One Division's Journey

I grew up poor. I was not homeless or destitute but had a clear sense that I did not have the resources the people around me had. This has led to a lifelong interest in how others overcome poverty, often with far greater obstacles than I or my family faced. After years of providing training in my institution around the topic of poverty and how it intersects with educational success, I decided I wanted to see if we could put our learning into practice. In 2018, along with my team, I committed to changing the economic reality of our students and their families (and their communities), by starting a journey toward becoming not only informed about students from under-resourced backgrounds but actively creating an environment that allows those students to thrive and advance. This work rests on a foundation that finding solutions for students with the greatest barriers creates systems that benefit ALL students. It's a form of Universal Design.

Inspiration came from the amazing work happening at Amarillo College, but Amarillo has made it very clear that they do not have a "one size fits all" approach. And while they are working college wide, my current sphere of influence is in the division I lead. I hope that the lessons we learn will take hold across our institution, but for now we are a learning laboratory within a larger setting. Without a pattern to follow, we decided to pursue our own path based on professional wisdom and training we have received and provided. Since 2010, we have provided training based on the book "Understanding and Engaging Under-Resourced College Students" by Karen Becker and my friends Karla Krodel and Bethanie Tucker. It is a wonderful foundation, but again it is not a prescription. In recent years, we have turned to the work of Dr. Donna Beegle as inspiration and have tried to take to heart her exhortation to "Fight poverty, not the people who live in it." Dr. Beegle has worked extensively with Amarillo College, but also makes it clear that their plan is not necessarily the right plan for others, even other colleges. With all of this in mind, we began our own project.
We began with two core beliefs. The first is that belonging is a fundamental human need, near the base of Maslow's Hierarchy. The second was acknowledging the power of relationships in helping individuals from poverty succeed. Many of our students are exceptionally interdependent and reliant on one another, and we felt we needed to take advantage of this amazing strength they bring to their pursuit of their dreams. So, we knew that our project needed to create a sense of belonging at every opportunity and build on the relational strengths of the population we wanted to support.
We began with what I call a "No Audit."

This door was locked

Our audit assumes that everything "speaks." Our facilities, our signage, our behavior and everything else on campus is constantly telling students whether they "belong." Unfortunately, too many of our students have been getting messages for much of their life that they don't belong and are "less than." Imagine those messages, no matter how subtle, piling up for a lifetime. Then that individual comes to a college campus... Our assumption is that anxiety and fear are natural in that setting and it is often an act of courage just to cross our threshold. So, we started looking for places we were inadvertently delivering the wrong message. The truth was a bit disheartening. We found signs in all capital letters,
even though the door was already locked.

Note the all caps...

We found test booklets labeled like the one to the right.

It wasn't real friendly and frankly it was a little confusing. Before we had even begun to examine our behavior, we found our materials were telling our students to stay out and implied they didn't know how to use an answer sheet. Once you begin to see these unintended messages, you really can't "unsee" them and you notice them everywhere. I was soon overwhelmed by the results of our audit. It was time to get to work.

My budget reality is no different than higher education budgets across the country. That meant we weren't going to make wholesale facility changes right away, but we could start eating the proverbial elephant one bite at a time. We took the test booklets and started relabeling. We looked for affirmative statements and better visuals. We changed from an all caps and underlined "NOT", to a softer font and a reminder to "please use answer sheet." No longer did it feel like a command, but maybe a request from a friend who was trying to help. Was it nit-picky and silly? Some thought so, but I refused to do so. Our students are our guests and we will treat them as such. It also didn't cost us a penny to go around our building and remove as many "no" statements from our walls as we could practically. We have stopped labeling books "property of ____ DO NOT remove." We are operating with the assumption that our students came to be students and if they remove a book, it is accidental, just like it would be for any of us. All these little steps are changing the signals about belonging or not belonging that we had wrong. And the work continues.

It is early in our journey to becoming a poverty informed division that makes students feel welcomed and supported, but our little actions are inspiring conversation and unexpected action. Part of our program is an email from me every week called "Poverty Informed Friday." These emails are used to create an understanding of "why" we are doing this (thank you Simon Sinek) and to start listing "what" can actually be done. After an email discussing our idea that "everything speaks" and tells our students whether they belong or don't belong, two teachers' aides decided that should extend to room decor. They decided that the classrooms that serve the most vulnerable students should not look like they were furnished from a rummage sale, so they spent a day going to every classroom and making sure that furniture matched, bulletin boards were fresh and professional, mouse pads were clean and accessible, and created a list of materials that I should order because their students deserved it. Needless to say, I was moved by this level of personal accountability and caring for the very students we are trying to invite in.

As I've said earlier, we have just begun our work and these examples are just part of our initial journey. There is so much to be done and it is urgent. I was at training this week and saw data that the six-year graduation rate in our system is 20% less for students classified as "economically disadvantaged." That feels like a moral imperative to me. And in this case, doing the right thing is doing the smart thing. Our current labor market needs full participation from trained workers and closing achievement gaps for untapped groups is a promising solution to keeping our communities vital. Finding answers for the students with the greatest barriers benefits everyone. It changes reality for students, families, businesses, and communities. Stay tuned!