Sandra Hofman-Kingston posted:My dissertation was on Teacher Efficacy and working with children in poverty. It was a qualitative study. I wish I had known about the ACEs screener when I was doing my research because I would have loved to have included that information. One of my findings was that lower levels of teacher efficacy were correlated with disruptive student behavior. The student behavior was included in a larger umbrella term of working conditions. Being a former teacher and elementary principal in high poverty schools in Michigan I have found that the burden put on our teachers, (who are trained to teach curriculum and are not social workers or nurses) has significantly and negatively effected our teacher ranks. Most teachers today stay in the profession no more than four-five years and because the pay is so low, we haven't been recruiting from the highest performing college students. Young teachers, especially those working with children in poverty get a bit of shell-shock when they start in their own classrooms. These young professionals are quickly overwhelmed and then not provided with meaningful supports because of budgetary restrictions but also because the onus has been placed on our teachers to 'handle' student behavior issues without sufficient, (if any) support from healthcare staff. I would be hppy to get more specific information for you if you would like. This topic is near and dear to me. Good luck!
My last day - my nurse told me, “ You haven’t been a doctor; you’ve been a social worker. I went to IEP meetings as much as I could. I did my best but I really wasn’t a doctor; I was a social worker. 3/4 of my kids had been involved with the MI child welfare system. Parents were homeless, addicted, unemployed, been in prison, committed suicide, died of overdose. They were doing their best under circumstances that are really tough.
Doctors can’t fix this either. The psychiatrists give psychotropic medications but there isn’t a pill in the world that can treat homelessness. It’s not simple to turn around generation after generation of disorganization and fear. Parents are mostly doing the best they can - even when it doesn’t look good. They try to get help, but when the help that’s available doesn’t resolve the problems, because the problems are massive and complex and came to be over generations and generations I wonder where are we going? I worry that it will be another huge disappointment for parents who try but find out we “professionals” haven’t thought out our systems well enough to find and offer what works. I worry that parents might give up.
It’s important to talk about ACEs and especially about how families can make themselves stronger and hardy. I’d also like to talk about the nuts and bolts of turning this all around and learning what works.