NEW!!! Rosenwald school documentaries now available for online streaming, just click the film titles below:
Carrie Mae: An American Life (just featured at the 2015 NTHP Rosenwald School conference): This documentary follows the life of Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk, who was educated in a Rosenwald school and in 1966 became one of the first African American teachers in SENC to integrate a white faculty
Under the Kudzu (screened at the 2012 NTHP Rosenwald School conference): This documentary traces the history of two schools that African American communities helped to build during the segregation era
A few years ago I had a student who everyone loved. He was polite, he worked hard, and he had the sweetest smile. Then everything changed overnight. He lashed out, put his head down during lessons, got in fights with other students. I was very worried, but I couldn't reach his mother and he wouldn't talk to the school counselor. At first he said he was "fine." After two weeks he pulled me aside and whispered the truth: His family had been evicted, and he was living in a car with his mother and four sisters. The stress and shame had overwhelmed him to the point that it warped his personality.
Imagine that you are homeless, but that you are still expected to work and function at your normal level. If you do not manage to perform well you will bump up against disciplinary structures. If you yell or lash out you might even find yourself involved in the criminal justice system, like a child who loses control at school and ends up in the back of a police cruiser. My point is not that we should allow out of control behavior in school, but that when children exhibit such behaviors compassion needs to work alongside discipline.
Most of the time students' lack of focus or self-control doesn't stem from situations as extreme as homelessness, but from continual, lower-grade stress. When parents have to work two or three low-wage jobs to keep the family going, children feel direct effects from their stress and the lack of parental time. When there is food insecurity in a household, children are stressed. When gunfire is routine in a neighborhood, children are stressed. As the National Institutes of Health noted in 2012:
"High levels of stress hormones influence the developing circuitry of children's brains, inhibiting such higher cognitive functions such as planning, impulse and emotional control, and attention. Known collectively as executive functions, these mental abilities are important for academic success." (from www.nih.com/news/health accessed 7/26/15)
The list of potential stressors is endless, and not all of them relate to poverty, but poor children do often carry a high burden of stress. While the sources of stress are complex and many, antidotes are refreshingly simple. As Ungar notes in the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies (2013), "...relationships are crucial to mitigating the negative impact of toxic environments." (from http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ijcyfs/article/viewFile/12431/3767 accessed 7/26/15)
So a positive bond with even one adult has a protective effect. Likewise, addressing food insecurity, a lack of affordable housing and the problem of a minimum wage that does not allow working parents to provide for their families would all be important steps forward for children. It's simple, it's just not easy.
After my student told me the truth, that his family was homeless, I immediately spoke to our school's social worker. It turned out that the social worker at his younger sister's elementary school had already alerted the county DSS, and soon after that they had temporary housing. In this situation the system worked as it was supposed to and provided relief for the family, although it was several more months before his mother was able to find permanent housing. My student's behavior troubles subsided, but in the time that I knew him he never regained his former focus. I also had to try much harder to get him to smile.
Something that is hard to convey to people who have never taught in high-poverty schools, or experienced the stress of poverty themselves, is just how high a mountain we ask poor children (20% of American children live in poverty) to climb. Why do we expect children to stay focused, positive and obedient through situations that would unravel most adults?
