately. Young people are naturally learners, they are curious about everything. What has deprived them from the interest of learning? The answer is boring, repetitive and directive learning tasks. Engaging students, establishing trusts rather than heavy disciplines, as Habermas suggests in his article, maybe one thing all the teachers need to work on.

Habermas discussed at the end the potential resistance of the alternatives to the pedagogy of poverty. At first, I was a little bit puzzled: why would not people change to make a better education? The author discussed about the detailed and specialized allocation of responsibilities in the whole educating system: teachers, parents, administrators and the community. It seems so true that when you are only responsible for one part of the whole system, then you could always blame others for the wrongs. Instead of teaching students to memorize things, to follow every directions and do not think for themselves, we would never start to teach students to be good citizens until each ‘part ” in the system considers themselves responsible for helping students become critical, creative and caring people.

After reading this article I feel kind of sad about the current educating system. Who is responsible for the prevalence of pedagogy of poverty? How can teachers start with the change to the alternatives of it?

Xiaochen Song:

As a teacher, I strongly believe that every child in my class can be the future president of the United States. You think it is too exaggerate? Actually, I think so too. What I want to say is that every single one of my student will become something great. Mary can be a great scientist; Sydney will turn into a doctor; John will make a good farmer; and Amanda can be a great housewife. See, they are good at different things but all of them will be great in living a life, which is what they learned from school.

School should be a place of learning, for both teacher and students. On the contrary, pedagogy of poverty holds the "logic" that "teaching is what teachers do. Learning is what student do". It considers teacher as the carrier of knowlege but neglects his role as a guide and a supporter. It did not take students' motivation and differentiation into

consideration but treat all of them as one. Without acknowledging students' interests and ability, students' learning initiative can be highly decreased which causes ineffective learning. Therefore, teachers should be reflective participator and learner too. For

example, before the class, a teacher should learn the information about the subject he teaches, and keep up with the new ideas; during the class, he needs to reflect his instruction style according to students' action in order to keep students engaged in learning; after class, he should reflect on the virtues and weakness of his class, get suggestions from experienced teachers so his pedagogy can be improved. In this way, teachers and students can grow together and together, they will build a learning-centered school.

School should be family, not military. Pedagogy of Poverty believes that "when students follow teachers' directions, appropriate behavior is being taught and learned." This statement is partially right. Let's imagine a school as a country, school rules, can be seen as country laws. There are criminals, who broke the law because their lack of morality. Therefore, rules can only teach a person to a certain extent whereas moral virtues make a good citizen. It is not wrong to teach students to follow the rules but at the same time, rules need to be explained and taught with ethics because what we want are good citizens but rule followers.

School should be a place for students to discover their passion in learning. Students' potentials and learning ability vary, so it is true that "Some students will end up at the bottom of the class while others will finish at the top." However, when I closely analyze the behavior of my "behinders" I find that there is one common thing that they are short of-passion in learning. Take my own class as an example, Ron is a boy that gives me headache all the time. No matter what activity we have, he always gives me that "I don't care" look and he loves chatting with his neighbors. Therefore I pulled his chair out from his group and told him that he needs to be sitting by himself. One day, we were learning about shapes and he happened to be very quiet and participate. I was so thrilled so I praised him in front of the whole class and gave him a "caught being good ticket." After that, I asked the whole class to give him a big hand. Ron's expression didn't change much, but I could sense his excitement and since then, he has never misbehaved in my class. Ron's example is not too bad and there are lots of at-risk students who behave hundreds of times worse than him. However, from his case, I learned that there is a "bunny" in EVERY child some of them are discovered and developed but some of them are hidden deeper and deeper then vanished. Therefore, before we teach students knowledge, we should teach them to believe in themselves. Same approach cannot work for all of them but we will never go wrong with encouragement+reason+praise, you will be surprised by what a happy child you get.

In the article "Pedagogy of Poverty" Habermas mentioned various kinds of good teaching. It is not hard to see that good teaching happens when meaningful connections are made. There are connections between students and their personal life (Whenever students are directly involved in a real-life experience, it is likely that good teaching is going on ), connections between learning and society (Whenever students are involved with applying ideals such as fairness, equity, or justice to their world, it is likely that good teaching is going on); and connections between abstract knowledge and realistic life (Whenever students are involved in reflecting on their own lives and how they have come to believe and feel as they do, good teaching is going on ).

The "Pedagogy of Poverty" article inspired me that as much as we teach knowledge, we should teach it in a way that students will find its meaning in their life, as Habermas says :"Good teaching transcends the particular grade or subject and even the need for lessons with specific purposes."

Concern: I am teaching Chinese Language and Culture. Sometimes I find it challenging to connect culture with my students' culture since Chinese people and American people think differently. Sometimes, my students will think some Chinese culture doesn't make sense. For example: they think it is weird that Chinese women do not change their maid names when they get married. However, I am also thinking that for cultures that have big contrast, are there bigger impact on students? How can I use these issues to intrigue my students' thinking?