I am going to take a break from the poverty question and write about an article that was shared by one of my Kenan Fellow colleagues, Jennifer Walmsley. The article titled “How to fix the apathy problem in schools” (http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article81668307.html) felt beyond relevant. Apathy is something that I struggle with everyday as a teacher and I mean everyday. There were a couple of points the author touched upon that I will share my reactions to:

Teachers are expected to combat apathy by continually finding new and innovative ways to reach students – through multimedia lessons, group work, games, alternative assessments or whatever it takes. This expectation is passed down from school administration and even parents. During teacher evaluations it is always asked, “What are you doing to improve student engagement?” Teachers can’t help but fall into this trap because as you may be aware keeping your job in part depends on student engagement. It seems as if we are tasked to create innovative, ground breaking, earth shattering lessons that would decuple student engagement. Okay maybe I took it a little too far but sheesh, that’s what the expectation can feel like. Not only that we must teach to their learning styles, to their individualized learning plan, to whatever makes them happy. Now I’m all for a student centered classroom. However, I feel as if we’ve given the keys to the students and the teacher is in the passenger seat just along for the ride.

Maybe I’m old school, a relic from a bygone era but I was expected to follow whatever lesson the teacher doled out and get the most out of it that I could. Every lesson wasn’t dynamic. Sometimes it was, “Do problems 1-20 in your textbook.” In language arts, “Read the passage on pages 12-18 and complete the questions on page 19.” I tell my students that everyday isn’t always going to be fun and exciting. Sometimes you have to do the grunt work to be successful.

Teachers, parents, administrators and, of course, the students have to start making self-motivation an educational focus and priority, with self-motivation becoming the new educational buzzword
A comment that I often find myself making to students is, “It’s your education.” I say this because I want my students to take ownership of their education. The way I see it, their education is the most important thing in their life at the moment. Granted, I didn’t always see it that way myself during my schooling but hindsight gives me the ability to pass on that perspective to them. It is well noted that students have a lot of distractions these days; namely social media. There is Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Kik, Ask FM, Instagram, Periscope and the list goes on. For many students maintaining their social profile is the most important thing in their life. Who can blame them? These outlets are constantly promoted to them as the “in” thing to do. The thing about teenagers is they don’t want to be left out, at least a majority. What if joining a book club became cool for a majority of students? What if solving complex math puzzles became super–cool?

Do you know who can make academics the coolest thing since sliced bread? Parents. If you survey any teacher they can tell you what most of their successful students have in common: parent support. Now, there’s a thin line between being over involved and involved just enough but either way parent support is key. Parents of this generation have often been criticized for wanting to be their student’s best friend or overall lacking the backbone to do what’s right for their student. Being a parent myself I don’t want to be too overbearing to my daughter to the point that she is miserable. However, I do want to give her outlets and opportunities to discover ways to maximize her talents.

At the end of the day you have to want to achieve your success more than anyone. It’s the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” Working with middle schoolers is tricky in that regard because most of them can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel or let alone know that they are in the tunnel. For myself I have to continue to push and implore my students to realize that they are on a journey and it will get tougher every step of the way. I have to continually reinforce to them that they are building the skills and fortitude to make their arduous journey less strenuous. Because in the end you are basically a reflection of what you’ve created.

I had a student my first year teaching named Adeja. I have taught many students over the years, a couple hundred perhaps but this young lady was the brightest. I feel like I’ve crossed paths with some pretty gifted students. This young lady, I mean all around; reading, writing, and arithmetic she was stellar. Not only that she was just the sweetest young lady around. She had the respect of all her peers; even students who were habitual line steppers respected her scowl. With all of this going for her one would expect that she came from a nice, middle class, two parent home, except she didn’t. Her father died when she was just two. Her mother, unable to provide adequately for Adeja and her two siblings, sent her to live with her grandmother. Her grandmother lost her home during the housing crisis at the beginning of this decade. They ended up living at the Durham Rescue Mission and that’s when I met her in 2012 as a fifth grader.

In Adeja’s circumstance it would have been easy to just give up on life and resign oneself to disappointment. This young lady didn’t, she found something to cling to and she wouldn’t let it go. That something was school and her education. She once told me she loathed leaving school (I recall she used the word “loathed” because I remember thinking at the time, “how does a ten year old know how to use that word properly?” Then I realized this young lady was reading Pride and Prejudice at the time) because there wasn’t much to do at the rescue mission. That school building was her sanctuary. From 7:30am-2:30pm she might as well have been halfway across the world.

This wasn’t the greatest school in the world according to its testing data. Actually it was one of the worst elementary schools in the state. Both reading and math proficiency were below 15%. Perhaps not coincidentally, 94% of the students receive free or reduced lunch at the school. So the question remains how can students living in adverse circumstances rise up out of those conditions? Perhaps more importantly what is my role as the educator in that process?

I still often wonder, how can this young lady who had so little in the way of what most people think matters, have so much of what is missing in education: desire, motivation and just pure gumption. All of this started somewhere. Somewhere in her educational journey a teacher, another adult, perhaps one of her peers instilled the joy of learning in her.

Personally, Adeja’s story underscores the importance of schools for students living in poverty. An education is a way out the madness, the insanity, and the sheer uncertainty that these students endure when they leave the school building. Oftentimes students living in poverty bring with them into the school building the disorder that is associated with their lives. In turn school personnel are often tasked with providing remedies and it is a daunting task. Regularly I feel like too many expectations are placed on teachers. Eventually teachers feel burdened with all of these expectations. You’re expected to keep students engaged, be their surrogate parent, dramatically raise their achievement levels, and be the beacon of hope for students. Eventually with all of these expectations placed on teachers, they become burned out. They don’t feel like they are making a difference, they’re just treading water. I’ll address this in my next blog post. I’ll be reading this study (http://tinyurl.com/hqvme69) to gather some ideas.

I’ve taught entirely at Title 1 schools during my brief teaching career. If you asked me what a Title 1 school was last week, I could have provided a brief definition, albeit insufficient. After pondering this question again, I did my own basic research and I’ll get to that momentarily. Just so you know though, Title 1 schools have a sort of stigma attached to them. Now, this is based on my own bias and anecdotal evidence. In any gathering of teachers, mention that you work at a Title 1 school and you will receive several different reactions. You might get the look of pity, which implies, “Aww you poor thing how do you manage such an arduous task?” I’ve even got the furtive, condescending glances that suggest, “Better you than me.” So, why would teaching at a Title 1 school elicit such seemingly unenthusiastic response?

Doing some quick research on what designates a Title 1 school as such, I found that it can vary from district to district. Prince William County Public Schools website has a good overview of what Title 1 means (http://tinyurl.com/juo5sm3). What automatically makes a school Title 1 regardless though, is if 75% of the students at the school receive free lunch. Now take a school like Neal Magnet Middle School where I once worked. Out of 882 students, 85% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. That’s roughly 750 students. We’ll cover this bit of data further at a later time.

Now let us get into some figures behind what makes a student eligible for free or reduced lunch. We’ll just use a family of three- two parents and one child-, which is the size of my own family, as a baseline example. To receive reduced lunch that family’s net income can make no more than $37, 167 per year, that’s $715 per week (interestingly many teachers would fall into this category). To receive free lunch that family cannot have a net income over $26, 117 or $503 a week. Now put this figure into context. The federal poverty line for a family of three is 20,090. That means that many students who receive free lunch are likely living just around the poverty line. If only 1 adult in the household is working a full-time, 40-hour week, they can’t make more than $15 an hour. Two adults working fulltime would have to make just above the $7.25 federal minimum wage to qualify for free lunch.

Why does this matter to me? Why is it important? What am I trying to get at? Besides teaching at schools where a majority of students receive free and reduced lunch, I received free lunch during my entire schooling and I attended Title 1 elementary and high schools. I came from a household of 11 and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I never knew it growing up but I came from a household whose income was far below the poverty line. Maybe the reason was because at the schools I attended, there were kids worse off than my siblings and I. Don’t get me wrong when I say worse off, but if someone is homeless and you’re not, that’s not an enviable position to be in. However, like most students at these schools we just had the basic necessities. We never had the latest fashions or played with the coolest toys. We made due with our imaginations most of the time. The thing about America is people can make a way. Someway, somehow, everyday, people lift themselves out of poverty. One can forge a path out of poverty. The question is… how can it be done?