Ending Poverty by Developing Justice-Oriented Citizens

1. Ending Poverty by Developing Justice-Oriented Citizens By: Jenny Hellstrom, Rachel Kohl, Kristin Letrich, Karen Martin, and Kim Stange

2. Overview of the Social Injustice: Poverty “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” ~Norman Vincent Peale Facts: • At least 80% of humankind lives on less than $10 a day. • The U.S. has the largest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. • About 790 million people in the developing world are chronically undernourished • 1.6 billion people live without electricity • 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation • Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion are in poverty • According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die EVERYDAY due to poverty. • Approximately a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. • Based on enrolment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005

3. Journal Articles • “Modern Myths about Poverty and Education” • “The Role of Social Foundations In Preparing Teachers for Culturally Relevant Practice” • “Online Resources for Developing an Awareness of Poverty” • “TEAMS: (Teacher Education for the Advancement of a Multicultural Society)” • “Beyond Charity” • “The Causes of Poverty- Key Economic Issue” • “The Hard Work Hypothesis: Is Doing Your Homework Enough to Overcome the Effects of Poverty?” • “Making Sense of a Globalizing World: Adolescents’ Explanatory Frameworks for Poverty” • “Using the Storypath Approach to Make Local Government Understandable” • “Powerful and Purposeful Teaching and Learning in Elementary School Social Studies”

4. “Modern Myths about Poverty and Education” • Myths are unsubstantiated narratives with strong moral overtones. • National myths promoted in textbooks • Myth 1: “The Poor are Lazy” • Myth 2: “U.S. Public Schools are Failures” • Myth 3: “Racial Segregation in Schools is a Thing of the Past” • Myth 4: “Student Test Scores Measure School Quality”

5. “The Role of Social Foundations In Preparing Teachers for Culturally Relevant Practice” • 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress • Social inequities play a significant role in shaping teacher beliefs, attitudes, and expectations of students of color and those in poverty. • Teachers explain reasons for student’s behavior with references to ethnicity, culture, and/or socioeconomic status of the families. • Teacher preparation needs to include courses in social foundations. • Teachers need to be culturally relevant and have a clear sense of their own cultural identities. • Teachers need to hold high expectations, scaffold from home to school, and involve parents and community members in the classroom.

6. “Online Resources for Developing an Awareness of Poverty” • In elementary school: poverty, hunger, homelessness is most often discussed in terms of a canned food drive • Avoid language such as “poor little children” or “people who don’t work and don’t have food” • Service Learning Project: Make placemats (or trays) for a local soup kitchen on a weekly basis.

7. “TEAMS: (Teacher Education for the Advancement of a Multicultural Society)” • Urban schools have a “revolving door” of unqualified teachers • Seeking diversity of teacher recruitment • Prepares teachers to increase the academic success of all students • Pedagogical Seminars • Service-Learning • Teacher Support

8. “Beyond Charity” • Children need practical experiences in schools and communities. • Social justice education begins with children’s personal experiences then moves toward critical perspective and action • Students should get involved in efforts to change the root cause of a problems • ex. speak with service providers and public officials about the condition of homelessness

9. “The Causes of Poverty- Key Economic Issue” • Students are interested in poverty due to the stigma attached • Lesson on poverty statistics proves opportunity to think critically about data • Debate on poverty- does not resolve issue but will help become informed, critical decision makers • Use date to evaluate the positive claims in each argument • Cornerstone of socially responsible citizenship

10. “The Hard Work Hypothesis: Is Doing Your Homework Enough to Overcome the Effects of Poverty?” • Does low SES and poverty really effect grades that much, or is it simply hard work? • Studied the Hmong and the Boat People, both came to America as immigrants and lived in poverty • Found that these students did significant amounts of homework, but did that really attribute to their success, or did family background have something to do with it as well? • Found that many of these students performed well in school, because of homework completion, but homework did not directly effect standardized test scores.

11. “Making Sense of a Globalizing World: Adolescents’ Explanatory Frameworks for Poverty” • Researched how adolescents explain global poverty • Of all adolescents surveyed, no single explanation was agreed upon for the cause of poverty • Uses explanatory framework to incorporate all different types of ideas • Adolescents explained poverty in terms of unequal resource distribution, failed modernization and exploitation by wealthy nations • Overall, these adolescents had little faith in world leaders to solve the crisis of poverty • Students believed it is our responsibility to help end poverty in the world

12. “Using the Storypath Approach to Make Local Government Understandable” • Storypath – using a narrative to have students role-play as the characters (engages emotionally and cognitively) • Ex. – Students build an imaginary community to make decisions for; they take on roles as community members • Students’ community  Critical incident • Challenges students’ previous experiences; engages students in inquiry and problem solving • Why is Storypath so powerful? • It gives students personal connection to social studies words, causing them to more easily grasp their meaning.

13. “Powerful and Purposeful Teaching and Learning in Elementary School Social Studies” • Social Studies helps students learn to make informed decisions about their world. • Powerful Social Studies Learning should be: • Meaningful • Integrative • Value-based • Challenging • Active • “Denying students the opportunity to build social studies vocabulary and background knowledge can lead to lower literacy levels and, ironically, increases the achievement gap.”

14. Directions: Affecting Systemic Change in our School • Get into your lesson planning groups • Assign group roles: Recorder: writes the letter Discussion Director: leader, generates discussion questions Time Keeper: makes sure work is progressing in a timely manner, alerts the group when there are 5 minutes left, and two minutes left Task Master: keeps everyone on task Presenter: reads the letter

15. Directions: Affecting Systemic Change in our School • Discuss in your group (for 10 minutes): • How could you help students in poverty in our school? • What programs could you create that provide support for poverty stricken students? • How would these programs assist all students, not only those in poverty?

16. Directions: Affecting Systemic Change in our School • Use your ideas to write a letter to our Superintendent. Explain how the programs you propose would help the children in poverty in our school (5 minutes). • Make sure the letter has all components: date, greeting, main body, closing, and signature. • Read your letters to the class (Presenter)

17. Questions and Answers

18. References • (2009). Powerful and Purposeful Teaching and Learning in Elementary School Social Studies. Social Studies and the Young Learner,22(1), 31-33. • Fernandez, M.R., & Nunez, M. (2006). Collaborative recruitment of diverse teachers for the long haul – TEAMS: Teacher education for the advancement of a multicultural society. MulticulturalEducation, 14(2), 50-56. • Fox,K.R. (2008). Online Resources for Developing an Awareness of Poverty. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 21(2), PP.32-Cover 3. • Guillemets, T. (2007). Quotations About Poverty. Retrieved October 1, 2009 from The Quote Garden Web site: http://www.quotegarden.com/poverty.html • Krashen, S. (2005). The hard work hypothesis: Is doing your homework enough to overcome the effects of poverty? Multicultural Education, 12(4), 16-18. • Manning, J.P., & Gaudelli, W. (2003). Modern Myths about Poverty and Education. Social Studies and theYoung Learner, 16(2), 27-29. • McGuire, M. E., Cole, B. (2008). Using the Storypath Approach to Make Local Government Understandable. The Social Studies, ,85-90. • Meyers, J.P. (2008). Making sense of a globalizing world: Adolescents' explanatory frameworks for poverty. Theory and Research in Social Education, 36(2), 95-123. • Otlin, J. (2008). The causes of poverty: Thinking critically about a key economic issue. Social Education, 72(2), 75-79. • Ryan, A.M. (2006). The Role of Social Foundations in Preparing Teachers for Culturally Relevant Practice. Multicultural Education, 13(3), 10-13. • Shah, A. (2009). Poverty Facts and Stats. Retrieved October 1, 2009 from Global Issues Web site: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and stats#src24 • Wade, R.C. (2000). Beyond Charity: Service learning for Social Justice. Social Studies and the young l earner, 6-9.