How Gadgets Teach Kids They are Poor

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Editor’s Note: This month, Teaching Tolerance launched a new series of lessons called Issues of Poverty. This week’s featured lesson can be found here.

A student pleads with me at the beginning of class to bring an electronic reader to class?

“I’m almost finished reading my book and I want to finish it, but it’s on my (electronic reader name), the students says. “Please? I’m at a really good part.”

At first, this appears to be every language arts teacher’s dream; students begging to continue reading things they’ve read on their own time for fun.

But, then come the problems. 

Our school policy forbids electronics outside of lockers while classes are in session. We’d have to monitor use. Are students actually reading or playing games and instant messaging on their electronic gadget? And perhaps the most challenging: How does allowing electronic readers widen socioeconomic differences in a public school setting?

Author Jeff Sapp reflects on his school experiences in the article How School Taught Me I Was Poor. He recounts the myriad encounters he had that made him feel deficient as a child of a single-parent home growing up in poverty. “Over and over again in school I had been cued both verbally and non-verbally that I was poor. I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t have enough and what I had was the wrong thing,” Sapp writes.

So, when I’m asked if students can bring electronic readers to class, my hesitation is a reflection of Sapp’s experience. I think of Sapp and what caused him to become more and more isolated and ashamed. In one example, Sapp talked about the devastation he felt when a patriotic egg decorating project in third grade clearly displayed his poverty because his mother couldn’t afford extra materials for decorating, unlike other students who used lavish materials to decorate their eggs.

His simple, but carefully colored egg was enough of a difference to make Sapp feel “immense shame about my red, white and blue egg. And then I noticed my classmates’ response to my sad homemade flag. It was pity, pure and simple.  It’s the first time I ever remember feeling shame.”

As a teacher, I don’t want the appearance of electronic readers to make a student in poverty feel ashamed. And how can avoid giving the impression that having an electronic reader is some kind of invisible extra credit?

We could have a classroom set of electronic readers to level the playing field. But then we must be mindful that students without regular access to these gadgets may not know how to navigate their use and must learn to do so in front of his or her peers. But perhaps there’s a place we can start, with designated gadget time.  

It may not be as simple as deciding whether or not to let students bring their electronic readers from home, but whether or not we are willing to open ourselves to the reality of how we may be perpetuating feelings of shame and inferiority in our classrooms.

Timm is a middle school language arts teacher and creative workshop instructor in Iowa.