Dr. Pamela Cantor’s Op-Ed in The Hechinger Report: Overcoming the Challenges of Poverty

Dr. Pamela Cantor’s op-ed in The Hechinger Report builds on President Obama’s recent initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, and addresses the growing education gap among black and Hispanic males and ALL children growing up in poverty. Dr. Cantor posits that to prevent this gap from further widening, schools must build fortified teaching and learning environments, where teachers have the skills and tools to defuse disruption, increase engagement, and prepare all children to reach their full potential as students and citizens. Here’s an excerpt:

“What does this look like on the ground? At the more than 80 high poverty public schools Turnaround has worked with, it means creating a teaching and learning environment that supports the needs of every student. It means training every adult in the building in practices that increase student engagement, defuse disruption and personalize learning. It means creating individual student support for those that need it. And it means changing the climate from one that is often chaotic, punitive and filled with low expectations to one where the assumption is all children are capable of high levels of learning.”

We encourage you to read Dr. Cantor’s full op-ed here.