The father of one of my students was murdered last week. I can’t imagine going through that at such a young age. When he came back to school, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I heard him mention the upcoming funeral but with no more emotion than any other weekend plan. I don’t know if he is that much more emotionally stable than I am or if maybe his father wasn’t a big part of his life but I was shocked. For a couple days I couldn’t talk to him without actively trying to suppress the murder that was dominating my attention.
Just today I found out about another one of my student’s home lives. De’Andre was raised in New York until his mother and grandfather were gunned down in a robbery attempt. Grandma spent all of her money getting him out of New York and chose Orlando as a destination because of how Disney looked on TV.
Not surprisingly, these kids aren’t great students. It’s hard enough to convince a student that learning about the scientific method is worth while when they plan on having a long healthy life.
The current “Value Added Model” (used to determine wether a teacher is effective or not) uses all sorts of variables like past test scores, reading level, etc.. to predict how much a student is expected to learn, but one factor that is legally prohibited from being included in the algorithm is poverty. Can we as a state/country come together and recognize that poor people have different set of struggles in life that make learning incredibly harder? I hope so, especially because without doing so teachers are incentivized to go to the rich school districts and away from where the help is needed the most.
If this sounds depressing, it’s because it is.