My Emotional Reaction to Teaching Students with Socioeconomic Status

 

My Emotional Reaction to Teaching Students with Socioeconomic Status

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

Hackman, Farah, and Meaney (2010) state, “Socioeconomic Status is a complex construct that is based on household income, material resources, education, and occupation, as well as related neighborhood and family characteristics, such as exposure to violence and toxins, parental care, and provision of a cognitively stimulating environment.” According to Schunk (2012), it is parental status in society that is related to their rank and position, their financial income and assets, their educational position, and the type of work they do.

I find that dealing with socioeconomic issues in the classroom is challenging because the socioeconomic status of students in the school often becomes a barrier to meeting educational goals. The parental status makes students in the school setting come up with the mind of discrimination, racial thoughts, and other differentiation that affect students’ academic learning and development (Li and Qui, 2018). Parents are not in a position to fulfill the requirements of their children due to their financial constraints (Schunk (2012). Children become emotional when their needs are not fulfilled by their parents and they ultimately suffer from anxiety.

They would start developing low self-esteem in the classroom, which makes teaching and learning challenging because their tendency to compare themselves with their friends would act as a barrier to contrasting philosophies in their minds. On the other hand, they would stop getting along with their peer because they find it difficult to make friends as they belong to poor families. It would demotivate them from even going to school or attending classes. Some even decide to drop out of their school due to the trauma they undergo. Such experience would impact the development of their cognitive skills (Li and Qui, 2018) because they would experience higher rates of depression and anxiety that ultimately affect their attention in the classroom with attention problems and conduct disorders and a higher chance of internalizing and externalizing themselves (Hackman, Farah, and Meaney, 2010). Since they are emotionally effective, they would participate less in classroom activities.

It is realized that teachers play a vital role in helping such students by addressing their needs so that they don’t become the victim of cognitive development, and physical and mental health across their life span (APA, 2022). In the classroom, usually, students from racial minorities who belong to the low caste are victimized during the learning process and are not able to concentrate well in the classroom (Pham, 2019). While going through this unit, I learned that such problems can be overcome if we make timely interventions to help such students. We can also have timely advocacy programs for all students to derive diversity and inclusiveness in the school and the classroom. As a teacher, I should provide him with an important role in the classroom to keep him engaged and focused during the learning process. I should also conduct frequent collaborative learning to engage them through group discussion so that they develop social skills through interaction with peers. Since they are poor, they are usually ill-prepared to attend their schooling; they are also exposed to some kinds of violence and anxiety, which doesn’t allow them to come up with good performance in school (UNESCO IIEP, 2021), and help them address their issues by overcoming it. On the other hand, involving parents in parental care and working for cognitive stimulation to meet their emotional needs is essential as it would help such students to overcome the situations they are facing (Hackman, Farah, and Meaney, 2010).

My pre-service Teacher Training Program is purely based on the content, skills, and strategies that are to be followed in the classroom. It was more methodology-oriented and focused on content. My B. Ed course was purely based on the teaching of the content with methodologies and my PGDE training was based on the literature content. It was therefore we never took any consideration of a student’s racial/ethnic, gender, socio-economic, or cultural/linguistic variability while teaching in the classroom. Lately, the introduction of the infusion of Gross National Happiness in the curriculum gave us some ideas about the psychological aspects of teaching and learning. After taking this course, I realized how important it is to address the variability that students have along with diversity in the classroom. Now, I am confident that all those matters are essential to address to meet the learning needs of the learners. As a teacher, I realize that inclusiveness in education and creating a diverse classroom is essential. Our role is not simply to teach the content but to contextualize the content in providing social skills to our students along with meeting their needs related to mental health and disabilities they possess.

References

APA. (2022). Education and Socioeconomic Status. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education

Li, Z., and Qui, Z. (2018). How does family background affect children’s educational achievement? Evidence from Contemporary China. https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40711-018-0083-8#:~:text=In%20terms%20of%20children's%20learning,than%20that%20among%20rural%20children.

Pham, L. (2019). How socioeconomic background makes a difference in education outcomes. https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=4354

Schunk, D. H. (2012). Learning theories: An educational perspective (6th ed.). Pearson.  https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html?id=53ad2847cf57d75c068b45c5&assetKey=AS%3A273549456019456%401442230680395