1. Understanding Poverty Chapter 1-3 Chrissy Gutenberger

2. Chap 1 Definitions and Resources

3. Terms  Poverty: The extent to which an individual does without resources - Financial: Having money for goods - Emotional: Ability to choose and control emotional responses without self-destructing behavior - Mental: Have mental abilities and skills like reading and writing - Spiritual: Believe in purpose and guidance - Physical: Have physical health and mobility - Support Systems : Have friends/family in times of need - Relationships/Role models : Have access to appropriate adults - Knowledge of Hidden Rules : Know unspoken cues

4. Summary for Teachers in the Field  Ability to leave poverty is based on much more than just financial resources.  Teachers cannot assume that all students have a “mom and dad”.  Teachers should be notified understand the resource availabilities per student.  Teachers should be jumping in to be a role model for students…It costs nothing.

5. Case Study Example – John and Adele  Single mother  Lack of family help  Mentally and physically handicapped 3 yr old  Weekly income $300.  Car costs $400 to fix  Adele in jeopardy of losing job  Daughter has seizure, another doc visit and new med  John wants to do the reading book contest and go to library  John’s school is having an open house, but no baby sitter  Adele gets offered an easy way out of car payment, but has to stoop to an extreme low.

6. Reflection and Thoughts as a Teacher  Do not assume that all students come from a home with positive resources  Do not take actions/behaviors out on the student for things that they cannot control  Make yourself accessible and be flexible when communicating with parents.  Be a role model for all students  Understand cultural differences between your beliefs and how you grew up compared to those of your students and their families.  Provide parent/student with helpful resources through the school.

7. Chap 2 Language and Story: How they impact thinking, school, and work

8. Registers of Language  Frozen: Language that is always the same.  Formal: the standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school. Has complete sentences and specific word choice.  Consultative: Formal register when used in a conversation. Discourse pattern not quite as direct as formal register.  Casual: Language between friends. 400-800 word vocabulary. Conversation dependent on nonverbal assists. Sentence syntax often incomplete.  Intimate: Language between lovers or twins. Language of sexual harassment.

9. How does this impact students from poverty?  Most students from less educated households and students from poverty don’t hear formal register at home.  The inability to use it will knock one out of interviews in the first three minutes.  The more generations one is in poverty, the less access one has to formal register.  A 3 year old in a professional household has more vocabulary than an adult in a welfare household.

10. Discourse Patterns in formal and casual register  1. The manner in which the information is organized:  Formal- straight to the point  Casual- the pattern is to go around and eventually get to the point.  (For students who have no access to formal register, educators become frustrated with the tendency of these students to meander endlessly through the topic.  2. Primary and Secondary Discourse:  Language a individual first acquires  Language of the larger society that the individual must be able to use in order to function.

11. Reflection  The two different versions of Cinderella was something that could be used in the classroom to model for the students how to think and translate that into their writing.  It is important to model the language and register you expect the students to operate at.  Specific vocabulary needs to be taught in order to expect this from the students.

12. Chap 3 Hidden Rules Among Classes

13.  If you do not know items for a particular class, it shows that many of the hidden rules are taken for granted by a particular class.  Other classes would assume that you know how to do these things already.

14. Could You Survive in Poverty?  I know how to get someone out of jail  I know how to get a gun even if I have a police record  I can get by without a car

15. Could You Survive in Middle Class?  I know how to properly set a table  I talk to my children about going to college  I know how to get a library card

16. Could You Survive in Wealth?  I can read a menu in French, English and another language.  I fly on my own plane or on a company plane  I know how to enroll my children in preferred private schools.

17. Class Differences  Poverty: Bottom line is entertainment and relationships  Middle Class: most decisions are made relating to work and achievement  Wealth: Financial, social, and political connections carry most weight.

18. Money and the Classes  Notion as used for security, saving and investing: Middle and Wealthy classes  This is why it is so difficult to get out of poverty: managing money and general information around money  Seen in poverty as expression of personality, use for entertainment  How can you manage if you never had it?

19. Money Hidden Rules:  Poverty: To be used, spent  Middle Class: To be managed  Wealth: To be conserved, invested

20. Education Hidden Rules  Poverty: Valued and revered as abstract but not as reality  Middle Class: Crucial for climbing success ladder and making money  Wealth: Necessary tradition for making and maintaining connections.

21. World Hidden Rules  Poverty: Immediate locale  Middle Class: National picture  Wealthy: International scene is their world. “Favorite restaurant is in Brazil.”

22. Classroom Connection  Hidden Rules Govern a great amount of our immediate assessment of an individual and his/her capabilities.  These are the factors that keep an individual from moving upward in a career, or getting a position to begin with

23. Reflection  These rules are what cause miscommunication between teacher/student and teacher/parent  Areas that we must become educated, aware, and sensitive to  Children need to be aware of hidden rules of middle/ taught so it is known they can become their rules  Understanding is key for relationship and communication  Interesting to me: those in poverty do not believe so even if on welfare, those in wealth do not believe so and cite someone else who has more than they do. Implication=what does class mean to us? What connections between all classes can we find rather than differences?