I like to consider myself culturally aware and have a strong understanding of poverty and its effects on my students. I took several multicultural courses and immersed myself in a school whose culture is very different from mine. Despite all of this alleged experience and expertise, I find it surprising that I was both moved and troubled by last week's readings. Many of the facts and case studies were not surprising; I had seen many of them before. What was surprising was a quote that put it all into perspective. The statement in Payne's book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, really seems to bring home the disadvantage my students experience due to poverty. The quote says: “One of the biggest challenges in escaping poverty is learning how to manage money. How to deal with what you never had? If you gave me fifty head of cattle and asked me to manage this small herd, I would be in trouble, and my cows would be in even bigger trouble. How can I manage livestock when I have no experience with cows? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Being from a small town and growing up on a farm, I know the challenges associated with raising livestock. I know the needs, knowledge and skills needed to raise a healthy cow and make a profit. If someone were to go into this profession without any knowledge or understanding of what they are doing, I would almost guarantee failure, because the things you need to know to be successful are not obvious or easy to achieve. When I thought about this quote and its ramifications for my teaching career, it made me very uncomfortable. As a teacher, I feel like I'm doing a good job helping my students prepare for their future and giving them the tools they need to succeed. I realized, however, that by teaching only on content, I am only preparing students in the middle and upper grades, which is only about thirty percent of my students. The vast majority of my students don't understand money or how to manage it, but it's so much more than money. Due to their generational poverty, they do not know how to interact in the business world. They do not know or understand the expectations associated with a career or live in the middle class. They have not learned the unwritten rules that make middle and upper class people successful. As the book says, “They don’t know the language of green.” “Instead of teaching them these things that will likely be necessary if they ever want to get ahead in life, I am in class every day teaching them trigonometry, a subject geared toward engineering and architectural careers. I don't know if that was the intention of this reading, but I really feel like I'm wasting my students' time by just keeping the status quo. It's not enough to teach them the content we owe them; teach the language, values ​​and behavior that will prepare them for success Without this alternative curriculum, the school system only perpetuates class separation. I am ashamed to say that despite my presumed knowledge and understanding of poverty. I have done nothing to help these students get out of this. Less than a week from this realization, I have not developed an action plan to resolve these problems, but I feel that if I want to. qualify as a teacher, I need to do more. I find it strange to have always known the limits of poverty :.