Kristin Mitchell's Website

Notes on the book:

A Framework for Understanding Poverty

Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D.

Chapter One: Definitions and Resources

·        The ability to leave poverty is more dependent upon other resources than it is upon financial resources.

·        Emotional resources provide the stamina to withstand difficult and uncomfortable emotional situations and feelings.

·        Emotional resources are the most important of all resources, because, when present, they allow the individual not to return to old habit patterns.

·        Mental resources are simply being able to process information and use it in daily living. If an individual can read, write, and compute, he/she has a decided advantage.

·        Spiritual resources is the belief that help can be obtained from a higher power, that there is a purpose for living, and that worth and love are gifts from God. This is a powerful resource because the individual does not see him/herself as hopeless and useless, but rather capable and having worth and value.

·        Physical resources are having a body that works, that is capable and mobile.

·        A support system is a valuable resource.

·        Relationships/ role models are resources.

·        Knowledge of hidden rules is crucial to whatever class in which the individual wishes to live.

·        Hidden rules are about the salient, unspoken understandings that cue the members of the group that this individual does or does not fit.

·        Resources of students and adults should be analyzed before dispensing advice or seeking solutions to the situation.

·        Educators have tremendous opportunities to influence some of the non-financial resources that make such a difference in student’s lives.

Chapter Two: The Role of Language and Story

• In the formal register of English, the pattern is to get straight to the point. In casual register, the pattern is to go around and around and finally get to the point. For students who have no access to formal register, educators become frustrated with the tendency for these students to meander almost endlessly through a topic.
• The majority of minority students and poor students do not have access to formal register at home.
• All state tests are in formal register and to get a well-paying job it is expected for one to use formal register.
• Formal register and discourse patterns need to be directly taught.
• Schools can address casual register by: having students write in casual register, then translate into formal register. Establish as part of a discipline plan a requirement that students learn how to express their displeasure in formal register and therefore not be reprimanded. In the classroom, tell stories in both registers to distinguish the differences.

Chapter Three: Hidden Rules Among Classes

• Hidden rules are the unspoken cues and habits of a group.
• On page 59 there is a helpful grid that gives an overview of some of the major hidden rules among the classes of poverty, middle class, and wealth.
• The hidden rules govern so much of our immediate assessment of an individual and his/her capabilities. These are often the factors that keep an individual from moving upward in a career—or even getting a position in the first place.
• Students need to be taught the hidden rules of middle class—not in denigration of their own but rather as another set of rules that can be used if they so choose.
• An understanding of the culture and values of poverty will lessen the anger and frustration that educators may periodically feel when dealing with these students and parents.

Chapter Four: Characteristics of Generational Poverty

• Generational poverty is defined as having been in poverty for at least two generations; however, the characteristics begin to surface much sooner than two generations if the family lives with others who are from generational poverty.
• Situational poverty is defined as a lack of resources due to a particular event (i.e., a death, chronic illness, divorce, etc.)
• Often the attitude in generational poverty is that society owes one a living. In situational poverty the attitude is often one of pride and a refusal to accept charity.
• One of the reasons it is getting more and more difficult to conduct school as we have in the past is that the students who bring the middle-class culture with them are decreasing in numbers, and the students who bring the poverty culture with them are increasing in numbers.
• An education is the key to getting out of, and staying out of generational poverty.

Chapter Five: Role Models and Emotional Resources

• A system is a group in which individuals have rules, roles, and relationships.
• Dysfunctional is the extent to which an individual cannot get his/her needs met within a system.
• An individual operating in a dysfunctional setting is often forced to take an adult role early, and then as an adult, is literally caught between dependent and independent.
• Schools need to establish schedules and instructional arrangements that allow students to stay with the same teachers for two or more years.
• The development of emotional resources is crucial to student success. The greatest free resource available to schools is the role modeling provided by teachers, administrators, and staff.

Chapter Six: Support Systems

·        Support systems need to include the teaching of procedural self-talk, positive self-talk, planning, goal-setting, coping strategies, appropriate relationships, options during problem solving, access to information and know-how, and connections to additional resources.

·        Support systems school use include the following:

·        Schoolwide homework support (setting time during the school day or after school to provide opportunities for students to do their homework with teachers there to assist them).

·        Supplemental schoolwide reading programs (Accelerated Reader program that uses a computer-based management program that provides tests for students to take over the books that they have read).

·        Keeping the students with the same teacher for two or more years or having a school within a school.

·        Teaching coping strategies (small groups and advisory groups).

·        Schoolwide scheduling that puts students in subgroups by skill for reading and math can be a way of providing support.

·        Parent training and contact through video (teachers make a video giving an introduction and overview of the year and encouraged parents to visit or call.

·        The direct teaching of classroom survival skills (classroom survival skills).

·        Requiring daily goal setting and procedural self-talk.

·        Team interventions (teachers and the student meet with the parents to make a plan to help the student become more successful).

Chapter Seven: Discipline

• In poverty, discipline is about penance and forgiveness, not necessarily change.
• Many of the behaviors that students bring to school are necessary to help them survive outside of school.
• The child voice is defensive, victimized, emotional, whining, losing attitude, and strongly negative non-verbal.
• The parent voice is authoritative, directive, judgmental, evaluative, win-lose mentality, demanding, punitive, sometimes threatening.
• The adult voice is non-judgmental, free of negative non-verbal, factual, often question format, attitude of win-win.
• Educators tend to speak to students in a parent voice and this is unbearable to the student who is already functioning as a parent.
• Teaching students to use the adult is important for success in and out of school and can become an alternative to physical aggression.
• Structure and choice need to be part of the discipline approach.

Chapter Eight: Instruction and Improving Achievement

• Low achievement is closely correlated with lack of resources, and numerous studies have documented the correlation between low socioeconomic status and low achievement.
• Teaching is what occurs outside the head. Learning is what occurs inside the head.
• Concepts store information and allow for retrieval.
• Skills—i.e., reading, writing, computing, language—comprise the processing of contact.
• Content is the ‘what’ of learning—the information used to make sense of daily life.
• Mediation is basically three things: identification of the stimulus, assignment of meaning, and identification of strategy.
• The true discrimination that comes out of poverty is the lack of cognitive strategies. The lack of these unseen attributes handicaps in every aspect of life the individual who does not have them.

Chapter Nine: Creating Relationships

• Because poverty is about relationships as well as entertainment, the most significant motivator for these students is relationships.
• When students have been in poverty (and have successfully made it to middle class) are asked how they made the journey, the answer nine times out of ten has to do with relationship—a teacher, counselor, or coach who made a suggestion or took interest in them as individuals.
• A successful occurs when emotional deposits are made to the student, emotional withdrawals are avoided, and students are respected.
• Find ways to establish natural connections that will enable opportunities to foster relationships.

Conclusion:

• The role of the educator or social worker or employer is not to save the individual, but rather to offer a support system, role models, and opportunities to learn, which will increase the likelihood of the person’s success. Ultimately, the choice always belongs to the individual.