Syllabus: Empowering Students from Poverty to Succeed

Course Overview:

This professional development series will equip educators with strategies and insights to better support students from low-income backgrounds. The sessions will focus on understanding the challenges of poverty, fostering resilience, building relationships, implementing instructional strategies that promote student confidence and helping kids overcome the impulse toward self destruction, emotional reactions.

Session 1: Understanding the Impact of Poverty on Learning

Objective: Examine how poverty affects cognitive development, behavior, academic performance and relationship reluctance.

Topics:

The poverty impacts you might not see

Barriers to learning and engagement

Brain research and the effects of chronic stress and fear

Activities:

Midnight Run book study guide

Reflective journaling

Guest speaker: Kevin Honeycutt shared his lived experinces

Deliverables: Reflection journals on how poverty affects student learning and the impact of positive student-teacher relationships

Session 2: Building Relationships and Trust

Objective: Develop skills to create trust and meaningful connections with students from poverty.

Topics:

What fear feels like for marginalized kids and parents

The power of seeing kids for what they "could" be

Creating safe and inviting learning environments

Activities:

Presentation: The Why & Hows of relationship building

Group discussions on potential outcomes of positive student-teacher relationships

Interactive relationship-building exercises

Deliverables: Plan to implement relationship-building activities in the classroom

Session 3: Seeing past behavioral bombs and callous camouflage

Objective: Learn smarter ways to react when students give us behavioural challenges.

Topics:

The interplay between emotional, heuristic and analytical thinking

Getting past our reptilian brains and accessing the pre-frontal cortex

Pausinf before reacting

Activities:

Case study analysis

Book review and discussion

Small group discussion on strategies for not getting pulled into trauma drama

Deliverables: Newly minted strategies for helping teachers take the more positive road when reacting to entrenched, negative behaviors

Session 4: Helping kids find their own voices

Objective: Helping kids find their voice, their confidence and the confidence to share their own stories.

Topics:

The power of story through the Hero's Journey

Seeing yourself as the hero of your own story

Celebrating everyone's "heroic" story

Activities:

Self-assessment on the quality of their lesson plans and activities

Creating empowering lesson plans

Encouraging students and teachers to stand and deliver their stories

Deliverables: Powerful strategies for helping kids learn to share their stories and their truths

Session 5: Helping kids overcome the impulse toward self destructive, emotional reactions.

Objective: Equip students with tools to overcome the impulse to react emotionally and to mind-shift into more productive and positive mindsets.

Topics:

How to help kids stop their brains from sabotaging their happiness and success.

Helping kids break free from their "scripts"

Helping kids silence their inner critics

Activities:

Student resilience case studies

Developing mind-shifting lesson plans

Role-play scenarios to encourage mind-shifting rather than emotional reactions

Deliverables: Mind-shifting lesson and board games

Session 6: Engaging Families and Communities

Objective: Strengthen family and community partnerships to support student success.

Topics:

The role of families in academic achievement

Effective communication with parents from diverse backgrounds

Creating community support networks and success showcases

Activities:

Family engagement project planning

Panel discussion with community leaders

Collaborative development of a resource guide for parents

Deliverables: Family engagement action plan

Assessment and Evaluation:

Participants will share their journal that share their reflections on their learning from all sessions. This will include their thoughts on actionable strategies they can institute either individually or as teams to positively impact student enagement and learning.

Resources:

Books: "Midnight Run" by Kevin Honeycutt

"Mind Shifting" by Mitch Weisburgh

"Eat & Run" building lasting trust relationships with learners by Kevin Honeycutt

Additional articles, podcasts, and videos provided throughout the course