SMEC Newsletter #9

SMEC is the Southern Maine Equity Collaborative (formerly BERAC). We are a collaborative of teachers who care about equity in our schools, and we meet monthly to plan events, newsletters, and educational opportunities for our faculty and staff.

Biddeford is an incredibly economically diverse community. Having some families who live in mansions by the ocean and others who struggle to make rent or buy food can be challenging. But while our country is largely segregated by socioeconomic status, Biddeford is an exception–and this presents us with a highly unusual opportunity: according to a 2022 report by economist Raj Chetty and colleagues at Harvard University, friendships that spanned economic class boosted class mobility more than any other factor. In other words, a low-income student who has economically diverse friends, including high-income students, is much more likely to leave poverty than a low-income student who only connects with other low-income students.

And let’s face it: a student’s time in school is likely the most economically diverse setting they will encounter in their entire life.

So what can we do to help our students who live in poverty?

Strong teacher-student relationships are key to positive outcomes in so many ways! Students who come from poverty might have fewer adults at home stressing the importance of education, or they might have adults at home who had bad experiences with school themselves (this obviously does not apply to all students from poverty). Or maybe our poor students have parents who value education, but they work two jobs to make rent and don’t have the time to devote to their kids that a middle class parent might. Whatever the case, a student’s perception of school is formed by their teachers and administrators--not just their families. Be present and available for your students. Take an interest in them. Communicate home with positive messages. Build strong, meaningful relationships.

Do you often talk about “poor performances” or “poor test scores”? What effect do you think this has on your students who identify as poor? The two uses of the word are so ingrained in our everyday speech that even this excellent NWEA article on teaching kids from poverty uses the word “poor” in a derogatory way!

Poverty can affect brain development, particularly in areas of language, reading, executive functioning, and spatial reasoning. In addition, poverty adds additional stress to the brain, which can make it more difficult to focus on cognitive tasks, like school work. People who are forced to live in a scarcity mindset might have little bandwidth to channel toward tasks beyond their immediate survival.

This does not, however, mean that poor students cannot catch up. Provided with evidence-based teaching strategies, social emotional coping skills, and extra academic support, students from poverty can achieve their same outcomes as their affluent peers.

Every school in the district has social workers and a Resiliency Coordinator. If you know a family is struggling, offer to connect them to support at the school, or pass the parent’s name along to school support staff. Many parents don’t know all the ways schools can help them, so they don’t even think to ask.

Maine also has a fabulous new website, BeThereForME.org. This site can help connect families to all kinds of support, from housing to childcare to parenting help.

Remember that students who live in poverty, especially younger ones, might not self-identify as poor–they might not have the context to understand their situation. Early conversations with adults (i.e. you!) will determine whether they see poverty as something to be ashamed of or empowered by.

Biddeford is an increasingly diverse community, however we continue to struggle with many families living in poverty. As educators, we see the impact of both generational poverty as well as poverty in our New Mainer community due to economic challenges around immigration and resettlement. Demographic data from the City of Biddeford website shows that children experience poverty at high rates, with 25% of families living in poverty in Biddeford, compared to the national average of 16%.

Our district recently became more aware of intersectionality from speaker Ed Silva during his Cultural Humility presentation. Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how different kinds of inequalities can combine to create additional barriers or challenges. When using an intersectional lens, these statistics illustrate significant disparity between members of our community. While it is easy to see that poverty unfairly affects people based on their race, gender, and ability, explanations and solutions are harder to come by. The goal of sharing these statistics and articles is not to stereotype any groups, but to help educators see and think about the issues around poverty through the lens of intersectionality. How, for example, might it be different to be poor and White versus poor and Black in this country?

United States’ Poverty Rates:

White Poverty Rate: 8.2% (15.9 million people)

Women’s Poverty Rate: 12.6% (20.9 million people)
Hispanic Poverty Rate: 17.0% (10.4 million people)
African American Poverty Rate: 19.5% (8.5 million people)
Native American Poverty Rate: 23.0% (600,000 people)
People with Disabilities Poverty Rate: 25.0% (3.6 million people)
(Source: Talk Poverty Website - https://talkpoverty.org/basics/index.html#povertyrate)

Additional Reading:
What is Intersectionality?

An Intersectional Approach to Poverty and Inequality

New Poverty and Food Insecurity Data Illustrate Persistent Racial Inequities

Do:

• Normalize the idea that different families have different needs

• Remember that some students’ basic needs aren’t being met at home–this can lead to behavior like food hoarding or power struggles

• Promote socialization across socioeconomic status (mix kids up!)

• Maintain high expectations while providing support

• Give students voice and choice (empower them!)

Don’t:

• Ask students to all share publicly what they’re doing/did for a school vacation

• Use broad statements that might not apply to all students (“Everyone has a Stanley cup nowadays!”)

• Make assumptions about a student’s ability based on their clothing or the family they come from

There's Always This Year is the most beautiful book I will ever read about basketball. The fact that I know this is both a testament to Abdurraqib's prose, which is as perceptive and illuminating as his poetry, and to my own reading habits, which skew decidedly away from sports writing. Someone who cares more about the Cleveland Cavaliers, and about LeBron James in particular, would likely find treasures of insight that I missed. Still, there is a lot that is beautiful and important here, even for the sports-averse. Abdurraqib weaves together stories from his youth and young adulthood with analysis of the cultural artifacts that shaped his growing up--basketball, mostly, but also music and movies. He writes with love and profound empathy about the complicated, impoverished neighborhood he grew up in and the way that money (the desire for it, the performance of it, the lack of it) was inextricable from his developing understanding of himself and the people around him. I particularly loved moments when his talent as a writer and observer was brought to bear on his own memories: of sneaking into LeBron's high school games to watch a phenom-in-progress play, of throwing a pair of socks at a jail ceiling to will himself to sleep, of returning home both to watch the Cavaliers play with other fans and to march against police brutality. I left this book with a sense of profound appreciation for Abdurraqib's dedication to the place he's from, as complex and layered as that place might be. A world where we all felt similarly loyal to the geography of our childhood would be a better one, I think.

-Veronica Foster

If you want to learn more about what we do at SMEC, please reach out to one of our building representatives: Rebecca Reynolds, Landyn Bowers, or Pablo Cebollon and join our virtual monthly meetings!