Community

Let’s imagine that instead of being a source of consistent support, as she is in the scenario that opens this chapter, Myra and George’s mom battles debilitating chronic depression. Her mother, the siblings’ grandmother, lives with the family to help when the mom is unable to provide the care that the children need (that is, help with regularly served, nutritious meals; help getting ready for school; and help with homework after school). Myra and George live within an environment that offers love and, in many ways, consistency and support. But the depression that their mother struggles with represents a stressor and is a likely factor—though not the only one— contributing to George’s challenging behaviors. While this imagined addition to the introductory scenario makes explicit the ways a parent may not be available to meet physical needs, the parent may also not be available emotionally. Emotional unavailability can lead to perceived rejection, internalizing behaviors (for example, anxiety), and externalizing behaviors (for example, aggression) in children and adolescents. Parents who lack warmth or who display overprotection may also promote children’s risk for internalizing and externalizing behavior challenges (White & Renk, 2012).

Parents and other family members have the capability to promote prosocial behaviors that protect against risk factors for children’s challenging behaviors (White & Renk, 2012). Nurturing and supportive parents, family stability, and consistent discipline are factors that can lower risk and foster prosocial behaviors (Hallahan et al., 2019).

Educators are on the front lines interacting with students and the dynamics of their families daily. When it comes to challenging behaviors in students, don’t forget the importance of supporting families (Hallahan et al., 2019). The National Federation of Families (www.ffcmh.org) has a fantastic website full of resources to support families. Most parents of children who have challenging behaviors, like George, want them to act more appropriately and will do anything to help them be successful. Rather than criticizing or blaming parents, educators need to act from a place of empathy and support. Parents need teachers to listen to them with an open mind. When parents and teachers work together, students are more successful.

When you think about students, it helps to consider the community in which you teach. Is there plenty of green space? Do people have easy access to grocery stores? Is the community safe? Maybe the community in which you teach is the opposite of those ideals—a densely packed population, a concentrated number of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores with little fresh produce, and high levels of crime. The effects of class discrimination directly impact students in ways that manifest in their school performance (Gorski, 2018).

Consider green space, for example, which is often plentiful in wealthy neighborhoods. Research consistently supports that students who have access to nature have lower stress levels, fewer challenging behaviors, reduced symptoms of attention deficit disorder (ADD), and higher standardized test scores than students who have limited access to nature (McCormick, 2017).

Students who grow up in neighborhoods with limited resources face overwhelming challenges that their peers in affluent neighborhoods do not encounter (Jensen, 2009). Communities where students are regularly exposed to threats to their health and safety and to chronic and acute stress can serve as obstacles to strong school performance. In communities with low financial resources, there is often a higher prevalence of inadequate housing, poor health care, depression, and teen motherhood. In his book Teaching With Poverty in Mind, author and educator Eric Jensen (2009) says families that experience these factors can demonstrate a decreased capacity for sensitivity toward infants and young children, which can in turn manifest as poor academic performance and challenging behavior in students.

Consider this high-stakes factor that more commonly occurs in lowersocioeconomic-status (lower-SES) neighborhoods than in affluent areas: violence. Research supports that direct and indirect exposure to violence distresses students, negatively impacts their mental health and academic performance, and can lead to anxiety and aggression (Ozer, Lavi, Douglas, & Wolf, 2017). Regarding the relationship between what happens in a school and what happens in the surrounding community, violence in neighborhoods can have ripple effects among students (Burdick-Will, 2018). When students live with high levels of neighborhood violence, the schools can experience more disciplinary problems, students and teachers can feel less safe, and according to sociology and education researcher Julia Burdick-Will (2018), students have reported feeling less trust in their teachers.

Children and youth can display anxiety and aggression when they feel hypervigilant about perceived threats, and this hypervigilance can become a child’s default state when living with neighborhood violence. Students who live in a neighborhood where violence is a regular occurrence may incorrectly interpret others’ actions as hostile due to unconscious responses to fear and stress. Burdick-Will (2018) finds that adolescents who experience neighborhood violence may resort to using aggression to keep others in their neighborhood from bothering them.

Students who are reacting to their environments may not be inclined to engage in violent behavior, yet their peers, classmates, and teachers could misinterpret their actions. A cycle of misunderstanding can develop in which those in the classroom feel less safe and relationships between students and teachers deteriorate.

To reverse the complicated dynamics that can evolve between teachers and students of different socioeconomic statuses, teachers must focus not on the student as the problem but on their own practices as catalysts to support students. Teachers can support their students by drawing on their strengths and meeting them where they are (Gorski, 2018). Likewise, it is crucial that teachers conceptualize neighborhoods with large numbers of families living below the poverty line as more than collections of poor people (Milner, Cunningham, Murray, & Alvarez, 2017). Teachers should observe the ways in which students navigate and persist despite obstacles associated with poverty and learn about various supports they receive from their families and communities.

Let’s revisit the scenario involving George and Myra.

George and Myra have a loving and supportive mother and grandmother. This is very clear to George’s teacher, Mr. Riley. George’s mother always calls to confirm George’s assignments even when she can’t make it to parent-teacher conferences due to her minimum-income job that does not include paid time off—or time off period! George’s grandmother often drops by with a box of doughnuts she got from the discount shelf at her local supermarket, a gift for George’s class to share. While George’s mother’s efforts are commendable, Mr. Riley can’t help but feel that they are a bit futile and that, no matter what, she’s just going to be a bit more out of touch with George’s school life than if her circumstances allowed her to be more present at the school. Mr. Riley also recognizes that George’s grandmother’s gesture is incredibly kind and supportive. Even so, he typically throws the doughnuts away without offering them as a snack to students. High-sugar foods aren’t good, right? And the yellow discount tag deters him—what if the doughnuts are expired? “They do what they can,” Mr. Riley mutters one day to fellow third-grade teacher Mr. Jewel as they stand outside helping with arrivals one morning. “What? Who are you talking about?” Mr. Jewel replies. “Students from low-SES families,” Mr. Riley says. “Sometimes, they try, but it’s just not enough. The communities aren’t supportive. We’ve got to adjust our expectations for these students and realize their success, as far as they can succeed, is on us—us alone. And that’s a hard responsibility when the student you are trying to help is throwing chairs and interrupting reading circle!” Mr. Jewel shakes his head. “It sounds like you’ve developed a really limiting and very possibly inaccurate mindset. Let me know if you’d like to talk

sometime about strategies to support and engage family and community, and about stress relief for yourself!” Just then, Mr. Riley sees Myra and George arriving to school accompanied by a man with piercings and numerous tattoos showing below his short sleeves. Who is this? he wonders. A transient boyfriend? An unsavory neighbor George and Myra’s mother has to rely on because she doesn’t have any other options? “What a day this is going to be,” Mr. Riley says to himself.

In this scenario, multiple potential community figures of support exist in George’s and Myra’s lives. However, Mr. Riley, perhaps through the stress of dealing with George’s disruptive behaviors and a lack of clear strategies to address these behaviors, has developed a fixed mindset that no longer allows him to see this potential or imagine ways to engage it. Later, you will see how Mr. Riley’s closed mind continues to negatively affect his classroom management and his students’ success until he, at last, seeks support to change this mindset and strategies to empower his students through their unique backgrounds rather than dismiss what these backgrounds offer. Empowering students who live in marginalized communities involves more than guiding them to predetermined ideals about what it means to be successful in school (Seward, 2019). Teachers serve as advocates for their students when they disrupt power imbalances and work to shift power toward people from marginalized communities. Teachers should seek out and develop relationships with individuals in the community who can serve as supports to the students, even if they are not the students’ caregivers or immediate family (Milner et al., 2017). Many community members, such as grandparents, godparents, pastors, and—for youth involved in the juvenile justice system—probation officers, are often eager to serve in this role, and students themselves are receptive to the support. The strategies in this book do not present punitive disciplinary measures used to get students to fall in line. Instead, the strategies draw on students’ strengths, and the strengths of their families and communities when possible, to support students in fully engaging in the classroom. While students who live in neighborhoods with limited financial resources can face significant obstacles, it is important to note that students who live in wealthy neighborhoods face their own challenges. These students are more likely to engage in drug and alcohol use and demonstrate internalizing and externalizing problems than students in middle-class neighborhoods are (Luthar, Barkin, & Crossman, 2013). In their journal article “How the Rich Get Riskier,” researchers Katelyn F. Romm,