Smith Miraha Smith English 1102-025 Megan Keaton 15 April 2013 Characters: Sorie Gasama: The Correlation Between

Poverty And Learning (Teacher) Cutting Class Authors (Teacher) PCE: Are Achievement Gaps Closing And Is Achievement Rising For All (Librarian) Monique Redeaux: The Culture Of Poverty Reloaded (Teacher) Miraha Smith: Me (Counselor) Kayla Zeisler: The Impact Of Resources On Education (Teacher) Janie: (Student) Example Setting/Description: It is a cold and windy day in inner city, Uptown Charlotte. The cast is meeting outside of

Ransin IB High School for a parent teacher conference. They are planning to talk about how they can help the youth that are dealing with poverty in the West Charlotte schools district and specifically help a troubled student in the class. While walking into the school Miraha Smith, Sorie Gasama, and Kayla Zeisler all encounter the student that is obviously in poverty, acting out, cursing, and leaving the school without a book bag. They begin a conversation about the student while walking to the library meeting room.

Scene: Miraha Smith: Isnt that Janie? He is the student we are having this conference for! I just do not understand why he acts out in school like this. He is so smart. Sorie Gasama: Well Miraha, Janie is smart; he knows how to do the work in my class but wont. He may be acting out, but we all will never know what he goes through everyday at home

Smith or in his community. People in some situations lack the basic resources that you and I have. School is not the most important thing that they have to worry about. Miraha goes up to Janie and makes him come back to the schools for his conference. Kayla Zeisler: Youre right, Sorie. Resources have much to do with what children of poverty deal with in life and in schools. Children with fewer resources have a hard time achieving what students with resources do. They tend to make lower tests scores and grades in schools. (Zeisler 28) Miraha sends Janie inside the school and begins to listen to the conversation. Sorie Gasama: Exactly! Students need a lot of support from their parents and the community. Sadly, often times what parents are worried about is survival. Their parents have to think about making sure their children eat, have shelter, clothes on their back, and a way to get back and forth to places. School is the last priority for these students and their families. (Gasama 8) Miraha Smith: Wow, you know I had never even thought about that. As a counselor, I always saw it as students trying to give me a hard time or just being lazy. I never even thought about what a student of poverty could go through that makes them not succeed.
Walking into the library meeting room for the meeting the entire cast except PCE takes their seat and they begin to discuss what can be done to help students in the Title 1 schools succeed including Janie. PCE the librarian is just walking around the library and enters the room being nosey while acting like they are stocking the shelves in the office.

Miraha Smith: Hello everyone. Thank you all for attending this parent teacher conference for Janie. Please enjoy the refreshments that have been given. Janies mother has not arrived yet so until she does lets quickly start talking about what can be done for the students in our district. As I walked in today, a couple of the staff and I talked about what students go through at home that makes them not be as successful as students in the south charlotte schools.

Smith Cutting Class: I have dealt with poverty and being in a privileged setting. And teachers are a big part of how students succeed. They give them the expectations. It is true that students in impoverished schools do not get high expectations from their teachers. These students also need support and resources. Students from poor families have been found to own on average fewer books; to be read to much less often; be less likely to be taken to museums, public libraries, a play, or to participate in dance, art, music, or craft classes; to spend more hours watching television; be more likely to have one parent; and to move their residences more often. (Kincheloe 113) Monique Redeaux: Students do need great expectations from teachers, but saying that those students need teachers that can relate with them. Most schools dealing with poverty are heavily populated with white women teachers. This is not helping these low-income classrooms or helping these students. They need role models and to see people that look like them succeed.

These teachers step into a small part of these students life for 8 hours a day and go back home to their comfortable suburban families. These students need more teachers that know what they go through. They need role models in their classrooms and not teachers that do not relate to them in any way. (Redeaux 96) Miraha Smith: Everyone has told me very good information about what student in schools deal with and what they need to succeed. Miraha sees the PCE/Librarian in the office trying to seem inconspicuous. She knows that they have heard what is going on and decides to get their opinion. Do you have anything to say PCE? I see you over there looking like you know something we dont.

4 Smith PCE: I have overheard you all talking but all I know are the facts Ms.Smith, and they are that there is an achievement gap. Minority students are on all ends of that achievement gap. The school they attend matters and the district. Because we are under the No Child Left Behind Act, student that make bad test scores, which live in impoverished neighborhoods, continue to do worse and worse while the students that are privileged continue to do better and better. Although minority students attend poverty schools and even wealthy schools, the curriculum and funding make a difference. (Policy Center Education 23) Feeling relieved that he has gotten what he wanted to say off of his chest PCE/Librarian walks out of the library in relief and in a hurry. Miraha Smith: You guys have all brought up some good points. As teachers and educators we should be giving our students greater expectations and acting as the parent figure when they are not around. Miraha sees Janie outside the library meeting room where the conference is being held fidgeting in his seat as if he is in a hurry and has somewhere else to go. Let me see if Janies mother is here yet. One second. Miraha goes outside. Janie and Miraha walk back in the room. Janies mother will not be able to make this meeting, so we will have to go on without her. Sorie Gasama: Janie I wish your mother were here. Where is she? Janie: I dont know. Working. She has better things to do I guess. Miraha Smith: Did she say anything about attending the conference today? Janie: No. She didnt say anything at all. Who cares about this conference anyways? You all just want to out me down and make me fed stupid. I dont have to be here for that. Janie gets up out of his seat. Miraha and Sorie sit him down.

Smith Sorie Gasama: Janie no one is here to out you down we are here to help you. Everyone shakes his or her head in agreement. You are a very smart student and could be making As in all of our classes if you would just do the work. Why dont you complete any assignments I give you? Janie: I do not have time. I make sure I understand the work, but I have so much more to think of. My mother works sun up to sun down. I have siblings to make sure are fed, an apartment to

clean, money to make. I try to work as much as I can so that I can help my mother with as many bills as I can, and this homework stuff usually has to take a backseat. I cannot focus in your classes when I know what I have to worry about when I get home. There is no one where I am from that went to school and made it out. You have to be playing basketball or rapping to make it and since I cant to either, I have to work a regular job just like my mom. My mother has enough on her plate than to be worried about some conference when as soon as I turn 16 I plan to drop out anyways. I am trying to take care of me and my family, and no offense but none of this class work you teachers assign is helping me do that. If you all would excuse me I have to go make sure my sister got off of the bus. Janie leaves. Miraha Smith: We have to work as a support system to these students. Although their parents are not there, it is our jobs as faculties to make sure that all students are supported, achieve, and do their best. I will not let any student fail, and will be talking to Janie tomorrow about what I can do to make sure he is helped in every way possible. The No Child Left Behind Act has students thinking they cant succeed. Monique Redeaux: So do their teachers! They have no expectations and no hope so they give up!

Smith Cutting Class: As a person that has lived through poverty and wealth, I know that these students can make it if they try. We just need to show them! Miraha Smith: And we will but how? Kayla Zeisler: We may not have the money but we need to show these students that there are

resources and things available to them if they take advantage of them. There are public libraries, there are books, there are free museums, and there is a free college application week. We need to educate them on the ways to make it out of this area and into these colleges. Monique Redeaux: We have to show them that we support them. We have to show them we care. We need to give them expectations and show them that we expect great things from them so that they will give us great work in return. Sorie Gasama: We also need to reach out to their parents and show the parents that we care. WE have to be that parent role sometimes and also get the parents involved however we can in the students lives. Miraha Smith: I honestly believe that we can do this everyone. We all have the right mindset about it now it is just putting it into action and as a team we can. The teachers and counselor all continue to brainstorm on what can be done to help students like Janie while the curtains close and the light fade to darkness.

Smith

Work Cited Gassama, Sorie. "The Correlation Between Poverty And Learning: What Can Be Done To Help Children With Limited Resources Learn." Online Submission (2012): ERIC. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

Kincheloe, Joe L, and Shirley R. Steinberg. Cutting Class: Socioeconomic Status and Education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pub, 2007. Print.

Policy Center on Education, et al. "State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08, Part 3: Are Achievement Gaps Closing And Is Achievement Rising For All?." Center On Education Policy (2009): ERIC. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.

REDEAUX, MONIQUE. "The Culture Of Poverty Reloaded." Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine 63.3 (2011): 96. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

Zeisler,Kayla. "The Impact Of Resources On Education: A Position Paper On How Theories Of Social Capital Provide Insight On The Achievement Gap In The United States Education System." Online Submission (2012): ERIC. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.