Poverty in Education / Using Assessment Feedback

     Poverty in Education

     In Education 350 on Tuesday, we did a small poverty simulation. As we entered the classroom, our professor asked us to randomly take a piece of paper that designated where you were to sit for the day. There were four people whose papers asked them to sit at a table in the middle of the room that was covered with food, art supplies, and poster board. Everyone else was seated in the floor around this table, and had no food and little art supplies. We were then asked to make a poster about poverty using the materials provided. Needless to say, the table in the middle had an abundance of supplies, and were able to make a poster that they were happy with. On the other hand, the people in the floor had to use the research article paper that they were given to help make their poster, and only had one or two markers. Many of the students in the groups with little supplies were very creative and created some unique posters, but you could still very much see who had access to supplies and who did not. This was an extremely eye opening experience, because this is what is really happening in education. Students have little to work with at home when assigned projects due to their socio-economic status, and do the best they can. They bring their projects to school, and are likely embarrassed at the obvious divide between who has all that they need and who does not. I think this connects directly with standard 2, element a, of the NCTCS. It states that "teachers provide an environment in which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with caring adults." In my future classroom, I will provide students with the necessary materials needed to do any homework. I will make sure that I am aware of the struggles that come from being at a low socioeconomic status, and I will try my best to help these students reach their fullest potential by providing for them as best I can.
     Poverty not only affects a students ability to do their work, but also affects their physical, cognitive, and social-emotional readiness (see link at bottom). These students are often more worried about surviving at home than they are about school. They may not have eaten, they may not have slept, educators cannot fully ever know what these children go through everyday. What we can do, is make sure we provide everything we possibly can to help these students feel as if their essential needs are taken care of at the moment so that they can begin to learn. I also plan to differentiate in my future classroom in order to help students learn. Students that are in poverty tend to think differently than middle class students. They do not have as many life experiences to connect ideas to, and they may need a concrete example to help them understand. These students learn differently due to how they grew up. This is something that I will need to be aware of when I am a teacher in the future.

Using Assessment Feedback

     In education 410, we looked at the feedback from a math test in a real fourth grade classroom. Immediately my class realized how much work had gone into organizing the scores of the students' test results, and the organization it takes to keep track of everything. This fourth grade teacher used a chart to display all her data and feedback. On the chart were the pre-test and post-test scores for all students, the percentage of students that got each question right, the standard connected with each question, and the percentage of students that correctly answered the questions for each standard. I thought this was a perfect way to organize the data for a end of unit test or other important assessment. After analyzing what each part of the chart meant, my class was asked to create a lesson plan that could be used to reteach one of the standards that had a lower percentage of correct answers. This turned out to be very challenging. Together we began discussing the math standard we picked to reteach, and how we would teach this. As we conversed, we realized it was very hard to write a lesson plan for students that we did not know, and for a classroom that we were not a part of. In my future classroom, I hope to be able to organize my assessment data and feedback in such a way that helps me see where my students are struggling and how I can help them best. I think it is extremely important to make sure you do not just put a grade on a test, but that you use your assessments to help students further their learning. This connects directly to standard five, element a, which states that "teachers analyze student learning." This standard goes on to say that "teachers collect and analyze student performance data to improve school and classroom effectiveness. They adapt their practice based on research and data to best meet the needs of students."