A Leader Informed by Poverty

I've been writing for some time about the necessity of realizing our students bring the entirety of their lives to our doorstep, and it matters. We do not serve people in isolation, we serve complex individuals with rich full lives. As the world has shifted to requiring post-secondary education for all, it has challenged those of us in post-secondary education to think differently about how we serve these students. I've written about this issue before (The Poverty Informed Triangle), but today I'd like to look at another issue. Specifically, I'd like to talk about what it means to lead when you are someone with lived experience in poverty. Just like our students come to us with a different context and world view, I think the same is true for our staff with lived experience. And just like our students who sometimes feel mismatched with our schools' polices and procedures, I think the same thing happens to those of us who work at the colleges. So, I'm going to deviate this week and talk about something from a completely personal perspective. Although I often use my experience as an example, this is different because I just want to tell you my experience. I don't know if others share it, but my gut says they do.

Let's start by being honest. The type of poverty I experienced growing up and later in my 20's would be considered mild by a lot of folks. We always had a roof over our heads, and generally food was in solid supply (with some help). So, this isn't a story about proclaiming my poverty, which ranged somewhere between blue collar poverty and situational. All I'm saying is a persistent sense of having less, and possibly being viewed as being less, has influenced my world view and how I do my work. In fact, it informs everything about me. So, it must mean it impacts me as a leader, and I'm guessing it does for people like me as well. Now I'm Vice President of a college, so my financial difficulty is behind me (I hope, but doubting is an outcome of my history too), but just like the students, it still lives inside me. And as I changed jobs this fall, I started to wonder what it means to lead from this mental and emotional place. I think it has an impact. I think it has strengths and challenges, but I think most of all it means others don't always see me or the situation the way I do. Let me share a couple examples.

Folks in poverty tend to be relationship based and live in a more oral culture. This means we can see connections and we think a lot about people when leading. Middle class people tend to talk more about achievement and goals. I know this is true because I've picked up lots of middle-class norms over the years. A traditional path to leadership often begins with the ability to "get stuff done", which seems very middle class. I've read extensively on leadership, and the literature often discusses the transition from being an outstanding individual performer (read 'get a lot of stuff done') to having to get work done through influencing others and how hard the change can be. What if your skill set ran the opposite way? I can only speak for myself, but it has always been easier for me to influence people's hearts and minds than it has been to accomplish processes and tasks. In fact, I joke about it all the time (for my whole career) because it can make me feel outside the norm and deficient. But I wonder, maybe it's just a reflection of my skill set, and maybe that skill set is less common, but just as important. Am I rationalizing? I don't know. I just know I can often feel like I'm missing skills I'm supposed to have, yet I'm having some success. I often think our students need a sense of belonging to overcome impostor syndrome. I wonder what we do for our leaders with similar backgrounds. If I'm honest, every career transition I've made has had aspects of sheer terror as I work through feelings that pretty soon someone will figure out I don't really know how this works. But after two decades of mostly successful work and advancement, that can't be true, can it? Could it be the skill set my life gave me is enough? It never feels that way, which leads to the next issue.

If you can be bilingual between poverty and middle-class, I come close. However, it leads to my most vulnerable places. If you are always sure at some level you are faking it until you make it, the odds of feeling inadequate and defensive are pretty high. Again, after twenty years in education, I cover pretty well, but I'm sensitive to things others aren't. I remember being at an after work dinner at a fairly upscale place on a business trip a few years ago. I was with a colleague and friend who came from a much more affluent background than I did, although we had the same job and title at that time. And when they served the meal, I reached for the pepper immediately, like always. My friend casually said, "aren't you going to taste the food before you season it?" It was a throwaway line between friends, and I doubt he could sense my reaction. But on the inside, I was in a spiral, and the hamster wheel in my mind was spinning furiously. My lack of class had been exposed. I was being judged. I was outed, and would never fit in. None of those things were true of course, but that's where my mind was. I don't remember the rest of the dinner, but I remember my shame and feeling very angry at my friend and his "pretentiousness." "I'm just as good as you, damn it. In fact, I'm better" was the refrain in my head. It seems kind of crazy as I type it, but it's been years, and I can pull the memory and the feelings up easily. It's one of many times I was pretty sure a small behavior meant I was being judged as inadequate and a fraud. If my experience is not just limited to me, I wonder how many other leaders go there too, and maybe are limited by their response.

So, we often read about the crisis of leadership, and I wonder if it is because we define it on a particular set of norms. Even while I feel like an impostor as I try to figure out structure and process and generate products, I am taking daily time to connect with the people I work with and learn their stories. But my own internalized insecurity tell me this isn't "work." It's wasting time and makes me a procrastinator, at least in my head. Of course, I'm pretty sure everyone else sees it too, but what if there is an alternative version to the story I tell myself. I'm getting to do a fair amount of public speaking in recent years (feel free to invite me to your place of work, it's my favorite thing), and people often approach me to chat when I am done. On rare occasions they want to challenge something I've said or learn more, but fortunately they are usually pretty complimentary. However, without fail, someone will approach me to say they also grew up in tough circumstances, and they have connected with what I have said. It's the best part of those days, but today it is making me wonder if we are missing out on some potentially excellent leaders. The people who approach me usually share with me privately and quietly as if we just joined a club we aren't supposed to tell anyone about. What if, just like I'm asking us to do with students, we approached people with the skill set poverty develops from a strengths-based perspective and made them feel welcome and not like impostors. If we acknowledged and celebrated the rich complexity of our leaders, perhaps we would get better outcomes for the richly complex people we serve.

A Tale of Two Students

This is my son Cameron (it's a couple of years ago, but you get the idea). I asked his permission to use him in my article this week and much to my surprise, he said yes! So, let me tell you about Cameron. I remember going to his 4th grade teacher conference and his teacher telling me "Cameron is a genius you know." It was a very nice thing to say, but to be frank there wasn't much traditional evidence of that. Cam has never liked school very much and has pretty much no interest in homework (perhaps as a result of all the Alfie Kohn books I read while raising him). When I pointed it out to the 4th grade teacher she said, "oh not the kind of genius who does school stuff, but trust me he's a genius." Well my Midwestern modesty says the jury is out on the level of genius, but I can confidently say he has a gift for language, he's a good person, and he still hates playing the school game. He started high school this year, and it has actually gone pretty well. He has teachers he likes for the most part, and his gift for language put him in the freshman honors Humanities course, which is a combination of History and English and team taught. I've worked hard to let go of concern about grades and focus on learning, but Humanities has been the one course where his grades aren't good. It's a twist on the now familiar tale of my son and school; He actually likes this class (that's the twist), but still has no interest in worksheets and things like that which are givens in our school system. This means he has been neglecting to complete a number of assignments, and this in turn has led to some tough conversation with his teachers, and the possibility of being moved to a different track. Now, what does this have to do with poverty informed practice? Let me tell you.

Earlier this week, Cameron's teachers reached out with some concern for his performance and behavior. The teacher who wrote was obviously upset, and to be honest the note wasn't very kind. I was told he could "choose" to "earn" poor grades, but distracting behavior would not be tolerated. It was upsetting, but I'm an educator too, so I took a deep breath and sent an email. The email asked for further examples of their concerns. It also pushed back on some of the comments I thought were unfair and ended with an offer to talk by phone or in person. I got an immediate response and followed up with a relatively pleasant phone call. I was empathetic, but made it clear my son valued the class, and I was more worried about his learning than his GPA. When the teacher expressed concern because Cameron is a "college-bound" student, I shared I worked at a college and he could certainly go there, which I hope he will. It all ended well, and he remains in the class and is committed (he says) to trying to do more of what they want. If I'm honest, it's the type of conversation I've had annually with at least one teacher since my son started school. I don't make apologies for advocating for my son, but I've always had guilt around it because I am so keenly aware of people who don't have advocates like me. I know having college educated parents who feel like they are able to talk with school staff gets him the benefit of the doubt, and no one thinks it's unusual. It's just part of the built-in help middle class kids get, and no one thinks twice about it. The longer I work at this notion of being poverty informed, the more insidious it all seems. I'm afraid our systems (like schools) were built on unfair and inequitable principles to begin with, so they are designed to perpetuate those inequities. And that is only mitigated, if you have someone who can "work" the system, like I and other middle-class parents do for our children.

So, what about people who have all my son's gifts (and more), but don't have me? In my training with Dr. Donna Beegle, she often refers to using your title on behalf of others to navigate the system. I didn't disagree, but it always seemed like a small part of what we could do, but now I feel differently. I think it's actually huge, and if your organization is committing to serving people in poverty better, this is a great low-cost place to begin. There is a gulf of difference between giving people the phone number for a service that can help them and making the call with them. It's not right or just, but it matters a call that starts with "this is Vice President Chad Dull" gets a different response, it's just true. And you don't have to have a big title to make this strategy work. I've seen faculty get individuals into homeless shelters after the initial request was denied. I've seen financial aid staff get parents to share FAFSA information when a student couldn't convince them to. It bothers me how well this works, but it is reality. As I said earlier, the system is built on some faulty foundations, so sometimes we need to subvert the system to make it work for the people we advocate for. And we've been taught this is "cheating" when in fact, it's just another version of what I would do for Cameron, and no one ever questions that.

All of this made me think of another student I spoke with in the last two weeks. I don't have her permission, so I won't use her name. She is an adult who has none of the advantages Cameron has, and I think that makes her behavior suspect in situations no one would blink at for my son. She reached out to me after being removed from one of her courses due to a confrontation with an instructor. This student comes from generational poverty and her vocabulary and behavior do not indicate her intellectual ability (meaning she doesn't do middle class things). She also has a strongly developed sense of what she thinks is fair and what she thinks isn't fair. On this particular day, she believed her instructor was being unfair and would not back down on the topic. The instructor was pulled into an emotional reaction, and unfortunately the exchange ended with the instructor telling the student to "get the F#$% out of my class." I'm pretty connected to this student and started getting messages that night about what had happened. She had decided to drop out of school and had been ordered to stay off campus until the following Monday. And if she didn't tell me, the story ends there. I'm not the hero of the story, but I am someone with perceived power who could make phone calls and emails on her behalf to see what could be done. She could feel assured people would respond to my inquiries and the issue would be resolved. Sadly, she didn't believe her own self-advocacy would yield the same results, and she has a lifetime of evidence to support that belief. I spent 20 minutes on the phone and writing emails to key folks, and in the end, she returned to campus to try to finish the term. My title and status simply helped her navigate a situation like it would have for Cameron.

My heroes at Amarillo College tell us we have to love our students more than we love our policies. I think this is exactly what they are talking about. When people who know middle class norms violate policy, they (or their advocates) know how to negotiate and mitigate the response to those policy issues. But all too often for our students from poverty, it is just a confirmation of their powerlessness and a reminder they weren't supposed to be here in the first place, and therefore the end of the road. So, being poverty-informed changes the behavior of those of us in power in distinct ways. If we embrace this, it would remove the guilt of intervening on behalf of students who have nothing. For those of us who are parents, it would simply be the equivalent of what we would do for our children. I like to say that poverty-informed practice is an intentional choice to love the students we have. We do things differently for people we love, including using any tools in our toolbox to navigate a system which does not serve them. We should be on a dual track of navigating the flawed system and fixing it simultaneously, but in the meantime, I think everyone is entitled to the same privileges the handsome guy at the top of the article gets through an accident of birth.