A Bridge to Build Student Academic Success in High Poverty Communities

While it is easy to dissipate a child from his home and educate him for eight hours daily, the truth of the matter is the child has to return to the community in which he derives. Hence, it is better to take a community approach verses a school out approach when student learning is involved. This means that as a school we gain a better understanding of the communities in which our students are coming from versus making them feel as if their residential community is not worthy to be a part of our academic system. Family engagement is a vital part of the academic success of students, especially in low-income communities. Authors Alfred Tatum and Zaretta Hammond speak strongly about using one's lived experiences as social capital. Hence as students enter our classrooms, we must accept who they are and what they bring as capital that will enhance the learning platform versus deficits that will debilitate our prescribed curriculums.

When a community diminishes or is engulfed with violence, it is often easier to exclude the community from the school environment. However, the more we become encapsulated with the idea that we can potentially stop the blood flow of violence in our communities by not expecting students to be docile, we continue to miss opportunities to connect with and understand them. We must be actively engaged by creating and attending community-centered activities. We may have the potential power to inoculate our communities with hope such that the insufferable feelings of fear does not asphyxiate quality learning. As a result, this means we must be willing to abdicate the delusional power that we have over school systems and our classrooms.

The first step is to avoid the impetuous need to disavow that the school system is not directly impacted by the community in which it is located – that is a fact. The community has an adept ability to permeate the culture of the local school system regardless of how educational organizations attempt to make it impervious. Therefore, by coalescing school and community engagement we have a much better chance of changing the way in which our communities may negatively impact our schools. Having reading and financial literacy nights can increase the placidness of our communities while nurturing a culture that is full of alacrity. It can be unequivocally stated that our school system is not doing enough. Steven Covey may have said it best when he cogently stated that it is better to understand before seeking to be understood. Academic organizations can become the interties between communities and a life of choice by not becoming despondent to the things that are imbuing our communal spaces and committing to intimate assiduous efforts to close the opportunity gaps that have become ubiquitous.

Phillip Lockhart

Assistant Principal of Instruction

KIPP Delta Public Schools