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Students from PovertyFor a span of years I taught in several non—profits, charter schools, public schools and university level—-along the way I collected students to mentor, young men and women (and some older) who showed potential or who I could cull from one program to another.The benefit to me was multi-fold:I had Program Assistants that were familiar with me, my work, my style to help out in the new classes/programs.One of the challenges of many programs is filling seats with committed students; a student’s stickiness to me allowed me to carry them over.I could readily fulfill benefits to the students that I hadn’t been able to do in the previous programs. Most non-profit programming is deliberately limited or shortsighted.I could chart/follow and therefore increase their potential at success by longer engagement.Ruby Payne has written extensively about identifying the culture and aspects of poverty and the overarching reasoning,plus she’s designed some programming to move people out of Poverty. Her estimation is that it takes 3–5 years of intensive mentorship; so as a longitudinal study and outlining a process, remaining sticky to students as I moved from one program/school to the next was a good idea.I started out at a charter school and then as a youth coordinator/men’s group facilitator. As the YC/MGF I discovered a deep disconnect between myself and the 150+ men/youth I was servicing a week. To some degree considering that I was college educated/from a corporate professional background, there were clear financial difference but I had never so directly confronted Social Class before.Payne’s work, as I was trying to design programming and counsel better, helped me to understand what was going on, what I was seeing, understanding but not able to language. Once I held up her work like tracing paper I could see how so many of clients fit into her outlines and with careful, judicious application, how her work answered back to them. Everything from social groups, education, behavioral interactions, cognitive concepts. I found lots of others—-Feuerstein, Lareau, etc. to expand upon what I was seeing and design forward.Why It’s So DifficultThe difficulty doesn’t lie in the curriculum of whatever I was teaching, I taught everything from relationship skills, sex and sexuality, finances, all school subjects (math, science, history, social studies, language arts, etc.), computer software and hardware but that I was constantly teaching against another curriculum.Poverty is it’s own curriculum. It has it’s own guidelines, it’s own sets of rules and prescriptions and more importantly, it is generally blood tied to the individual. This means that shifting, changing or doing differently, even that which makes sense is a form of suicide—-social, emotional, familial. The choice then becomes poverty-familiarity or Middle Class/Higher-potential “suicide”.Most people don’t get out of Poverty (earning roughly under $18k-$30k a year; the Middle Class Average is between $34–36k a year now), the current statistic is about 18% will do what it takes to do so (the 4 ways out are: higher education, marriage, windfall financially, extreme talent).But conversely Marriage which brings a host of legal and financial benefits, is a desire of Poverty students because relationships are so integral to survival in Poverty. A lot of my students did whatever it took to have relationships—-romantic ones—-but the contrarian force was twofold: children and HIV.Essentially a lot of my male and female students, gay and straight, made it a priority to get into relationshipsOne, mating with other poor people so there was no increase and no consistent mentoring lesson (the best comes from a romantic partner/spouse) on how to move from one level to the next.Two, they would have children. As insane as it sounds—-to each of my straight male mentees, as soon as my process stopped after 3–5 intensive years within a year’s time, all of them under 2,5 went and got girls, sometimes several, pregnant. Within two years time, I came to see that I had been acting as a boundary/border for years against the natural swaying of Poverty communities to have lackadaisical birth control practices.Half of the gay, bi, trans students are HIV+ and using HASA (the HIV Welfare priority system here in NYC and 4 other cities) to live/survive. The problem with all Welfare systems (besides my HIV+ students, I’ve had regular Welfare recipients in training classes, etc..) is that Welfare is not designed from progress, it’s designed for sustenance or subsistence. HASA is therefore designed indefinitely—-which is potentially 27+ years from date of infection. At the same time HASA is extremely strict on its rules for compliance and due to the rent stipend ($999) houses HIV+ people intensively within communities of other HIV+ people by virtue of the rent allotment and what neighborhoods that regulates a person to here in NYC. Yes, there are literally HIV “neighborhoods”.This by itself shouldn’t be a problem but the way that we progress as humans is a form of relational enhancement. I live next to you, a doctor, and I know about better healthcare; you live next to me a teacher and I give you great, cutting edge strategies for tutoring your children; a fireman lives across the street so our homes are always fire safe—-humans absorb from each other in our casual and deeper relationships. If there’s nothing to absorb—-there’s nothing to absorb. The error that the Poor make is that they learn from people who know the same or less than them; those who increase, seek out those who are experts or generally know more.Children are both expensive and time-consuming if you’re not ready. Even for the male students because of the intense child support laws (the States got tired of supporting children) means that they immediately track down income. Male students who are in their 40s and higher in the past couple of years have reported the last child support payments for children—-running 21 years. Some being double charged because the mother went onto Welfare and Welfare sought to reclaim it’s financial output from the father. My instruction to at least a dozen male students was not to have children until completion of college and being over 30. So far about 9 out of 10 of them below 30 have disregarded that and that extra burden sidetracked their college plans, curtails their paychecks and only 1 of them has stayed with his baby’s mother—-but he has a second child with another woman. He was able to complete his Associate’s degree but a lot of the exhaustion and frustration he expresses is because he’s under 30, barely out of school and unable to take and explore opportunities because he has two families to support PLUS…….In Poverty, the educated superstar often becomes the bank of money and knowledge. So to remain connected to family means that the person becomes the constant resource. There were several students who I gently suggested they just go—-to the other side of the country, join the military (2 have), go overseas—-essentially leave their families. That there was nothing of value keeping them here but the irony of Poverty is that while it shows a lot of TV and teaches survival skills, it doesn’t teach resilience and grit. many of my students lacked the balls, the fortitude, to do anything beyond what their poor communities mandated—-breed, drug deal, have sex, do drugs, sign up for Welfare, jail, go from no future job to job.This lack of resilience is multi-factored but a lot of it does have to do with the absence of strong male figures in their households/lives. They don’t know how to deal with men and men are a lot of the workforce, school force, social force in society. Conversely the closest approximation are Blacks and Latinos knowing how to resentfully defer to White males but not how to partner with because racial poverty teaches White is always the enemy, even when it’s not, it’s still the enemy. Women of color teaching their sons that men, Black and White, are out to get them and they’re powerless, other than physical fighting, to deal with it. The subtext that they, boys, are like their female parents—-subject to some form of exploitation/rape but women learn to deal with/ navigate racism and misogyny differently than men do and therefore how they would teach boys to deal with racism and misandry.As teacher/mentor, I was literally often fighting against a tidal wave of their own culture/poverty community (Poverty as a culture unto itself) and trying to “convince” them of the efficacy of my ways and lessons. Ironically in America, poverty is about:15% of the populations—-50 million.In the African American community it’s 40%—-about 16–20 million.In the conglomerated Latino community about 50–60%=—-which makes it 25–35 million.Now all of the above factors came to me, as people, to learn MS Excel or Algebra or HIV Awareness.There were some great successes—-some that even in their winding ways listened to me and others, stuck to programs I got them signed up to; stayed drug and alcohol dependent free; stayed out of legal trouble; avoided HIV infection and having children.Here’s what will blow your mind though. My not successful, completed the programs, did further intensive educational work with me, got into college and graduated, and took great jobs in fields that interested them: White males.About 30% of my most successful males are White; the rest are still in stages of working their lives out, after 5 years of intensive mentoring.Some, I had to walk away from because they were wasting my time and my time is so valuable but it is limited in its breadth. If I can intensively mentor 20 a year, you can’t be lagging behind, not building, skipping classes, bs-ing around. I must cut ruthlessly because #21, waiting, I could be helping them develop to not jump off of the cliff in their lives. Yes, some are directly suicidal. I also try to overlap experiences and assistance, to create networks with my being the introducing factor.By that I mean there are programs that extend from Columbia to 2 year CUNY schools—- you superstar there and then you can transfer up to CU. I was using the 2 year schools as Prep schools while they were in my ancillary programs, etc. and encouraged them to seek each other out or I introduced them so that Bob, who is a math superstar helps you, while you help him in social studies and so on.But the culture in poverty of individuality and mistrust socially, racially, sexuality-wise (most students were respectful of differing sexualities but some of the gay ones couldn’t curtail trying to “convince” straight guys—-which gets annoying.) But in poverty sex and sexuality lack boundaries of absolute respect. But that meant you repulsed Bob so he didn’t tutor you in math so you continued to fail math. Drama begetting drama.The poor will never inherit the Earth because they can’t unify and partner—-those are non-poverty skills.I have a few that I still work with, the best of the best. The ones who fit less poverty based demographics and therefore have a stronger potential outcome. I wouldn’t say it burned me out but I slowly let my special intensive group winnow down, I allowed their excuses and BS to discontinue them from my attention. It’s not that I don’t believe in the work of others or my own work but I put in my time. Now I look at accelerating advanced students, some from poverty, not all because it’s difficult to discern that 18% from poverty; who will be worth it anymore.#KylePhoenix#TheKylePhoenixShow