Teaching the Poor Child from a Dysfunctional Family (Part II): Dealing with the Student's Lack of Focus

We'll call this child Gabrielle. Gabrielle is a nine year-old (going on ten) Grade 4student.

When Gabrielle's father (whom we'll call Benjamin) enrolled Gabrielle in the New Salem Educational Initiative, he expressed deep concern that she was behind in reading and lacked the ability to focus. He knew that there were potential biological reasons why Gabrielle might have difficulty focusing. He is himself a recovered drug abuser, and Gabrielle's mother (whom we'll call Monica) was using cocaine and other stimulants when she was pregnant with Gabrielle.

Benjamin is now a solid citizen with a good job and a serious commitment as a volunteer in a program designed to redirect lives away from the street into productive activities. But Benjamin has a volatile temper that sometimes is directed as verbal outbursts against Gabrielle. Monica no longer uses heavy drugs as she did when she was carrying Gabrielle, but she has no job and she lives a life in which a penchant for church activities vies with her fondness for the corner bar.
When Gabrielle is in Monica's care, the potential for neglect is present and occasionally activated.

Gabrielle is in a dual custody situation that finds her in both instances living in high-crime areas. She is an enormously observant little girl, and there is little in life at the urban core of which she is not aware.

So Gabrielle has reasons rooted in physiology, family, and environment to be distracted. When she enrolled in the Initiative, I anticipated that this might be a case in which the route to grade level performance would have to be especially carefully sequenced, and in which capturing Gabrielle's attention might prove very difficult.

In fact, Gavrielle responded immediately to my personality and to my pedogogical techniques. I had known Gabrielle's family since she was a babe in arms, and she knew me to be a person given to light-hearted banter, especially with children. As it turned out, she was looking forward to our weekly academic sessions and eager to please.

Still, Gabrielle does struggle with keeping her body still and her brain focused on the task at hand. We do a lot of reading out loud, during which I ask close and frequent questions about content and vocabulary. I ask Gabrielle to summarize sentences and passages in her own words, and I monitor her understanding of vocabulary very carefully. When I find that she needs a definition for a word, I'll say something like, "The word, 'maximum,' means 'the highest point' or 'the greatest amount' of something." Then I'll immediately ask, "What does 'maximum' mean?" At first, her attention might have already wavered and I would have to repeat the definition. But in time, knowing that I would probably pose the question right away, her attention became very sharp and she took pride in being able to recall the definition.

I approach math with Gabrielle in much the same way. I continually urge Gabrielle to think a word problem through before deciding whether to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. She knows that she will have to explain to me why she chooses one operation over another, whether a problem is a one-step or two-step calculation, and precisely what numbers are involved in the calculation to be done. I very frequently remind Gabrielle not to just look at a bunch of numbers in a word problem and start calculating, but to take her time and always have a reason for what she is doing.

Gabrielle does still fidget and squirm a lot in her seat, and she likes to get up to demonstrate something that is variously germane or tangential to the task at hand. I allow her to squirm for awhile, and I provide myself as audience to her demonstration--- even laughing with her, complimenting her on her creativity, or makng my own silly reply--- but then I quickly redirect Gabrielle back to the task at hand. She struggles sometimes to reposition herself in her chair and to regain her focus, but she has greatly improved in these matters of personal discipline.

Near the end of each two-hour session with my students I offer a granola bar and juice to those whose focus and accomplishment have been sufficient. Rarely is the latter not the case and a granola bar denied. Gabrielle has always earned her snack, and this is another motivational tool that I use to help Gabrielle achieve proper focus: "Uh, oh," I'll inevitably say at some point in each academic session, "that granola bar and juice are looking a little shaky," and typically Gabrielle will snap back to the material to be mastered.

Struggles to achieve focus are certainly not limited to children living in poverty and belonging to dysfunctional families. Many suburban parents now in fact angle to gain an "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)" label for their children so as to gain certain concessions that may boost their test scores and grades. The misuse of such labels is widespread these days. Inner city kids with behavioral issues who attend struggling urban schools often have a special education label thrust upon them so that they may be sequestered away from a regular classroom for at least part of the day.

A better approach for most kids who struggle with behavioral issues and an ability to focus is to understand the child's familial and environmental context, to observe carefully the particular behaviors and responses of the individual child, and to devise classroom management and pedagogical strategies that will help the student achieve the level of focus necessary for academic accomplishment.

For children from poor and dysfunctional families, the root causes for an inability to focus are typically mulitiple, complex, interacting, and stemming from causes both physiological and environmental. They fall within a predictable range of causes for anyone familiar with life in the inner city. They must be anticipated, but they are not insuperable.

Gabrielle is now reading and doing math fully at grade level, and she has an excellent chance to record grade level performance on both the Grade 4 Math Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) and the Grade 4 Reading MCA.