I did the topic of what poverty is, and what comes to my mind when I think of poverty and the children that live in it. Ever since I was a small girl I have lived in poverty and I always wanted a way out of it, and the only way I knew how was to get my education. However, research and evidence shows that while students know education is the way to escape poverty, it extremely hard for them to because often poverty is "inherited" so to speak, and it affects their education in countless ways. 

The Poverty Problem

The word poverty is defined as the state of being extremely poor. This definition does not even begin to describe what poverty really is, and what it is really like. It doesn't explain how horrible it feels to have less than all of your peers. It doesn't explain how hard it is to know you are never going to have all the opportunities that so many others have. It doesn’t explain how much it hurts to look at your parents and know that they are working extremely hard to make what they do and yet it still isn’t enough to support the family. It doesn't emphasize how big of a problem poverty is today. No, it doesn't give you any type of real meaning of this word, it just tells you that when someone is living in poverty they have no money. When this word was defined it was made extremely generic, and it doesn't give you the real details about the lives all sorts of people who live in poverty lead. Taking all of this into consideration, I ask you to continue reading this with your eyes wide open, and your hearts to feel for those who get hurt the most by poverty. I ask you to sympathize with the children of poverty, because they are the ones who have to overcome it more than anyone. Before I continue, I am going to answer two questions for you. How do these children plan to overcome poverty? Education. How does poverty affect their education? In an unreachable number of ways. 

Research shows that children that come from homes ridden with poverty have lower academic performance and lack intellect. It also shows that students coming from these homes have bad relations with adults in the home.  Academic performance often can be directly related to the type of environment they live in at home, and if a student lives in a home where no money is being generated

then that means there is a shortage of food, water, and other basic necessities they need in order to do well not only in school, but in life. When these families are dealing with this problem parents often pull longer hours at work, become stressed, and ultimately lose a personal, nurturing relationship with their children. As children grow into this environment they often become resentful towards their parents because first of all, their parents are the bread winners in the family, and second they completely lost the relationship they were meant to have. That's what living in poverty is like for a child, and the reason I know this is because I have lived in poverty my entire life until I got my own job and did my own bread winning so  to speak.    

Children that live in poverty are considered "at risk" when they go to school. In the school system's eyes these students are expected to struggle more than their peers  not only academically but in life in general, and are also considered to be more prone to drop out of school once they reach the age that they can. The reason these students are considered at risk is because of the social class that they come from. More often than not, students that come from homes of poverty have parents that have not graduated high school, and/or did not further their education with higher learning. Children are expected to follow their parents actions, and not always but study shows that most of the time over 20% of them do follow their parents decisions. 

Teachers also have struggles when it comes to educating children from homes of poverty. These students typically have low test scores, bad behavioral problems, bullying problems, hygiene problems, and are often disruptive in class trying to gain attention they do not receive from home. Often when teachers arrange parent-teacher conference meetings in order to make some progress with students through their parents, and parent's from poverty homes do not show up and/or communicate with teachers and thus theses behavioral issues continue. 

In conclusion I'd like to remind you that the poverty issue is only increasing, statistically speaking it has more than doubled since the year of 2000. Children ages 5-17 years old have been the most

affected in respect to their academic performance. The truth of the matter is this, our children's educations are suffering due to poverty. There is no real way to make poverty disappear completely, but there are some things we as educators can do to help the children succeed academically who are affected by poverty. Arranging free tutoring sessions to get them help in school, having food drives and clothing drives for students who are in need (anonymously of course), and just offering a helping hand. The only way to help stomp out the poverty problem is to help our youth get an education because they are the future.  

 

References: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/esther-j-cepeda-overcoming-generational-poverty/2013/07/05/f6e49b28-e5b4-11e2-80eb-3145e2994a55_story.html http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/poverty/ http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cce.asp http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16