Change Mind-Set

We are having a two-day in-service meeting and the focus of our attention is the book Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen. The thesis of the book is that children who live in poverty display behaviors that are not typically associated with positive academic performance, and Jensen details the  reasons as explained in recent research.

Among the suggestions is that we (as educators, especially those who work with populations experiencing high poverty) adopt a mind-set of change as we need to accommodate these children if we are going to maintain our role as providers of universal education and if we hope to help children from these populations access education as a potential way out of poverty. I appreciate his suggestions on how to adopt a mind-set of change (or more accurately how not to adopt such a mind-set); he suggests we not:

• Focus on the basics
• Force compliance with our standards
• Reduce access to arts and physical education
• Decrease interaction among students
• Implement similar "heavy-handed" solutions

Jensen's book is an ASCD title:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109074.aspx