Teaching, Caring, and Advocating for Children and Families Living in Poverty

Editor’s note: This text-based course is an edited transcript of the webinar, Teaching, Caring, and Advocating for Children and Families Living in Poverty, presented by Kenya Wolff, PhD.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify their own biases regarding poverty and families living in poverty.
• List ways poverty can negatively impact children’s development.
• List ways teachers can create welcoming and equitable classrooms for children of all socio-economic levels.

Introduction

I have worked and advocated for families of all kinds, but specifically, families and children living in poverty for many years. I'm really happy to share what I've learned along the way. I'm going to share a little bit about myself first. I think it's nice to know about who's talking and how I got here. I got my name, Kenya, from growing up in East Africa as the child of missionaries. My mother runs a school called The Challenge Farm in Western Kenya. I went to preschool there and really got passionate about watching my mother's work and decided to grow up and become an educator. I've spent several years in the classroom and as an administrator, mainly working in programs designed to help children and families who are living in poverty or below the poverty line. I'm also a single parent to two teenage children who help motivate me and keep me going as an advocate. I believe that all of our children deserve that. 

Poverty

Poverty is defined as a situation where a family doesn't have access to provide for their basic needs. The federal minimum wage, which is $7.25, has not been raised since 2009, which is over 12 years ago. This leads to multiple problems, but with inflation the way that it is, millions of families are struggling to provide for their children. If a person is making minimum wage working a 40 hour week, they are bringing in $290 a week or around $15,000 a year. While some states and cities have raised their minimum wage, other states like Mississippi, where I teach, don't have any kind of extra protection. Our workers, many of whom work in early childhood, are making $7.25 an hour. It's really challenging for families to make ends meet on that. Children who are living in families that are under the poverty line often struggle with finding adequate healthcare, food, and shelter. These are contexts in which many of our children live, and you all see that every day in your classroom. We don't have a clear picture at this time of data, but we know that the official poverty rate is hovering around 11%. The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percent from 10.5 percent in 2019. This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019 (www.census.gov). With some of the government protections that were put in place during the pandemic coming to an end, we do have some concerns about how our most vulnerable families and children are faring as we know that our economy has taken a hit with the pandemic.

Types of Poverty

There are multiple types of poverty.

• Situational poverty 
• Generational poverty 
• Absolute poverty
• Relative poverty 
• Urban poverty 
• Rural poverty

Situational poverty is very common and something you or someone you know may have experienced. There may have been a job loss, a divorce, or maybe a health crisis that caused you to be economically unstable. We've seen a lot of families who have experienced this during the pandemic, specifically families who are in service and tourist industries. There are so many families that were living paycheck to paycheck then had an event like a job loss and became so much more economically unstable.

Generational poverty is defined as being part of a family that has been living in poverty for more than two generations. This is different because if you have grown up in poverty, there are certain thought processes, ways of being, and ways of knowing that will differ from if you have been brought up say in the middle-class. What we see is you are constantly in survival mode and rather than being able to plan for your future and problem solve, oftentimes you are living in a toxic stress kind of environment where you are in survival mode. This can shape a generation and become a cycle that is very hard to get out of.

Absolute poverty is defined as an absolute lack of resources, including food insecurity. The United States has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in developing nations. This also includes homelessness and lack of access to healthcare.

Relative poverty is defined as living at about 50% or below the average income. You may not be wealthy and might be living paycheck to paycheck, but you have food on the table. However, in comparison to others around you, you are certainly struggling. Relative poverty usually is not as detrimental to the health and brain development of a young child, but the emotional aspects can take a toll.

The final two types of poverty are urban poverty and rural poverty. I live in Mississippi, for example, and rural poverty looks a little different than it does in urban areas. In rural poverty, one of the main issues is there isn't access to high-speed Internet. When the pandemic took children out of schools, I would see parents lined up at schools picking up giant packets of worksheets for four and five-year-olds. If you were in an urban center, you might be meeting on Zoom with your teacher online instead of doing the worksheet packets. People in rural areas are often isolated and lack access to technology, childcare, and education. In urban areas, you may have more structural issues such as housing and safety issues, overcrowding, and sanitation. 

It's really important for you as a teacher or someone who works with children to really understand the different types of poverty. One of the things that I try to do when I talk to people, especially those who haven't experienced poverty, is first and foremost to explain that poverty is about the lack of resources. Many children who grow up in poverty are very much loved and the families have many strengths.

Poverty's Impact on the Developing Brain

Poverty has an impact on children's development. With all of our new technology, we're learning more about brain development. Some research shows that by age four, and even earlier, areas of the brain in children who are living in poverty are developing more slowly than children from wealthier families. There are multiple proposed explanations for this, but much of it has to do with lack of health care, toxic stress, and improper nutrition. That's problematic. We know that not only is there a different rate of brain development but in children it impacts cognition. For example, brain functions such as a child's ability to recall information (their memory), their language and problem-solving skills (executive function), and self-regulation can be impacted because of some of the causes of poverty. By measuring the cortical surface area of children’s brains researchers found that lower family income was linked to a smaller cortical surface area, especially in brain regions involved in language and cognitive control abilities.

We know that it's not only a lack of healthcare and nutrition, but it's also toxic stress. Toxic stress levels create high amounts of cortisol (the stress hormone) in the body. For those of you who have studied the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, we're learning more and more about how child development is impacted by toxic stress including living in high levels of stress. Adverse childhood events can also lead to trauma. The more stress hormone the child has in their body, the more it can impact their brain. It can also lead to behavioral and emotional issues, developmental delays, and when you have a lack of problem-solving skills and executive functioning skills, lowered academic achievement is going to follow.

I know this sounds so heavy and you may be wondering if all of this can happen by age four then why are we even talking about this? You may be thinking there's nothing we can do, it's almost deterministic. I went to see Dr. Bruce Perry and he spoke a lot on adverse childhood experiences and some of these issues related to brain development and poverty. As I looked around the room, others listening appeared so downtrodden and you could feel the energy in the room. We felt almost defeated listening to this research. Someone asked him, "Is it too late? Is it ever too late? What can we do at this point if the brain is already losing and missing out on these connections."

What Dr. Perry said was very hopeful. He doesn't believe in calling children resilient because it minimizes the importance of their early childhood experiences. He said the brain is flexible and malleable and children at any age can rewire their brains and make and grow connections later in life. It's never too late. No child is beyond hope. His message, and mine, would be that those positive relationships that children build with their parents or caregivers, like you and the people that care about them, help them to really lower their toxic stress levels. There is almost a scale and a balancing act happening. You can't mitigate the impact of poverty's impact on the developing brain, but you can put certain supports in place to help lower children's toxic stress levels and to provide resources that can feed, clothe, house, and actually love on young children so that the impact is lowered.

Stereotypes

We're going to talk about that now because the great news and what we've learned from many experts and the research over 40 and 50 years is that quality early childhood education, especially targeted in populations where there are high levels of poverty, can be part of the solution. It's not the only solution though because we need to support families as well. But at the same time, we can also reinforce a lot of stereotypes if we aren't careful.

For example, when I was an undergrad there were a lot of really popular movies coming out, including one with Michelle Pfeiffer, where the young white middle-class teacher went into an urban school and changed everything because she's so wonderful and passionate. I think that motivated a lot of people to go into teaching and I think that's so important. But if we're not careful, the idea of us as the savior of a population where we are going to help at-risk kids or poor families can reinscribe the stereotypes of a family or a child that's helpless without agency. We have to be really careful and examine our own biases all the time. That's what we're going to do now.

We're going to talk about some of the stereotypes of people who live in poverty. You might have noticed that I try to never use the term poor people because I think that's othering. It also focuses on putting "poor" in front of "people." I feel like we all are people first and poverty is a situation. It is not a description of an entire group of people. Part of our stereotype is even when you hear the term poor families or poor people, what comes to your mind? Figure 1 shows an image that many of us might think of when we hear those terms. 

Our population of people who may be experiencing homelessness is one very visible group, but there are many of us who are living paycheck to paycheck, one situation away from not being able to maybe make our bills. Many of us have kind of some social supports and social capital that can help buffer that.

Figure 1. Man sitting on a crate with a grocery cart full of personal items.

Let's look at some of these stereotypes. One of the largest stereotypes is that 42% of Americans believe that poor life choices cause poverty. This comes from a 2019 welfare and work and wealth national survey from the Cato Institute. There are other stereotypes as well. Take a moment to close your eyes and think about who or what comes to mind when you hear "poor families."  What are some thoughts that come to your head? Sometimes it can be painful because these biases and stereotypes are not just about people living in poverty, but about all groups. They are like the air that we breathe in our culture, they're everywhere. Just being human means that we've breathed them in. Unless we're trying to really unpack them, most of us do have similar ones.

Poor People Are Lazy

One of the most similar ones is the misconception that poor people are lazy. This is a very common misconception. If you turn the belief that poor people are lazy on its head then that means that if you're wealthy or if you're doing well, you must work really hard.

Let me give you a little background before I move on. Remember that I told you that I grew up in East Africa in a rural area. I saw lines of women walking along the street with giant tubs of water carried on their shoulder or their head. They would be walking to the water source to collect water because when I was growing up there were not as many community water sources and certainly no water sources being pumped into individual homes. Then you would see them in the afternoon coming back with collections of firewood to make fires for cooking on their small stoves called jikos. One of my favorite memes is a picture of an African woman carrying water with a quote by George Monbiot that says, "If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire." 

The belief that wealth is the result of hard work ignores the challenges that make it more difficult for some people to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. I believe this. I've seen the hard work of multiple people and families, sometimes working 2, 3, or 4 jobs just trying to piece it all together without benefits to make ends meet. Certainly, there are people who don't work and who live in poverty. I'm not saying that that's not the case. In contrast, most wealth is gained through inheritance, social capital, and available educational opportunity. Social capital is the idea of who you know, which many of us know that's how many people get jobs. This is supported by the fact that the largest predictor of economic status is the economic status to which someone is born. Many want to believe the idea that we can pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps and that we have human agency to climb out of poverty, but that doesn't always happen. If you were born in poverty, especially into generational poverty, it is going to take some extra support for those families.

Poor People Waste Their Money on Alcohol and Drugs

Another common misconception is that poor people waste their money on alcohol and drugs. In fact, 40% of Americans believe that drugs and alcohol are what causes poverty. I'm not going to tell you that it wouldn't contribute to it, but substance abuse crosses all cultural, racial, religious, and economic boundaries. This was such a prevalent misconception that multiple states started drug testing their welfare recipients. What these states found was welfare recipients are actually less likely than the overall population to take drugs (Covert & Israel). While the national drug use rate is 9.4%, welfare applicants ranged from 0.002% to 8.3%. We also know that drugs are expensive. 

Parents Living in Poverty Lack Parenting Skills

The next misconception, that parents living in poverty lack parenting skills, is rampant in the field of early childhood education. I feel like so many of our programs, especially ones that provide assistance or childcare for families living in poverty, often have caveats that families can get this childcare subsidy, but they have to come to our parenting education class. When these parents are able and do get to the parenting education class, it's usually an expert telling parents how to parent in a top-down approach, as opposed to really trying to work with families, connect with them, and learn about their strengths and their backgrounds.

This misconception is based on an outdated “deficit model” of thinking that is classist and ignores much of the research that shows that it is educational institutions and teachers who need to find better ways to connect with students from all backgrounds.  When we fail to do this, there is an educational mismatch that can hinder learning.  Rather than focusing on what a family does not have, it is important to focus on a family’s funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992).  These funds consist of a families’ unique strengths and hidden resources like family traditions, household talents, chores, and home language. The family traditions might be that they do the same thing on New Year's Eve or have a game night regularly. The family might love to cook together or have a great sense of humor and can laugh together.

I have a friend who on Saturday mornings does a dance party with her all of her children and her husband and they just dance. Then they clean and everyone gets a chore and it is a tradition. She said that they make it so fun that her children like to clean. These are the family's strengths. We know that that kind of cohesion helps to make families more resilient and become more supportive. Again, it's a buffer against all of that toxic stress that poverty brings. The next time you hear a colleague complain about a parent's lack of skill, think to yourself, what strengths can I focus on so that I can better connect with the families and learn more about them and change my thinking from a deficit model to a strengths model?

Poverty Simulation

Speaking of a deficit model, one of the things that I like to do with my students is to have them play a game called Spent, which is a poverty simulation activity. It only takes a few minutes to do but is worth your time.  I encourage you to go to http://playspent.org/ to play it. Before this game came out, I would give all envelopes to my students with $290 and tell them that this was their weekly paycheck. Then I would ask them to create a family budget. I would explain to them why they were getting $290 and then give them a few different event cards.

These event cards may be positive or negative. Many of the students in my undergraduate classes have never paid their own rent. They have no idea how much diapers cost or how much it would cost to go to an emergency room visit. One event card said your child was invited to a birthday party across town. This is how much money you have left. How much can you spend on a gift and gas? Then another event would happen later on that week that their child gets a fever and they can't get to work because their child is sick. But wait a minute, if they don't get to work, then they're not going to make the $290. They only have a few dollars left for groceries and for rent. The idea of this simulation is, especially if you've not lived in poverty yourself, it's so easy to judge parents.

I've seen it even in neighborhoods. I remember specifically having a conversation with a neighbor who was so upset that a dog in our neighborhood had not been treated for fleas. I found out later that the dog's family was really struggling just to put meals on the table. It's easy to judge when you don't know the choices that families are having to make. When you get the facts and realize the family had to decide between a vet bill and a child going hungry, this is a really difficult choice.

I try always to give people the benefit of the doubt and it can be hard. It's very easy to judge. I know I sound kind of preachy but that doesn't mean that I never judge. It just means that we don't know what's happening. We don't know if that iPhone or those beautiful acrylic nails were given as a gift or maybe they were bartered for. We don't know and it's none of our business. At the end of the day, as childcare providers, teachers, and people that work with families, it is none of our business. Our business is being there to support the child.

Very much like that game with the envelopes, Spent is a game that will help you to see how challenging it can be for families. It's a great way to build some empathy too. A couple of years ago, I read a book called Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive. It's a book about a woman who found herself as a single parent and had to navigate the system, get childcare, and find housing. I recently watched the TV show Maid on Netflix, which is based on the book. It was very challenging and really helped me to build understanding and empathy. 

I'm always amazed at the amount of ignorance we have about things. When my students were struggling with that game, I said, "Okay, so you're out of money. Let's go online and look for resources for families." When they were able to figure out how they were going to apply for SNAP food stamps and saw the actual amount of money they get, they thought, well, this is why are people constantly complaining about food stamps. This is not a large amount of money. Making ends meet is still a challenge even with the food stamps. It always helps to try and walk in someone else's shoes.

Creating a Safe and Equitable Classroom

We're going to transition from myths to talking about how as teachers, we can create safe and equitable classrooms for the children. As we've learned about trauma, as in the ACEs study, this has become very apparent. One of our basic needs as humans is to feel safe. Young children specifically need to feel safe at school, especially those who grow up in stressful environments. They need reassurance that school is a safe place where they feel loved, protected, and comforted.

There is nothing better than consistency, especially if a child has not had that kind of stability at home. This doesn't mean that teachers need to lower their expectations for behavior or even achievement. However, we do need to go out of our way to make the environment a loving, calm place. This includes using a calm, soft, and even tone of voice and demonstrating care for the child. I'm constantly asking myself, how can I demonstrate to these children in my care that this is a safe place and that I love them, even when I don't necessarily agree with their behavior or if they're having a tantrum. Still showing empathy and care for the child is so important. 

Materials Should Reflect Socio-Economic Diversity

The easiest way is to make sure that all children feel welcome. We all need windows and mirrors, even in literature. We need windows to see how other people live and mirrors that reflect how we live. One of the things that I've noticed is in typical preschools, we don't always have materials that reflect children from all walks of life, specifically socioeconomic walks of life. I'm trying to find books about children who take the bus, who go to the laundromat to wash their clothes, and who live in trailers or apartments. It's fairly rare to find those. We're seeing more and more come out, but children need to see themselves in stories and others need to be exposed to how people live.

Two good examples are Last Stop on Market Street, by Matt de la Peña and A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams. A newer book that's one of my favorites is Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts. This book talks about a little boy named Jeremy who wants a pair of shoes like everyone at school seems to be wearing. His grandmother tells him that they don't have room for a want, they just have room for needs. She says that what Jeremy needs are new boots for the winter. This is a really important story and one that helps children to grapple with the difference between wants and needs.

The more resources you can bring into the classroom, the better. I'm thrilled that we are focusing so much on race and the inclusion of children with different abilities and languages. We need to make sure that every child is represented, but let's not forget that socioeconomic aspect because we are different. At the university I work at we have children at the center who have been to Paris for spring break and others who have never been outside of their neighborhood. That's okay, there should be room for all of that.

I'll share one more book before I move on related to inclusive classrooms as I just mentioned. Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves by Louise Derman-Sparks, Julie Olsen Edwards, and Catherine M. Goins is a book I highly recommend. There is a beautiful chapter in here on how to help children in your classroom feel included and there's a chapter on socio-economic status. I always recommend this classic book.

Model Equity

Another way that teachers can create a safe and equitable classroom is to model equity and appreciation for all types of people of all different socioeconomic statuses. For example, when we talk about community helpers or when we bring in costumes for the dramatic play center or posters to put on the wall, we don't just want to focus on police, doctors, dentists, or white-collar jobs that many of us in this field traditionally talk about during community helpers week or month. We also want to talk about trash collectors and janitors and the heroes of the pandemic, which have been service workers such as wait staff in restaurants, grocery workers, and gas station attendants.

We want to help children take pride in what their parents do as well and know that everyone in society can contribute in their own way. I think that's one of the joys and beauties of seeing how much we relied on people in the service industry during the pandemic. There are certain jobs that we take for granted that we just could not live without. It is important to model that kind of equity in the classroom by celebrating people that do everything.

One of the other things that I have noticed is that children notice things. When they come into your school, all of your teachers should not be of a certain race or socioeconomic class. The same goes for all of your assistants or service workers. Look at how we model equity from a really large lens and from a child's view. Think like a child and ask what they are seeing in the classroom? How are we using our platform as teachers to be able to model that equity?

De-emphasize the Material 

Another piece is to de-emphasize the material. Many of us in early childhood are trying to rethink the classic activity of show and tell. There are multiple variations for show and tell whether we're having children do this during get to know you time, star student, or even if it's just every Friday. If children are bringing an item from home for show and tell, so often this activity turns into a time for children to show their coolest, newest, or fanciest toy. This is very exclusive and puts a lot of stress on children who don't have the latest and greatest toy. If show and tell is something your class participates in, make sure to focus on meaning and experiences rather than material things.

There are variations to the traditional show and tell that I've seen that are much more equitable. One is asking children to bring in their oldest toy and explain why they still love it.  You could also have them bring in a photo of the item or better yet ask the parent to text a photo to the teacher who can print it instead. We can't assume that everyone has access to printers or even phones. Have multiple options for children and families. Try to rethink through an equity lens, especially around socioeconomic issues, and ask yourself if this is going to be a burden?

Be Mindful of Food

Let's talk about food. We need to be sensitive to issues surrounding food. Years ago I took my daughter, who was in middle school at the time, to see an area of Kenya where I grew up. She was in shock because she had not experienced the kind of poverty that we were seeing when we were visiting. When we returned home she wrote a beautiful report for one of her teachers about how she almost felt like we were the Hunger Games Capitol (from the movie The Hunger Games) because of the way that we have so much food in our culture. The experience of seeing children who really were hungry changed her life.

For children who have experienced hunger, it can be confusing and downright insensitive for us to encourage children to use food to create art or to play with at the sensory table.  Once you've seen that kind of hunger, there's no way you would be filling up tubs or sensory bins full of pasta, rice, marshmallows, or any kind of food. I love sensory play, so please don't think that I'm anti-sensory play. I love it, but once you've seen a child experience hunger or you've experienced it yourself, it shifts for you. Food never becomes something that you use for an art project.

Most people expect to see that kind of hunger in Africa, but it's not as expected in America. When I was a teacher in Texas, I saw it over and over again. But the first time that I thought it was shocking to me, I was riding the bus home because our bus monitors were volunteers and were missing one. So I said, I'll take this class home on the bus. I remember this little boy sitting next to me and we went over a bump and all of a sudden rolls came out of his pocket. I looked at him and I said, "What is this?" He looked a little embarrassed and I kind of got a little grin out of him and he told me that he was taking his momma home some rolls because she liked them. For those of you who work with children living in poverty, you know that these children often come to school on Monday mornings and are so hungry. We would usually make extra food on Mondays for lunch because they were so hungry. This event with the little boy and the rolls falling out of his pocket happened on a Monday when we had made extra.

I'll never forget that. Since then, as a teacher and a director of a school, I have tried to discourage the use of food for art or play. You can adopt a policy that food is exclusively for eating.  It is important that we teach respect for the sanctity of food and avoid sending the message that food is something some people have so much of that they can use it for play. Around one in five of our students have experienced hunger, which is an astronomical number when you think about the fact that we're living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. 

Working With Families Living In Poverty

Let's talk about how you can help families because when you help families you automatically help the children. I want to share some ways that we can help support families and be a part of the solution to help families thrive. I'll share some of the things that I've done that have worked, and I'm sure you can think of some things that work for you at your centers and in schools. 

Start by being open and welcoming when to families when they visit. I don't want to say I try to go overboard, but I try to be very conscious that not everyone had good experiences in school. We can't just assume that parents are comfortable coming to our classroom. Have a smile, give a warm welcome, and let parents know that they are welcome. Try to use your body language and get to know families.

Try to be flexible and creative with parents when you are scheduling parent-teacher conferences, meetings, and classroom events. Remember, not everyone can take time off work. I know this seems really obvious, but it's amazing how many teachers forget and get so angry and assume that the parents don't care when they don't show up. Know that transportation can often be an issue, especially if families are using public transportation to get to your parent conference or events. Remember that sometimes they have to choose between going to work and getting paid or going to that parent-teacher conference or parent-family conference. Try to be as flexible as possible. Another option is to provide childcare if needed. I've seen multiple teachers get angry that the parents have brought their children. Not everyone has someone around that can watch the child. Again, just know that if you are truly committed to wanting to talk with the parent, then you may have to provide childcare or be flexible with your schedule to meet theirs.

Ask parents how they prefer to be contacted. Some of the schools I've been at, yes, our families had phones, but they were often phones that would continuously run out of minutes or their numbers would change. The email was spotty for many families. Our most creative way to communicate with families was the most effective. We would print stickers or have a pen with a piece of paper on the back of the shirts or jackets on children when they went home. This was a good alternative for those families who didn't check their email or didn't have the means to check it because phones were disconnected. Know your families. Yes, a lot of people have mobile phones now, even people who may struggle financially, but we can't assume that's how they want to be reached. Just ask families how they want to be communicated with and then be creative.

As an administrator, I have sometimes struggled with teachers who want to be creative and come up with fun ways to include families. Sometimes they don't realize that these fun and creative things are actually adding additional financial pressures on the family. For example, we had spirit week at a preschool I worked at and we asked each family to dress their child in a different color every day. I've also seen this done where you ask parents to dress their child in their favorite college team shirt for College Day.

These are additional pressures on families who are already may have multiple jobs or are financially pressed and feeling good if they can have clothes that their children are wearing to school. Making sure that they put the right color on their child or even having to go out and purchase something extra, like a college shirt, is a lot of extra pressure. I've seen it with Dr. Seuss Day where children dress up like a Dr. Seuss character as well. Yes, there are many ways to do that without purchasing anything, but if there are, send home some ideas that are no cost as opposed to those parents feeling like they need to go out and buy a really fancy costume for their child.

All parents, especially those who are struggling financially, find they are lacking quality time with their children. Provide creative ways parents can spend more quality time with their children. A lack of time is one of the main parental needs and challenges people report having when faced with economic challenges. It's important to help parents deal with that challenge. We're already doing that when we provide safe and wonderful classrooms and childcare centers for them, but here are some other ways.

One of the things that I encourage all schools to do is create a family resource room, which has information about community resources. These can be anything from books that are resources on different topics to a list of resources for where they can go to find different things. In the past, I've had a lot of books, DVDs, toys, and children's books that families can check out and take home and read with their children. It's nice to have materials such as manipulatives or toys that families can check out for their children to play with at home.

Creating different kinds of events for family fun is a great way to build community. Much of the research shows that all families need more community and that social capital that I was talking about. We can help build that amongst our parents in several ways. We've done cooking nights where we provide food while helping families cook with their children.  These are really fun and provide an opportunity to model for parents and hear about how they cook at home with their families. You can also talk about healthy food and how cooking can be a math activity.  They are a great way to get to know your families.

Another popular event I've done is haveing a garage sale night or day. Families and the whole community can drop off things to sell at this garage sale such as outgrown clothes, shoes, and children's toys. Cleats and dance shoes are really expensive and hard for parents to get and this gives them an opportunity to get them at a lower cost. We charged everyone a quarter for items because we wanted them to be very affordable for everyone. It was interesting because I would see beautiful books, strollers, and even cribs going for a quarter. If you have a hard time getting parents to come to your events, try this. It's a great way to have family participation and at one point, we had almost 100% participation in this.

You can also host a family game night where children and families play different games with each other. This is always good because we want families to be able to play together and learn together. This gives them an opportunity to get to know each other and build supports as well. If parents aren't coming to your family resource room you can send home information about community resources and free events in your community.  Again, free is important for working with families living in poverty.

I think a lot of times new teachers or teachers who are transitioning from one school to another are concerned about working with families and are worried they might say the wrong thing, or they don't want to pry. I understand these concerns and I've worked with families who were new immigrants or who lived in populations that were homeless. I was nervous that I would say the wrong thing or offend someone too. Mother Teresa said, "If you judge people, you will have no time to love them." I go back to this so often in my work because I think it's better to come from a place of wanting to learn about families and being genuine. That's where we need to be in order to work alongside families, rather than just trying to judge them. This quote means so much to me and I actually have a beautiful painting of this above my desk. I don't think you can go wrong if you just come from the assumption that most parents and families want to do the best for their children. They want better for their children than they have. As teachers, if we can partner with families we'll go so much further when we're working with them. 

Be An Advocate for Children

Part of that partnership is really using our positions of privilege. Most of us in early childhood don't see ourselves as prestigious and most of us aren't walking the hallways of Congress with a lot of power. However, we are in positions of power and there's always something we can do. Just the fact that we are teachers and educators and citizens is important. One of the important things we need to do is have loving, kind classrooms and work with families, but I believe that we need to take it a step further and also be advocates for children and families.

There's so much research on how beneficial our programs and investments for early childhood programs are. We know that they can help reduce poverty, incarceration, special education services, and other costs later (Heckman et al, 2010). We also know that the programs like SNAP and other programs that provide housing and education for children and families living in poverty do reduce things like poverty in later generations. We need to convince policymakers that they need to make an investment in early childhood programs now in order to reduce the issues I just talked about.  It's important for us and you took the great first step being here today.

We need to learn the research and know-how to share that with people that make decisions. There are a lot of local programs that we can help advocate for. Certainly, at a state level, there's a lot of funding that is actually coming in, but we can help guide our local representatives on some of the best ways that we can use that money. Look for an opportunity to talk to your national representatives. It's easier to do that when they're home and not in Washington if you can make an appointment. I have done that multiple times. Sometimes I get to meet with the representative or a Senator and sometimes I get their staff person. It's great if you can start educating yourself and become a local expert or even that person that everyone in the community knows cares about families and children. Then when a big issue comes up, you might get a call or an email from the paper or from that staffer that you met with and they'll ask your opinion. That's really what we need. We need more people who are advocating for policies.

While there are so many policies that are coming up, one that is near and dear to my heart is the Family Leave Act. We know that most developing countries have paid leave for all parents, but many don't even have paid leave for mothers. That puts newborns and mothers at a disadvantage. This is especially hard on those people who work hourly because they are not able to take the time that they may need. Research shows that it's important for mothers and newborns to be together for those first few weeks of life. That's just one issue, but there are multiple issues that we can educate ourselves on. It's easier than it's ever been before to send an email, make a phone call and let people know that there are champions out there that are fighting for policies that do make a difference in the lives of the families and the children that we serve.

I would like to end with this quote by the great Fred Rogers. In 2003 he said, “When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.” All of you who are out there in the field every day are my heroes as you make your classrooms equitable, safe, and loving and help children to build those connections in their brains. This all helps to mitigate some of the stress that they have in their lives. I really appreciate and applaud you for taking the time to learn about how we can support and help families living in poverty.

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