Identity Highlight: Low-Income Families
In the month of January, I’m exploring identities that are frequently invisible in the media or portrayed in harmful ways. This week, I’m exploring how class is portrayed in media, particularly how low-income families are generally portrayed as uneducated and lazy without reference to the systems that perpetuate their economic status. 

As usual, Teaching Tolerance has some fantastic resources on this topic. One of their stated goals is to “empower yourself to recognize the unique assets of low-income students and to challenge school practices and policies that favor wealthier students.” (Emphasis is mine) Below are a few of their featured resources. This website is intended for teachers but I think it’s useful for parents, too.

School is No Place for Class(ism) – The language that educators use to address students can maintain and reinforce class structures and classist attitudes. The antidote? Anti-classist language.

No Time Off – At the end of the school day, many kids carry responsibilities far beyond homework.

Questioning Payne – She’s popular, but is she right? Teaching Tolerance examines Dr. Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty.

To get a sense of how anti-poor bias can look in the media, think back to March of 2020 when there were several news articles and opinion pieces on how school closures due to the coronavirus would have disparate impacts between high and low-income families. Closing Schools May Cause Some Kids a Lifetime of Harm from Bloomberg is representative of the genre. If you scroll to the middle of the piece, the author compares the imagined home life (and parenting) of a white collar family (assumed to have two parents, is healthy and organized) vs. a single-parent family (presumably poor, unhealthy, and disorganized). Of this imagined low income household, Andreas Kluth writes, “If the school doesn’t structure the children’s learning, the parents don’t know where to find teaching tools, and wouldn’t be confident in this role anyway.” Read that again. According to Kluth, low-income parents lack the basic skills to find educational resources and, even if they do, they aren’t smart enough to support their child’s education. It’s worth noting that Kluth is concerned about inequality in education, perhaps even income inequality so I think this piece is particularly illustrative of anti-poor bias.

“It’s all too easy, for even the most well-meaning of us, to help perpetuate classism by implementing activities and strategies … that, however subtly, suggest we must fix poor people instead of eliminating the inequities that oppress them.” -Paul C. Gorski

ABAR Book Group – White Fragility
It’s not too late to join the Book Group. Our kickoff meeting is Tuesday, February 2nd from 7-8:30 on Zoom. Contact Jamie (jjurkovich@svcmontessori.org) and she’ll send you the Zoom link. 

Upcoming book group meetings:
February 2 – Introductions to group and topic.
March 2 – Chapters 1 & 2 – “The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism” & “Racism & White Supremecy”
April 6 – Chapters 3 & 4 – “Racism After the Civil Rights Movement” & “How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People”
Future dates: May 4, June 1, July 6*
*Summer schedule subject to change based on group feedback.

Save the Date – For Parents
On March 9th, join us for “Exploring Identity: Learn How to Make Your Own Identity Self-Portrait.” We’ll begin with an overview of what identity exploration looks like at each level of the SVCMS program, beginning with Childrens House through Middle School. Then, parents will be guided through how to create their own identity self-portrait. If interested, parents will be invited to include their self-portraits in the community art show, which will be in early April.

Taproot Blog
The taproot blog is currently the home of all of the past ABAR newsletter submissions and occasional resource updates.

Let us know what you think
The Anti-Bias/Anti-Racist work at SVCMS is a work in process and we’d love to hear what you think so far. Please send your feedback to Katie Bond (kbond@svcmontessori.org).