Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty

Too often, approaches for creating equitable learning environments for students in poverty focus on understanding a make-believe “culture of poverty”—the idea that all low-income people have the same values and beliefs. If we want to shrink the economic achievement gap, we need to begin with an approach built around a more robust set of knowledge and skills. I call this approach equity literacy: what we need to know to create and sustain equitable, inclusive learning environments for all students. In this workshop we will work on developing our equity literacy, which means focusing, not simply on identifying the supposed “deficits” in low-income families, but rather on understanding how the barriers that students in poverty face inside and outside schools—the biases, the inequitable access to opportunity--affect their school performance. With this knowledge in mind, we will discuss research-backed strategies for what we can do in our own classrooms and schools to create more empowering conditions for our most marginalized students.

Presented by:

Paul C. Gorski is associate professor of integrative studies at George Mason University and the founder of EdChange.
He has written several books and articles, with recent work focused on how educators can develop equitable learning environments for students in poverty.

Suggested Audience:  Instructional staff working with students who live in poverty, Administrators, Principals, Curriculum Coordinators, School Counselors, Classroom and Content Teachers, Title I Teachers, Interventionists, Social Workers, and School Psychologists.

 

Cost:  $175 for CESA 5 Safe & Healthy Schools Consortium Members
          $200 CESA 5 School Improvement Consortium and Title I Members
          $250 All Others 
          Special promotion for Title III Consortium Members:  2 free registrations per district!!
            
         ~$20 discount if registered by October 15th, 2015

**Click here for membership listing.**

~Registration begins at 8:00.~

Content question?  Contact Rick Raatz at:  raatzr@cesa5.org
Registration question?  Contact Melissa Sumwalt at: sumwaltm@cesa5.org

Cancellation Policy: Registered participants will receive a full refund if they cancel before 10 working days before an event, minus any material costs that have already been incurred. Because of our commitment to the trainer and the food vendor, participants who cancel less than 10 working days or do not attend, will be billed the full fee. CESA 5 reserves the right to cancel any event. Registered participants will be notified via email if a cancellation occurs and will receive a full refund. Inclement weather policy: Every effort will be made to hold an event. CESA 5 will notify participants via email as soon as possible if an event has been canceled due to weather conditions.