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A current issue in education is the increasing level of poverty and how to educate students living in those conditions so that they meet certain standards of excellence. The increasing income gap has an impact on families and children, which in turn has an impact on schools. Teachers face the challenge of teaching not only students with a variety of cognitive abilities and students from diverse cultures but also impoverished children and disengaged families.
With the pressures of accountability and standardized tests, education has become a means to produce economically productive citizens. However, education should also be used to help students end the cycle of poverty. Teachers must be given opportunities to be creative and to teach students not only the mandated curriculum but also strategies to help them lead successful lives. I see many people flow through homeless shelters, and they all lack education and the basic life skills most of us take for granted. Almost everyone spends time in an educational setting at some point, and this should be an opportunity for people to learn skills they can use to make their way out of poverty.
To create an environment conducive to reducing poverty, we need to embrace, rather than marginalize, students and families living in poverty. We need to help them build life skills and to develop opportunities for postsecondary education or workforce training. After discussing the nature of poverty, this article looks at strategies for engaging students and parents living in poverty, as well as teaching strategies for encouraging student learning. Next, a definition of success for this group, within the framework of accountability and data-driven environment of today's schools, is considered. Finally, programming options that further support the unique needs in the school context will be explored as a wraparound model benefiting students and parents.
Poverty
Canada does not have an official definition of poverty. Statistics Canada uses the lowincome cut-off (LICO) rate to measure poverty levels over periods of time. The LICOs are "income thresholds below which a family will likely devote a larger share of its income [to] the necessities of food, shelter and clothing than the average family."1 In 2005, approximately 3.4 million Canadians existed on incomes lower than the LICO rate, nearly 1 1 per...