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>> I started doing research on social class and poverty
as a doctoral student.
I was interested in this topic mostly
because of my own family history.
So I grew up in a working poor family and most people
in my family did not have good experiences with schools.
I did not have a good experience with schools and when I decided
to become a teacher, I thought that if I could be a teacher,
then I could help people understand how
to make schools a more powerful place;
a place that's more respectful and welcoming
to working class and poor families.
>> Look at this one.
>> The title of the workshop, it's kind of misleading
because you don't know what it is until you get there
because the title of it is "The Other Side of Poverty"
and it has nothing to do with poverty.
It's about how you think of people who are poor
or lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
What I took from it is their research shows children
from any background can learn; rich, poor, black,
white, Asian, Hispanic.
What is the difference?
The difference is the teacher and that's a hard pill
to swallow that...forget poverty;
that's not going to change.
And forget what they come to the table with.
We can make significant gains and changes in children's lives
if we know this is an issue.
We know that kids come from different backgrounds.
Why is it that we only show in our literature people
that look nothing like them?
And yet we expect them to meet the standard
that they can relate a text that they're reading to themselves.
Well if they've never had those experiences,
then it's kind of hard to relate.
And I totally got that once she put it like that.
>> Then they make all kinds of connections
across the curriculum.
Like, "Oh well what about when I teach this
or when I teach this?"
Then we start seeing that now you're thinking
of a class-sensitive approach
and how you integrate these ideas, but it's not going to be
in a textbook so teachers have to be really thoughtful and have
to educate themselves.
>> I wasn't new to teaching, but I was new to thinking
about how I taught and that this really challenged me just
because...especially as an African American;
I didn't like to think
that I was leaving African American children
out of my lessons.
But quite frankly, I was.
>> This is not about a curriculum or an approach
for a particular kind of kid.
This is about a richer, more powerful approach for all
of our kids to understand how complex our society is
in that we all live respectful, dignified lives regardless
of how those lives are different or how they're similar.
And learning to have relationships across lines
of social class, across lines of race, language, history...
>> So that's the thing that I learned from it.
I had to re-teach myself how to teach this
and I became more conscious of it also.
I want every child to see themselves in learning.
I want them to connect.
If it's reaching them in the books they see, great.
If it's reaching them in the music they hear, great.
If its reaching them with a one-on-one conversations I have
to have, but then from time to time about their behavior
or whatever, that's the goal is to reach every child.
>> It's not a special curriculum;
it's a way of thinking about how you relate to people.
And once you have that, you can't...it's like a gift
that there is no return.
You can't return it.