Understanding Behavior in the Classroom
People from poverty mindsets may demonstrate 1 to 3 characteristics to obtain status in their community. These characteristics may be:
A Lover
A Fighter
An Entertainer.
Students from a poverty mindset might exhibit one or all of those three characteristics. This may explain the “entertainer” student who acts up or is always goofing off and making the other kids laugh. And of course the other two characteristics are self-explanatory.
The best way to handle these students from poverty is to teach them to live by two sets of rules. First, they need their own set of rules at home to survive until the next day.
Second, they need to (BE TAUGHT) the school rules and that they must abide by them in order to be successful in school and to stay out of trouble. They must be told to use their HOME rules at HOME. And they need to be told they MUST use the school rules at school. If teachers or administrators will take the time to explain the school rules, I think the kids will do their best to comply.
It would be wonderful if every teacher understood where the poverty kids are coming from. But 10 to 15 percent of the teachers send 85% of the students to the principal. I am sure these are the poverty kids and the characteristics at the top of the page are the underlying factors in their behavior and that is why they are getting in trouble. Now that YOU understand the reason for the behavior, you can understand the student, and I know you will come up with some unique ideas on how to assist that student.
Do you find it hard to understand students in poverty? Poverty students seem to have no higher goals for jobs or education. Please understand that they do have goals. Those goals are to have food, shelter, and a few clothes for their back. They also may have a goal of trying to stay alive. In very bad situations, they may rightly believe they may not be alive tomorrow, so why should they plan anything further than right now, today.
Source: A framework for Understanding Poverty Ruby Payne, Ph.D The leading U.S. expert on the mindsets of Poverty, Middle Class, and Wealth.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Bravo! Dorothy, good job in choosing a helpful topic from Payne’s vastly informative book. I hope students read this and find themselves and their friends in the behavior, plus take the hint to teach or discuss the way rules are set up in schools, pools, play grounds, etc. We can all get along better with good understandings and rules! Dale
March 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Doro-Zorro, The pen is mightier than the sword!
Those of us who have lived be a certain set of rules or made them ourselves can often forget how they work for people of different circumstances. Hope this entry is controversial enough to draw people to the blog and into thought. Anita
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:23 am
[…] in the Boston Globe (online), Drake Bennett has some fresh thinking about poverty (maybe already voiced by Ruby Payne). People in poverty exhibit what would be an “irrational” approach to money, work, and […]
April 5th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
[…] in the Boston Globe (online), Drake Bennett has some fresh thinking about poverty (maybe already voiced by Ruby Payne). People in poverty exhibit what would be an “irrational” approach to money, work, and wealth for […]
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:34 am
If schools were taught to teach RICH kids goals of empathy, a modicum of generosity, learning to pay fair wages, civic responsibility with their wealth, and to NOT look their noses down on poor kids, wouldn’t school be a less painful place?
Who deals with the RICH snotty kids who mock someone because they are not wearing the “right brand” of boring old bluejeans? or when the mother is trying so hard to help her daughter to fit in,and cinched in the belt tight and bot some expensive brand from the Meyers store, then back in school the kid got the nasty comment from the snot nose: “How could YOUR mother afford those?”
THOSE rich kids KNOW money, but they don’t operate on much empathy or kindness. Who is going to take them on in the school system?