In this course, you will gain new understandings of families living in poverty and the concrete steps that high-poverty, high-performing (HP/HP) schools have taken to improve outcomes for all students. You will also have opportunities to read research, case studies, and anecdotal reports of how schools have welcomed students and families living in poverty to transition from wherever they are into high-performing schools. Course resources will guide you through activities to assess your school and create action plans. One of the critical components of the course is building leadership capacity. Whether you are an administrator or teacher, you will feel empowered to take advantage of opportunities to improve outcomes for students in your school, especially if you have a high percentage of students living in poverty.

This course is based on William Parrett and Kathleen Budge’s Framework for Action, which uses gear wheels to represent Spheres of Influence, Actions, and School Culture. As you work through the course, you will see how improvements in any one of the three areas can influence the other two.

Course Objectives

• Describe the adverse effects poverty often has on student learning.
• Distinguish explicit beliefs about poverty and people who live in poverty from tacitly held assumptions.
• Analyze how mental maps affect educators’ behavior and attitudes.
• Investigate your city and state and your school and district free and reduced-price lunch census data.
• Assess your school using suggestions from Gorski (2007) and Landsman (2014) for challenging the status quo in your school.
• Determine whether poverty is a school-based or societal problem and how a both/and solution is needed to address both types.
• Describe the structures and processes that foster healthy, safe, and supportive learning environments.
• Assess the processes and structures already in place to create a healthy, safe, and supportive learning environment in your school or district.
• Design next steps for improving the learning environment in your school.
• Investigate the key factors that improve student learning in high-poverty schools.
• Define the relationship between student learning and professional learning.
• Design actions you could take to ensure the work focuses on improving student, professional, and system learning.
• Identify structures and processes for building leadership capacity (e.g., developing and strategically using the capabilities of educators, students, families, and caregivers) in high-poverty schools.
• Examine the way you currently manage resources (e.g., time, money, people, and data).
• Determine ways to improve how you use resources to build leadership capacity through- out your school.
• Examine practices that encourage partnerships with parents and families or caregivers in supporting their children’s education.
• Design ways to authentically engage parents, families, and the community in your school.
• Analyze your experiences with parent, family, and community engagement.

Syllabus

(ASCD PD Online course, 2016) Self-paced asynchronous online course. Upon completion, learners will be awarded an ASCD Certificate worth up to 20 Clock Hours.