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"Poor" is such a subjective term. To those who are homeless or starving, someone living in Section 8 housing with government assistance probably seems downright well-off. But by most people's typical, comfortable American standards, I spent a substantial portion of my life at a financial disadvantage. After my parents' acrimonious divorce when I was 9, all the way through my early adult years, I lived well below the poverty line: that imaginary threshold separating the haves from the have-nots. My mom worked two jobs to make ends meet (though sometimes those ends didn't meet at all), and some years were leaner than others, but my reality was a constant state of never quite enough.

To me, poor is the burning mortification I felt when my fifth-grade crush, behind me in line at the grocery store, snickered as he witnessed my mom paying with food stamps. It's the sticky summer heat in our un-airconditioned one-room apartment, and how the springs of the thrift-store sofa bed I shared with my mom poked into my back no matter how I positioned myself. It's the rumble of emptiness from my stomach that seemed to echo into our equally empty cabinets, and the tastes and textures of powdered milk and generic peanut butter and government cheese that comes from a box.

Being poor is pawning, out of desperation, anything you may still have with any sort of value, and cashing in pennies. It's filling every receptacle you've got - bathtub, sink, buckets, pitchers - while you still have water because you know yours is about to be shut off. It's staying in an empty apartment with no electricity and an eviction notice on the door, because you know there's a 30-day grace period, and if you don't figure something out by then, you'll be on the street. It's watching your own blood depart your body from a thin tube as you give plasma for the second time in a week and already calculating when you'll be eligible to give again, because hey, that's 30 bucks.

Being poor is using the restroom at the gas station down the street and stuffing your pockets with toilet paper because you're out at home. It's the scornful glances, the treatment you receive, because it must be all your fault you're poor, you lazy ass - just get your shit together.

Why does happiness depend on money? Why is it money and not something else? I wrote in my journal when I was 18, from my first independent apartment where I was living with my boyfriend (who would later become my husband). Because nothing else keeps the bills paid. Nothing else says whether we have food or a phone or electricity or transportation. Just a couple of weeks ago our power was shut off, and during those 7 or 8 days it was cold and we had no heat, no light, no stove to cook on. Then when we finally got it turned back on, our phone got disconnected. While the power was out the refrigerator defrosted, and what food we had in there spoiled. Now there is literally nothing to eat. Even our staple foods like rice and sugar have all been used and we have no money to buy more. Today I've eaten two crackers, that's all, and it's 3:30. We can't do laundry - no quarters, no soap. We've been out of toilet paper for the past three days, so we've been using napkins - but just today, we ran out of napkins too.

Poor is a state of being, but it's also a feeling; an invisible but oppressive mantle you carry around your neck at all times. It's feeling beaten down, every damn day, even on "good" days when you don't notice it as much. It's the unrelenting stress of putting out proverbial fires, deciding which is more important when you finally get a few bucks: Paying your rent, your utilities, or getting some food? It's knowing your credit is ruined indefinitely because you can't afford to repay this or that, or anything at all, really. It's the disheartening knowledge that you must endlessly chase dollars, sometimes doing things that are illegal or at the very least unpleasant, things that go against your very nature, just to watch those dollars slip through your fingers as they keep a roof over your head for another month. But hey, it's a shame about that empty fridge.

Nobody understands poor people unless they've been there, and it's hard enough to be poor without also being misunderstood. As someone who has walked more than a mile in those (raggedy-ass) shoes, I'd like to clear up a few things.

I want to clarify this right now because it's a biggie. Sure, we've all heard stories of people who take advantage of government assistance because they're lazy or faking a disability. But there are also people, like my mother and countless others, who use this type of assistance as a hand-up, not a handout. When I would complain about having to use food stamps, my mom would squeeze my hand and assure me that she hated it, too, that this was only temporary, that we would only use them until we could provide for ourselves - even if that meant only having the bare minimum.

There's a sense of blame around poor people, like they actually, actively choose this lifestyle. Nobody says "Hey! Let's struggle to obtain even the most basic of needs!" People are poor for many reasons, and financial devastation can happen to anyone. Before my parents' marriage fell apart, we were an average middle-class family, with a home and two vehicles, going out to eat, watching our cable TV, and enjoying weekend trips. Afterward, I was the child of a single mother, getting my dinner from a food bank instead of a restaurant. Nobody asks for this type of circumstance. Nobody.

If "poverty is self-imposed" were a train, then "Why don't they just do something about it?" would be the caboose; one always follows the other. Being poor is like being at the bottom of a deep, dirty hole. You may find an occasional foothold, a root to grab here or there, but the soil crumbles beneath your weight or the root snaps - and when you fall, you often find that the hole is deeper than before.

When you get your water turned back on so you can bathe and flush and cook your ramen noodles, your car dies. When you get your car fixed, you lose your job. You're so busy scraping together money to live on and to patch the leaky holes (literal and figurative) that are popping up in every area of your life, it can be impossible to gain enough financial traction to actually get ahead. There's no room for long-term planning when you have trouble getting by on a daily basis. There's no saving when there's nothing left to save.

Even if you're an openminded and nonjudgmental person who feels like you can effectively see things from another person's perspective, there are facets of poverty that you'll likely never think of. Like what happens when you're about to start your period, but feminine hygiene products are fucking expensive and you have five bucks to your name and you'd also like to eat. Or you've got to choose between tampons and diapers.

So often, I hear people who have never experienced poverty grouse about things like, "If they're so poor, how come they can afford cigarettes/phones/coffee/fast food?" The best way I can explain it is this: There's a reason that people refer to shopping as "retail therapy" - sometimes it makes you feel better. When you're poor, your entire life is lived laboring under a weighted blanket of stress, of judgment, of never having enough or being good enough. It is human nature to want - no, need - the occasional splurge, no matter how destitute you are. Don't begrudge a poor person one of the only things that makes them feel a little closer to the rest of society.

I am admittedly no economist, but the way companies try to get extra money from people who don't have any is something that has baffled me since childhood. Say you overdraw your bank account by $20. The bank then charges you a $35 overdraft fee, on top of the negative balance - so once you do manage to scrape up $50 to deposit, you're still $5 short. Forget about buying anything in bulk, which is typically cheaper in the long run. Same with sales: You can't take advantage of a lower price if you don't have the money while the sale's going on. There's no good in a "buy one, get one free" if you can't buy one in the first place.

If you were holding up a heavy weight, and your arms were burning and trembling, which would you be more grateful for: someone who came along and said, "Tsk, so sorry you're holding that weight," or someone who came along and helped take some of the burden off? Poor people don't need anybody else to feel sorry for them. What they do need is someone to realize that they're not poor because they're lazy or stupid or bad - that they're humans, just like anybody else, with the same needs and desires and hopes. They need people to donate and lend support to the programs that help them because there are far too many voices scoffing that they're "just taking advantage." They don't need saviors - people who publicize what generous benefactors they are to make themselves look better. They need quiet understanding, and a willingness to share the resources that come so much more easily to people above the poverty line.

Fill a box with the things you take for granted: Coffee, candy, tampons, fabric softener, fuzzy socks. Rolls of quarters. Toilet paper. Take it to a shelter or a food bank or a poverty center. "Adopt" a family for the holidays, but don't let your support stop when the holidays are over. Find ways to help all year long, even if it's just little things.

Because for those in dire financial straits, even the little things are priceless.

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This Is What It's Really Like To Be Poor

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"Poor" is such a subjective term. To those who are homeless or starving, someone living in Section 8 housing with government assistance probably seems downright well-off. But by most people's typical, comfortable American standards, I spent a substantial portion of my life at a financial disadvantage.

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When it comes to poverty and education, many children face difficult situations. According to Carlos Lee in his doctoral dissertation, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services in Large Texas School Districts, "Poverty, regardless of level, is robustly linked to reduced academic achievement." Students who live in poverty come to school every day without the proper tools for success. As a result, they are commonly behind their classmates physically, socially, emotionally or cognitively.

Physical Readiness

There are three ways poverty affects physical development. The first is the role of nutrition. The diets of students who live in poverty are rarely balanced or nutritious. Fresh foods are more expensive than pre-packaged alternatives, and inexpensive fast food is readily available. The hectic working conditions involved with two parents holding multiple jobs to pay the bills results in hurried, unhealthy meals. Children in these families must often look after themselves, meaning there is no adult supervision of their eating habits.

Secondly, improper nutrition leads to poor health. When children do not eat regular, well-balanced meals, their bodies are more susceptible to a variety of illnesses, like untreated ear infections and asthma. Students who suffer from these chronic health issues are absent more often than other students, which causes them to fall behind.

Thirdly, the lack of physical activity in students who live in poverty affects their concentration. Some families of students who live in poorer neighborhoods do not believe it is safe for their young children to play outside; even if there is a playground or park nearby, the violence associated with these neighborhoods keeps families indoors. So students' only physical activity occurs during the school's physical education program or during a short recess at lunch.

Social-Emotional Readiness

It is also important to consider how emotions relate to poverty and education. Students who live in poverty-stricken families encounter many situations that can seriously affect them socially and emotionally. Studies show that many of these students live in single-parent households. When only one adult provides for a child's needs, that parent suffers a great deal of stress; they struggle financially, and they often get inadequate rest. Eric Jensen, writing for ASCD, says, "If caregivers are stressed about health care, housing, and food, they're more likely to be grumpy and less likely to offer positive comments to their kids."

The effects of negative and unstable environments manifest in children's behavior at school. They may act out in different ways. Some students are more aggressive and talk back to teachers using inappropriate language. Other students disconnect themselves and become passive - they do not respond to questions or requests.

Without stress relief, these students will struggle at school. Whether they act out or check out, poverty will have an effect on their development. Students who believe that their station in life will never change may go to little or no effort to succeed. The influence of an encouraging teacher can offset this negative impact.

Cognitive Readiness

The relationship between poverty and education shows in the students' levels of cognitive readiness. The physical and social-emotional factors of living in poverty have a detrimental effect on students' cognitive performance. Some children have short attention spans, some are highly distractible, and some cannot effectively monitor the quality of their own work.

Poor nutrition and health also influence how children learn. Exposure to lead, most commonly found in the paint in older, run-down homes and buildings, has been linked to poor working memory and an inability to make cause-and-effect connections. Chronic ear infections cause hearing loss, which makes it more difficult to follow directions.

Vocabulary plays a major part in cognitive development and student success in the classroom. Children living in poverty do not participate in lively conversations like their middle-class counterparts. By the time students enter kindergarten, children from poor families have heard only half as many words as their middle-class counterparts. The disparity increases in comparison to upper-income families. This lack of exposure to a rich and interesting vocabulary can leave students behind in academic conversations.

Many students who cannot understand the words in their texts will resist reading altogether. In addition, students will refuse to participate in discussions they do not understand simply because they do not want to ask for clarification. According to ldonline.org, it is not uncommon that children who struggle with academics would "rather look naughty than stupid."

Funding for Education

So, how can educators narrow the performance gap? One answer is better funding of early childhood opportunities for at-risk students. The Early Learning Initiative provides funding to support children from birth to third grade across the country, specifically targeting children with special needs.

Another answer is meeting some of the children's basic needs, like food and healthcare support at school. Title I is a government program that provides financial assistance to support schools in neighborhoods where families live below the poverty line. This program gives school districts substantial latitude, allowing them to use the funds in ways that best meet their needs.

Another national program, Promise Neighborhoods, provides funding to local community organizations, institutions of higher education and Native American tribes. According to their website, "The purpose of Promise Neighborhoods is to significantly improve the educational and developmental outcomes of children and youth in our most distressed communities, and to transform those communities."

However, according to a study done by the Southern Education Foundation, "In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren. In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013." These children do not enjoy books at home or regular trips to the library. They do not consistently experience interesting dinner-table conversation or educational vacations.

For these students, solutions for the effects of poverty on education may be available only at school. Increased funding will provide some solutions, including sufficient materials and appropriate curriculum and supplies. However, more help is still necessary.

One of the ways experienced teachers can make a difference in the lives of students living in poverty is by being prepared to lead. The LSU online graduate program in education prepares future leaders to anticipate the needs of at-risk students. A master's degree in educational leadership develops the skills necessary to empower students from all backgrounds to succeed.
Learn more about the LSU online M.Ed. in Educational Leadership program.
Sources:
ASCD: How Poverty Affects Classroom Engagement The New York Times: Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It? LD Online: School Failures, Adult Successes: The Negative Behaviors of Children with Severe Learning Disabilities That Often Turn Into Positive Attributes in Adulthood Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services in Large Texas School Districts U.S. Department of Education: Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies U.S. Department of Education: Promise Neighborhoods U.S. Department of Education: About Early Learning Southern Education Foundation: A New Majority Research Bulletin: Low Income Students Now a Majority in the Nation's Public Schools Have a question or concern about this article? Please contact us.

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How Does Poverty Affect Education? | LSU Online

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When it comes to poverty and education, many children face difficult situations. According to Carlos Lee in his doctoral dissertation, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services in Large Texas School Districts, "Poverty, regardless of level, is robustly linked to reduced academic achievement."

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How Poverty Changes the Brain

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By Tara García Mathewson
You saw the pictures in science class-a profile view of the human brain, sectioned by function. The piece at the very front, right behind where a forehead would be if the brain were actually in someone's head, is the pre-frontal cortex. It handles problem-solving, goal-setting, and task execution. And it works with the limbic system, which is connected and sits closer to the center of the brain. The limbic system processes emotions and triggers emotional responses, in part because of its storage of long-term memory.

When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways.

This happens to everyone at some point, regardless of social class. The overload can be prompted by any number of things, including an overly stressful day at work or a family emergency. People in poverty, however, have the added burden of ever-present stress. They are constantly struggling to make ends meet and often bracing themselves against class bias that adds extra strain or even trauma to their daily lives.

And the science is clear-when brain capacity is used up on these worries and fears, there simply isn't as much bandwidth for other things.

Economic Mobility Pathways, or EMPath, has built its whole service-delivery model around this science, which it described in its 2014 report, "Using Brain Science to Design New Pathways Out of Poverty." The Boston nonprofit started out as Crittenton Women's Union, a merger of two of the city's oldest women-serving organizations, both of which focused on improving the economic self-sufficiency of families. It continues that work with a new name and a burgeoning focus on intergenerational mobility.

After years of coaching adults and watching those benefits trickle down to children, EMPath has brought children into the center of its model-offering a way out of intergenerational poverty with brain science.

Elisabeth Babcock, the president and CEO of EMPath, said people in poverty tend to get stuck in vicious cycles where stress leads to bad decision-making, compounding other problems and reinforcing the idea that they can't improve their own lives.

"What we're trying to do is create virtuous cycles where people take a step and they find out they can accomplish something that they might not have thought they could accomplish, and they feel better about themselves," Babcock said. Maybe that step helps them earn more money, solves a child-care problem that leads to better child behavior, or simply establishes a sense of control over their own lives. All of these things reduce stress, freeing up more mental bandwidth for further positive steps.

It's true that exposure to the constant stresses and dangers of poverty actually changes people's brains. Al Race, the deputy co-director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, which has an enduring partnership with EMPath, says children who grow up in and remain in poverty are doubly affected. But the sections of the brain in question are also known to be particularly "plastic," Race said, meaning they can be strengthened and improved well into adulthood.

EMPath's Intergenerational Mobility Project, known as Intergen, uses three tools-one for adults, one for kids, and one for the family as a whole-to frame how they think about their individual and collective lives.

The child and adult tools use a bridge metaphor to illustrate how various domains are all important for ultimate success-if a single pillar on a bridge is weakened, according to the metaphor, the whole bridge could collapse. "The Bridge to Self-Sufficiency," for adults, guides parents to consider family stability, well-being, financial management, education and training, and employment and career management. "The Child Bridge to a Brighter Future" similarly guides children in thinking about health and well-being, social-emotional development, self-regulation, preparing for independence, and educational progress.

"The Family Carpool Lane Tool," meanwhile, helps parents and their children align individual and family goals. Working together, they can avoid traffic and cruise through the fast lane.

Intergen mentors visit participating families and facilitate conversations that prompt both adults and children to make future-oriented and contextualized decisions, ones that take into account other important domains. Their goal is to help the adults in the families become mentors for themselves and their children. Eventually, they hope, they make their own contributions obsolete.

Stephanie Brueck, the senior coordinator of the Intergenerational Mobility Project, recently sat down with a single mom, Ginnelle V., who asked her last name not be used to preserve her family's privacy, and Ginnelle's five children, four girls and one boy who range in age from kindergarten through college-aged.

Over the last year, Brueck has helped the family think through both personal and family goal-setting. Ginnelle's youngest, 5-year-old Cyres, has a medical condition that likely will require an invasive surgery that can be delayed through certain exercises. The family's doctor gave them an overwhelming list of dozens of exercises, few of which Cyres can do on his own. Still, exercise became Cyres's personal goal for the Intergen Project.

Brueck created an easier-to-use fitness plan and helped Ginnelle think about working up to the doctor's original list-starting with five push-ups, for example, and helping Cyres eventually reach the recommended 25. Looking back, Ginnelle thinks it's strange she couldn't break down an overwhelming task into more approachable steps on her own.

"I'm an adult, I have a brain," Ginnelle said. But she describes her roadblocks much like brain science predicts.

"Depending on how busy your mind is or how busy your life is, you tend to see things in black and white-'I need to get this done,' versus 'If I can't do this completely I can't get this done,'" she said, pausing before settling on something closer to reality. "Life is gray."

In families that have participated in the Intergen Project for at least a year, 86 percent of children demonstrate an increase in EMPath's externally validated measure of executive functioning, and 86 percent of families report an increase in household order and alignment based on another externally validated measure of "chaos" in the home, according to the most recent program data from Brueck.

Babcock calls these outcomes "kind of startling." They're unusually good, and EMPath is in the process of piloting the Intergen tools in Jackson, Mississippi, and the Seattle area to see if they're replicable by other organizations in the communities they serve.

EMPath's impact, historically, has been striking.

"We have people in our programs that have made it all the way out of poverty to a family-sustaining wage," Babcock said. "Most organizations that are working with low-income families are trying to get them connected into jobs. Ours is trying to get them to a place where they can sustain themselves and their families."

At the heart of these outcomes is a reliance on science. EMPath mentors understand the way the brain works, and their interventions are designed to help families effectively rewire their brains. Again, Ginnelle's own interpretation of the program lines up. When discussing the benefits for her children, she says the family goal-setting does more than simply foster togetherness, which is a benefit in its own right.

"It's going to empower them to understand that they can make a change," Ginnelle said. "That things don't have to be a certain way if they are not happy."

Poverty creates barriers to developing this sense of control over one's own life. And EMPath is among the minority of agencies helping families break them down-using an understanding of the human brain to effect lasting change.

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The Atlantic Monthly: How Poverty Changes the Brain - EMPath

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By Tara García Mathewson You saw the pictures in science class-a profile view of the human brain, sectioned by function. The piece at the very front, right behind where a forehead would be if the brain were actually in someone's head, is the pre-frontal cortex. It handles problem-solving, goal-setting, and task execution.

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In the passion of the civil rights campaigns of 1964 and 1965, Jonathan Kozol gave up the prospect of a promising career in the academic world, moved from Harvard Square into a poor black neighborhood of Boston, and became a fourth grade teacher.