To begin, one main difference between a child living in poverty and a child living in a comfortable household is their health and nutrition. A child that is in poverty may not be able to be seen by a doctor. Therefore, children may not get proper diagnoses or medications. The article explained that health problems (such as ear infections), can affect attention, reasoning and learning. In addition, a proper nutrition is vital to a child's performance in school. Children living in poverty may experience poor nutrition. They may not receive necessary vitamins and minerals, or they may not be able to eat at all. This makes it much harder for a child to listen, concentrate and learn.
In addition, another difference between a child living in poverty and a child living in a comfortable setting is their vocabulary. The article makes an interesting point that children living in poverty are not exposed to as many words than those in middle and upper class families. The article provided statistics saying that children in low-income families are exposed to 13 million words by age 4, those in middle-class families are exposed to 26 million words by age 4, and those in upper-class families are exposed to 46 million words by age 4. Therefore, as you can see a child in poverty may not know a lot of the words a teacher uses in the classroom. When a child isn't familiar with words, they don't want to read, they tune out and often think school is not for them. Also, they shy away from participation because they don't want to be mocked by their peers.
Furthermore, another difference is the child's effort. Those who are living in comfortable situations seem to exhibit more effort in the classroom than those who are living in poverty. However, this isn't because the child is lazy. It is because poverty has caused a lack of hope and optimism in the child. Poverty is known to cause depressive symptoms in children. Teachers may think the child is lazy and unengaged, when in reality they are giving up because they have no hope for themselves.
Continuing on, another main difference is the child's hope and growth mind-set. Research shows, that a child living in poverty sees the future as containing more negative things than positive. These children hold lower expectations of future outcomes compared to children in comfortable living situations. If children think failure is likely in the future, they won't bother to try in school. Therefore, their mind-set affects their learning greatly.
Another main difference is cognition. A child in poverty often performs lower on tests of intelligence and academic achievement than their peers. A child in low-income families often have cognitive problems, such as short attention span, high distractibility, etc. A child that struggles cognitively is likely to act out or shut down. Therefore, when the child acts out or shuts down their education suffers.
The second to last difference is relationships. A child in poverty is likely to experience disruptive home relationships than those children living in a more comfortable situation. Children that live in poverty may receive more reprimands than positive comments, if their caregivers are stressed they are less likely to get their child a positive comment. Therefore, children in poverty see that adults at home have failed them, so they believe that adults at school will also fail them. A child living in poverty is more likely to act out in class because of the instability of home and they don't have appropriate social-emotional responses.
Lastly, another main difference is distress. Children living in poverty experience greater amounts of chronic stress. Stress affects brain development, academic achievement, and social competence. Stressed children will exhibit two behaviors, an angry assertiveness, or a passive "leave me alone". In other words, the child may exhibit anger or may appear disconnected. Either behavior, aggressive or passive, is detrimental to the child's education. Those who are angry are more likely to talk back, get sent to the principal's office and more which takes away from their learning time. Those who want to be left alone, are often disconnected and not even paying attention.
As you can see, poverty leads to so many aspects that affects a child's learning. Initially someone may hear "poverty" and assume it's just about having little to no money. However, as you can see poverty leads to poor nutrition and health, poor relationships, lack of hope, lack of effort and more. More often than not, I think teachers may think the child is lazy and doesn't want to participate or they are acting out to be a "brat". However, as you can see this isn't the case at all. Those who are living in poverty are suffering in various aspects of their lives. It's not that they are lazy, it's that they are dealing with so much at home and it's being reflected in the classroom. This article was fascinating to me because it really analyzes what poverty leads to and how that then affects the child. For example, I would've never made the connection that poverty leads to poor vocabulary and that's why a child may shy away from participating. I think this article is important for all educators to read. It explains why those who come from poor economic backgrounds are not engaged. Teachers need to stop accusing a child of being a brat, a pest, an instigator, etc and needs to start looking at factors that are causing them to act this way.
How Poverty Affects Classroom Engagement
