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Breaking the Culture of Poverty is Society’s Great Challenge: Panel

Presentations and discussion on poverty impassions audience

By Roderick Benns
Editor

Children need to be inculcated from an early age with the belief that they can move beyond the troubling circumstances of poverty, agreed a four-member panel that recently convened on the subject of poverty.

Is Poverty Destiny? Closing the Achievement Gap was presented by The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat of the Ontario Ministry of Education as part of a monthly Lunch and Learn series. The series was developed to encourage dialogue amongst Ministry employees on supporting equity of outcome for all students, one of the key focuses for The Secretariat. Audience members were invited to bring their lunch and to contribute to the panel discussion, which this month focused on poverty and its relation to educational and social outcomes.

The panellists were from a broad range of disciplines yet seemed to draw strength from each other's perspectives over the 90 minutes of presentations and audience-based participation.

Zanana Akande recalled growing up within a poor family in the Kensington neighbourhood of Toronto, yet also recalled the high degree of affirmation and support she received from her mother.

"There is a fundamental difference between being poor and living in poverty. Poverty is a culture – a set of values and beliefs taken on by a group. It can control one's thinking and expectations," to the point where multiple generations live within a similar cycle, she explained.

Akande drew the example of a lottery winner who has been living in poverty. This person will very often choose to stay in, or near, the same neighbourhood, merely building a better house with their winnings, she said.

"They share similar expectations, understand the language and have friends there. So they often sabotage their success to remain," Akande said.

She said the idea of affordable housing is absurd because of this fact, creating the notion that the poor should exist together, feeding on each other's beliefs.

What is really needed, she emphasized, is for educators, families and society in general to help nurture the belief that they can move beyond.

Martha McKinnon, Executive Director at Justice For Children and Youth, a legal clinic for low-income youth, told the lunch crowd that schools need to think very carefully before they involve the police in school-based incidents. As well, they need to be cautious before they decide to suspend or expel a student because it will "always make things worse."

"Educators can transform behaviour more effectively than the police system," she noted. McKinnon said the Safe School's Act – often blamed for creating too many suspended and expelled students – was always meant to be used with discretion. However, since the document is so large, she notes that most schools and the system itself seem to be using a standardized approach to expulsions and suspensions.

"But a standardized approach never works. It never works for student learning and it doesn't work" in this case, either, she said.

McKinnon made the plea that boards start collecting more data to inform thinking about marginalized students. "We don't just want to hear that evidence is only anecdotal – we need to have this information," she said.

Terezia Zoric pointed out that teachers themselves inadvertently help to impoverish the education of students because they do not always get the opportunity to learn what they need to know to teach all students effectively.

Zoric spoke at length about the ways in which the system often works to hide questions of class, even as it has made strides to deal with other differences, such as language or race. But poverty, class and economic justice issues remain "nearly invisible" in the curriculum, she said.

Akande agreed with this assessment. "The omissions are glaring. Poor kids never see their lives reflected in the literature, except when it's pathetic. People who say they don't see class when they teach shouldn't be teaching," she added.

Zoric notes that school uniforms "mask a social identity." "So what other social identities are we attempting to hide?" she asked.

Zoric said that when teachers actually notice poverty, they see it as a deficit but yet not their responsibility to address it because it is too overwhelming.

She feels it is important to begin recruiting teachers who actually want to work with impoverished children, in order to see effective change.

"I'm not saying that education is the solution to poverty ... but the conversation needs to begin somewhere," Zoric added.

Val Taylor notes that the challenge of children coming to school hungry at her school in York Region was partly addressed with a comprehensive breakfast program that was designed for all children. By finding the budget to create the program for all children, many students chose to use the program because it was a social opportunity with their peers, while still quietly filling a student need for many.'

Under Taylor's leadership, Lake Wilcox Public School, which had a low academic and socioeconomic profile, blossomed and began to move forward academically. As well, its social challenges were addressed openly and inclusively, leading to less staff turnover and more commitment on the part of both teachers and students.

Taylor said solutions for many classroom challenges must include first-class professional development for teachers, a focus on instructional intelligence, the strong commitment of staff and a thorough discussion on how to best sustain successes.

The Panelists

Martha McKinnon was an English and Drama teacher in secondary school for eight years before being called to the Bar in Ontario in 1986. She has concentrated her legal practice on education law and children's rights, serving as Counsel to the York Region Board of Education for 8 years, and currently as Executive Director at Justice For Children and Youth, a legal clinic for low-income youth.

Zanana Akande is vice president of Community Unity Alliance and is a past president of the Urban Alliance for Race Relations. She was the former Minister of Community and Social Services under the former NDP government and served as Parliamentary Assistant to then-Premier Bob Rae. She was also an elementary school principal in Toronto.

Terezia Zoric is Policy Advisor on Equity and a Lecturer at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Previous Roles include as former Coordinator of Equity for Toronto District School Board and she has an extensive background in curriculum writing and review.

Val Taylor is the principal of Glad Park Public School in York Region, with previous roles as principal at Lake Wilcox Public School, which has a low academic and socioeconomic profile. She was also a Curriculum Region Consultant for York Region.