Jeff has received a lot of feedback on this award-winning article.  Here is what educators are saying:

• • I have just read the article by Jeff Sapp How School Taught Me I Was Poor.  I have forwarded this article onto my teaching staff.  As a school superintendent, it is important to me to have a staff that is sensitive to the needs of all of my students.  I work in a rather wealthy community.  The district has allowed students from other districts to attend without cost to the parents.  As a result, we are now getting kids from situations far different than what teachers have had in the past.  I want them to be aware of the impact of our “traditions” and how they may effect others not from the immediate community.  As a kid in the 1950s and 60s I, too, grew up poor and in a single family.  I moved six times by fifth-grade.  I was always the new kid it seemed.  If it had not been for a few people that I met in a factory after high school, I would never have attended college.  They saw in my what the schools never saw and that was my potential.  Thank you for bringing this article to me.  ~ John W., North Muskegon, Michigan
• • Thank you for the important article How School Taught Me I Was Poor.  It rings true on all counts.  I grew up in the fifties as the child of a single parent.  Most moms stayed home, managing house and family and were usually partnered with their farmer husbands.  My mom worked as my dad had taken his own life when I was very young.  My classmates were children whose parents worked in “oil boom” jobs and had the benefit of wealth.  I was in high school when I finally learned to know someone else who lived in a single parent household.  The shame associated with my absent father accompanied by endless questions that emphasized that reality, the limitations of financial resources, parental energy, and the time all had very profound effects of me.  Thank you for speaking up for the children of poverty.  As Jeff Sapp so poignantly relates, they have been a part of our society all along.  Thank you for your advocacy on behalf of the voiceless and the work of empowerment for all.  ~ Judy B., Newton Centre, Massachusetts

How Gadgets Teach Kids They’re Poor

by Ann Timm | January 30, 2012 for Teachingtolerance.org

A student pleads with me at the beginning of class to bring an electronic reader to class.

“I’m almost finished reading my book and I want to finish it, but it’s on my (electronic reader name), the students says. “Please? I’m at a really good part.”

At first, this appears to be every language arts teacher’s dream; students begging to continue reading things they’ve read on their own time for fun.

But, then come the problems.

Our school policy forbids electronics outside of lockers while classes are in session. We’d have to monitor use. Are students actually reading or playing games and instant messaging on their electronic gadget? And perhaps the most challenging: How does allowing electronic readers widen socioeconomic differences in a public school setting?

Author Jeff Sapp reflects on his school experiences in the article How School Taught Me I Was Poor.  He recounts the myriad encounters he had that made him feel deficient as a child of a single-parent home growing up in poverty. “Over and over again in school I had been cued both verbally and non-verbally that I was poor. I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t have enough and what I had was the wrong thing,” Sapp writes.

So, when I’m asked if students can bring electronic readers to class, my hesitation is a reflection of Sapp’s experience. I think of Sapp and what caused him to become more and more isolated and ashamed. In one example, Sapp talked about the devastation he felt when a patriotic egg decorating project in third grade clearly displayed his poverty because his mother couldn’t afford extra materials for decorating, unlike other students who used lavish materials to decorate their eggs.

His simple, but carefully colored egg was enough of a difference to make Sapp feel “immense shame about my red, white and blue egg. And then I noticed my classmates’ response to my sad homemade flag. It was pity, pure and simple. It’s the first time I ever remember feeling shame.”

As a teacher, I don’t want the appearance of electronic readers to make a student in poverty feel ashamed. And how can I avoid giving the impression that having an electronic reader is some kind of invisible extra credit?

We could have a classroom set of electronic readers to level the playing field. But then we must be mindful that students without regular access to these gadgets may not know how to navigate their use and must learn to do so in front of his or her peers. But perhaps there’s a place we can start, with designated gadget time.

It may not be as simple as deciding whether or not to let students bring their electronic readers from home, but whether or not we are willing to open ourselves to the reality of how we may be perpetuating feelings of shame and inferiority in our classrooms.

Timm is a middle school language arts teacher and creative workshop instructor in Iowa.