Paul Gorski: Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap

Excerpt

In Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap, educator and advocate Paul Gorski exposes the vulnerabilities and challenges of low-income youth in academia. The disparities that affect the lives of these youth take root before they are even born, with a lack of access for their mothers to proper prenatal care. As they grow, low-income youth in America often lack access to the basic necessities of life, such as a balanced diet and adequate healthcare. This want for the ordinary continues in the realm of academia. There, low-income students are often subjected to the consequences of attending a poorly-funded school, wherein unhappy teachers rarely stay for more than a few years and music and art are quickly cut from the curricula. In this book, Gorski explores the numbers behind the poor in America and the stereotypes that hinder their progress. In later chapters, Gorski explains how these disadvantages can be mitigated by realistic educators, who understand that the achievement gap is really an opportunity gap, and that the poor in this country care just as much about their education as do the wealthy. In Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty, Gorski successfully presents initiatives that are unpracticed by many in academia, but which, if practiced, may lead to greater opportunities for the low-income students in America. …