First Things First

I've been in education for most of my adult life, and for the most part we educators mean well, we really do. However, we tend to be thinkers and idea people, and perhaps that causes us to unnecessarily complicate things or as an old coaching friend of mine used to say "make the routine look impossible." As my team and I go further down this road of Poverty Informed Practice, it seems more and more clear to me the solutions we are seeking are not complicated, they are just hard. I had another topic in mind in mind this week, but a late Friday afternoon planning meeting put me in this mindset, so I'd like to talk more about putting first things first.

Last week, on Friday, I was part of a team working on what our Resource Development (aka grants) department calls Compression Planning. It's a nifty little method for putting together successful grants in a relatively short time and like many planning processes, it involves generating ideas and using an affinity process, and we love to put sticky dots on post-its to identify priorities (just the way everyone spends a Friday, right?). I admit up front, I'm not awesome in planning meetings that move fast (I like to think my ideas are deep, but maybe they are just basic, or maybe I'm just old and grumpy:)), but I have been in numerous meetings like this over the years, and it is remarkable how often my dots go on post-it's no one else chooses. I was trying hard to stay open-minded during the discussion Friday, but I'm struggling with discussions of "systems change vs band aids", and incremental processes. I even caught myself creating a "Triangle of Poverty Informed Practice" that might have been cool and borrowed liberally from Bloom's Domains of Learning, but I just kept coming back to how much does any of it matter when people can't get enough to eat or a secure place to sleep?

A Twitter friend shared a slide from a presentation by Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab recently(hence my
amateur screen shot photo), and it stopped me in my tracks. Half our students who are failing are food and/or housing insecure...Half! I think it would be hard to find anything else that 50% of our failing students have in common. To me it screams for action, not deliberation. It kind of renders irrelevant the idea of whether we address systemic issues or individuals first, the answer is obviously neither can wait! I've often heard Dr. Goldrick-Rab say we can't food pantry our way out of this issue, but she acknowledges a pantry is a start. The danger is if we think we are done and pat ourselves on the back... I'll note it again, 50% of failing students are struggling with housing and/or food. By the way that number isn't much different for our students overall.

 

Occasionally when I go to write this over the weekend, a little gift pops up to make my point better than I can. This morning my television brought the leader of the #RealCollege movement to my television set. Her video is above, and she makes the case so effectively that we need to start with basic needs or at the very least acknowledge that any student success effort that doesn't address basic needs puts 50% of the people you are trying to help at a serious disadvantage. Our vision of Poverty Informed practice doesn't have much time for lengthy debates about things like the importance and prioritization of appropriate rigor vs great teaching (that really happened by the way). All those topics are important, but we think you start with a foundation of basic needs. When we talk about removing barriers (every one we can), those have to get priority. But, we also have to have the courage to walk and chew gum, meaning we address basic needs as a default, but we never stop there. Our vision of Poverty Informed practice says you must build experiences and systems that acknowledge students' strengths, suspend judgment, and look forward relentlessly. And lastly, we believe that respect for students means we take every opportunity accelerate their path to success and stability. They have waited long enough.

I want to leave with another story that happened Friday. A student I met while doing some connecting with the homeless community near campus, reached out to me through another student to ask for help. He has cancer... he's afraid to go to the doctor alone and the people he thought of going with him were me or my Associate Dean because he doesn't really have other support. I'm calling him tomorrow to make the appointment, and we will go together. So in one day, I saw the macro and micro of what we are doing. It all matters but if we don't start with first things first, we will not succeed, and we must succeed.