Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1

I had to choose the podcast alternative assignment, which was very reflective and helped me learn and understand more of working with children in poverty.  The podcast I listened to was, "8 Things to Consider When Teaching Students Impacted by Poverty" by Brad Currie, Billy Krakower, with Ruby Payne as the guest speaker.  Dr. Payne talked about the importance of doing a resource analysis with children who come into your classroom.  Some of the things a teacher should look for are whether or not the child's physical, mental, and financial needs are being met. Having knowledge of where your students are can significantly help the teacher understand each student.  It is also important to know if the child has a support system, or if they have to be their own support system (Payne, 2015).

Some of the best practices that teachers can use when working with children in poverty are to know where your referrals come from.  Most referrals come from students and staff.   There are also challenges that need to be considered in poverty stricken areas.  Most families in poverty do not have access to the Internet.  This was unfortunate for one school who gave iPads to all of their students, only to find out that half of the children had no Internet access (Payne, 2015).  A lot of homework is nowadays done on a computer which makes it very difficult for children who don't have a computer, Internet, or knowledge of computer and keyboard skills.  One of the best things a teacher can do is to work with and train parents in poverty.  54 percent of children in America are on WIC (Payne, 2015).  Helping parents learn what they can do to help and provide for their children can make such a large impact on their child's life.

I chose to study more about poverty in Thailand.  My sister lived in Thailand for 18 months and I was hoping to get to email with a teacher that she knew, but the language barrier is too difficult and my sister doesn't remember Thai well enough to translate.  I knew that poverty levels were high when she was there ten years ago, but thing are increasingly getting better, "the proportion of people living in poverty in Thailand dropped from 21 per cent in 2000 to 8.5 per cent in 2007" (UNICEF, 2008).  I found it interesting how the family structure has changed in Thailand and has changed from being mostly three-generation family households, to now being "skip generation" households with only the grandparents and children (UNICEF, 2008).  It seems like the family structure is being changed and impacted all around the world. Thankfully children have their grandparents, but they also need their parents in their life.  The last thing I found interesting about Thailand is that, "the GDP per capita increased from 39,104 baht per head in 1990 to 128,607 baht per head in 2007" (UNICEF, 2008).  With the hope of the GDP continually increasing, child poverty will continue to be less of a problem in Thailand.  I was pleased with most of the results I found in my studies.  There are still many difficulties that families have to face in Thailand, but statistics show that it is starting to look up for the Thai people.

References

Payne, R. (2015).  8 things to consider when teaching students impacted by poverty. World forum foundation radio. Retrieved from http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php

The Thailand Development Research Institute (2008). National report Thailand. UNICEF.  Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Thailand_Childwellbeingreport-fullreport.pdf