How Teachers Can Battle the Odds and Come Out On Top

How Teachers Can Battle the Odds and Come Out On Top

According to a report [1] published by the US Department of Education, “students who are placed at risk due to poverty, race, ethnicity, language, or other factors are rarely well served by their schools.” The report goes on to state that traditional means of support for these students may actually reduce a student’s learning opportunities. So, what is an educator to do?

Where to Start

One of the suggestions, offered by the researchers cited in this study, is to shift the focus from constant remedial instruction and ability grouping to a focus on “student assets.” Those assets include learning preferences, the background knowledge the student brings to the table, his or her cultural upbringing, and the experiences of each child.

Discovering those assets, and learning how to utilize them well, begins with an understanding of the child. What does he or she value? What is his or her learning style? How does he or she communicate best?

A great place to start is to administer a temperament assessment device to your students and then follow-up with several dynamic activities to teach them more about their styles and preferences.

Using the information from the assessment, teachers, parents, and other school personnel can make grouping and planning decisions based upon the specific population of the classroom. This can begin to help level the playing field by allowing teachers and parents to find the nexus (or connection) point for the class.

Example — Ms. Salta

Meet Ms. Salta and the students of room 205. Ms. Salta is in her fourth year of teaching and has been assigned 27 sixth-grade students.

Ms. Salta, a Blue Teacher

Ms. Salta, a Blue Teacher

According to the commutative files, she has three students who have been chronically tardy and two students who have been retained once. In addition, the makeup of the school is such that she will have students from both high and low socioeconomic areas. She knows from experience, that there are (and will be) other issues for her students. She knows she MUST start right on day one!

The first thing Ms. Salta does is create a classroom environment that is inviting for all four temperament/learning styles because she knows they will all be there. She is also aware that she is Blue and makes sure that her preferences, while accounted for, don’t overwhelm the preferences of the Greens, Golds, and Oranges.

As she prepares for the first week, she makes plans to “colorize” each of her students and build a common vocabulary for discussions on personality and learning styles. This is the starting point for building teamwork and communication skills.

On the academic agenda for week one, she is scheduled to review many of the concepts that the students learned in the previous school year. However, she has some tricks up her sleeve. Rather than reviewing from a text or workbook, she has decided to use games, in-class projects, experiments, challenges, and a short student-centered writing project to liven things up and engage EVERY student. She is using her whole back-to-school review as a hook for the school year.

Once the temperament assessments and learning activities about human personality are completed, Ms. Salta will have some data to use to plan lessons and activities for teaching new concepts. She will discover the percentages of each style that are at work in her room. She is also aware that sixth graders are prone to peer pressure and that she may need to make some adjustments along the way!

What follows are two examples of how Ms. Salta might use the information gleaned from her students’ personality assessments.

Class #1

In the first example, the class is composed of 4 Blue students, 11 Golds, 2 Greens, and 10 Oranges. In this scenario, the percentage of each style close to those found in the general population.

In terms of planning, Ms. Salta will be more successful if she plans learning tasks that involve manipulatives and hands-on discovery. She needs to balance freedom and choice with structure and stability. She needs to set clear and concise expectations and adhere to them consistently.

Ms. Salta will also need to take a whole-brained approach to her teaching. She needs to focus equally on both “the parts” and “the wholes.” And, she will need to provide multiple forms of assessment, i.e. some written, some verbal, and some choice.

Class #2

In the second example, the class is composed of 3 Blue students, 6 Golds, 6 Greens, and 12 Oranges. In this scenario, Ms. Salta needs to be prepared to challenge and be challenged — although not necessarily from a disciplinary standpoint.

She will need to set up learning experiences that involve choice and self-discovery. She needs to be prepared for the word “why” and a significant amount of discussion and debate! This class will most likely be active and constantly on the go. Lessons and assessments should be designed to accommodate those preferences where possible. However, in the process, she will find clear expectations and limits invaluable.

Ms. Salta is likely to find more success with this class if she uses a more right-brained approach to her teaching. She will need to remember to work from whole to part. As with the first scenario, she will need to provide multiple forms of assessment.

The Bottom Line

Even if you use every tool at your disposal, you will not eliminate the factors that cause your students to be at risk. What the tools do offer is a chance to derail any new factors for students who have the odds against them. They can also work to decrease the negative effects of these factors on future success while building a strong foundation for academic and social success.

[1] Letgers, N., McDill, E., & McPartland, J. (1993, October). Section II: Rising to the challenge: Emerging strategies for educating students at risk. In Educational reforms and students at risk: A review of the current state of the art (pp. 47-92). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
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