Ruby Payne’s book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, is highly popular among teachers and administration around the country. Her book was written to shed light on the characteristics of poverty-stricken students and to explain how their beliefs and home life greatly affect their learning and behavior in a school environment. Though Payne mentions that her book is made to make a positive impact on students by offering solutions to teacher and staff, many people believe that Payne’s book supports negative stereotypes and deems the poor as incompetent of developing appropriate social and learning skills. The authors of Poverty and Payne: Supporting Teachers to Work with Children of Poverty, explain that it takes self-awareness and communication with other teachers to ensure that these students are provided the skills that will help them succeed in school. The book and article have different solutions on how to close the gap between the poor and a successful learning experience.
Both the article Poverty and Payne written by Mistilina Sato and Timothy J. Lensmire and Understanding the Framework for Understanding Poverty both show great concern four our youth that experience the negative results of poverty on a daily basis. Both believe that poverty hinders a student’s learning experience. Though they have similar concerns, their solutions to helping poverty-stricken students are quite different. While Ruby Payne offers characteristics of students that come from poverty and provides teachers and staff with skills and advice on how to assist these students, the article clearly states that it is up to the teachers to have a good cultural identity of themselves before attempting to reach out to their students that come from poverty. The article accuses Payne of negatively stereotyping people that come from low income homes and lacks to mention these people’s positive actions and decisions.
I have found advice and solutions from both the book and article that I will use in my career. Before starting my career, I plan to become comfortable with my own-self and culture. As a teacher, I will always keep in mind that not all students come from middle class homes and will do attempt to get a better understanding of where my students come from by doing my research and visiting neighborhoods where my children live so I can experience what they do every day. I will keep in mind of my student’s personal situations when I am planning projects because not all students have the resources to complete certain tasks.  The most important element that I have found evident in both readings is that forming a close and meaningful relationship with your students is essential. Without forming a solid relationship, you cannot gain trust and respect from the student. This element is what I believe to be the most important and will strive throughout my career to develop strong and positive relationships with my students that will inspire them to strive for the best.

Budgeting

in Diverse populations, I a difficult task of shopping for three kids with only 50 dollars. I learned alot from this experience and wanted to share with yall!


My first multicultural project allowed me to experience what many American families have to do on a daily basis. Providing for a large family with a very tight budget can be extremely challenging and frustrating. With the help of this project, I’ve developed a better understanding and more admiration for the families that manage to provide for their children on such a tight budget.
I went to the Temple Goodwill on a Saturday morning. When I entered the parking lot, I was surprised to see so many cars there and the amount of families coming in and out of the store. Before going inside, I decided I would create a budget for all four children; $12.50 per child. I believed I could find two or three different outfits considering that Goodwill is known for their reasonable prices. Once inside I noticed a diverse crowd of people including both young and old who were in search of some good finds and bargains.
Once inside, I decided to buy each child at least one pair of jeans. Luckily, the jeans were pretty cheap. Once I finished that, I decided to buy the usual school attire such as T-shirt and shoes. A lot of the racks did not have prices on them, so I had to ask the sales associates but all of them were friendly and willing to help me. I noticed that boy’s clothing is cheaper than girl’s clothing. When I was shopping for Trey, I found some pretty decent items. When I began searching for clothes for my girls, Nicole, Aiden, and Shelby, I was focused on finding the cutest outfits. After looking at the prices, I realized that cute clothes were out of the question if I wanted to stay in budget. I then had to resort to the basic T-shirts and tops. I was only able to buy one child a pair because the shoes were more expensive than I thought. After about a hour of shopping, I managed to get each child at least two shirts and a pair of jeans. I also managed to stay in budget all the clothing came up to $45.86. I tried to make my money stretch so I bought two pairs of socks for the oldest child. My grand total came up to $48.85; I felt disappointed that I was unable to buy more with $50.00. I assume that many mothers and fathers feel this way too when they are shopping with little money.
Though this was only a project, I’ve know that this is reality for many families and the possible students I will encounter in my career as a teacher. I will not express my sympathy for these students, but rather my empathy and understanding of their situation. I can only hope that I can provide a positive learning environment that enables them to gain confidence in themselves and not let their living predicaments hinder their learning capabilities.

Arts in public schools

Many public school districts across the united states are being forced to make budget cuts due to the lack of money in the school district. Most schools are choosing to cut the art programs such as choir, band, theater because they deem them as less important and do not help students academically. These false assumptions are depriving thousand of our public education students the opportunity to experience the beauty of the arts. Research has shown that a student in an arts program has a better understanding of math topics. Art programs also teaches students discipline, problem solving, cooperation, concentration and many other benefits. I believe that these important programs are completly taken out public schools, our students would suffer greatly and would have less ways of expressing themselves.

How to cater to all learning styles

I found this really good website that offered learning style tips for teachers. I'll put a few tips up but definitely visit the website! The Website is
http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Teaching_Tips/
Visual Leaners:

• Ask these students to write down information, even rewriting or highlighting key points.
• Ask students to preview chapters by looking at subheadings and illustrations before they read each chapter.
• Seat these students up front, away from windows and doors (to avoid distractions).
• Encourage them to ask for comments or directions to be repeated if they did not understand directions the first time.
• Use overheads and flip charts.

Auditory Learners:

• Audiotapes of classroom activities can be helpful.
• Suggest that they read class notes into a tape.
• Encourage them to read the textbook out loud.
• It can be helpful for these students to say out loud the meaning of the illustrations and main subject headings, and to recite any new vocabulary words.

Kinesthetic Learners:

• Movement should be planned to avoid distracting others.
• Memorizing information can be enhanced if these learners are encouraged to physically move about the room.
• Providing students with a colored desk blotter or a colored transparency to read a book is called "color grounding" and can help focus their attention.
• Ask them to take notes and encourage them to underline key points as they read.

Hope you found some of these tips useful! Have a great day!

My favorite teacher

Everyone has had a teacher that has left a positive influence on them. My middle school choir teacher did more than that. Though choir was just an extracurricular activity, I think I learned more than I did in actual class. Mr.Pheifer always pushed us and encouraged us to be more than just average. There were times where all me and my classmates were on the verge of tears. Lol we all knew that he was was being tough on us for good reasons. Choir helped me grow more confidence in myself and opened my eyes to all types of music. When I become a teacher, I hope to inspire and push my students towards success.