Peer Mentoring in a Low Income Community

Introduction

As a current intern at Cook Elementary in Auburn Gresham Illinois, I get to interact with you students who struggle with the basicsreading, writing and arithmetic. So far it has been a genuine pleasure to interact with these young minds as we work through the issues and overcome the obstacles to their learning. However, I would like to increase my cultural knowledge and skills in order to provide multi-culturally competent service provision. The population is poor and predominantly African American though there is a small percentage of Hispanic students as well. I am a peer mentor at the school through the Cities Project of DePaul University. The Cities Project (2020) is a non-profit, research-based mentorship program that aims to provide support for the Chicago Public School students and families. Working in a low income community provides one with a sense of the disadvantages and challenges that people from a low socio-economic community face on a daily basis. But to better serve this population, there is a need to more deeply understand the cultural aspects the community. Having this cultural competency and these skills also helps people to build bridges between such communities and the communities of privilege. By getting involved as a peer mentor at Cook Elementary, one can develop both empathy for the people of this community and confidence in ones abilities to integrate, communicate and create an environment of inclusivity and respect. This paper will describe what it is like to work in a low income community and cultural competency and skills are needed.

Poverty and Education

The students at Cook Elementary come from poor neighborhoods and there appears to be a clear connection between poverty and education according to research on the matter (Comber & Woods, 2016). On a drive through the neighborhoods, one can conduct a windshield survey and see rows of homes in dilapidated array. The communities definitely struggle to maintain a sense of pride in their appearance, and the overall effect of working in this environment is disheartening at firstbut over time one gets used to it and begins to see the life that still exists in the community in spite of the poverty. This life can be seen in the children at the school, in their parents and families, and in the teachers and principal of the school. There is a great deal of life in them all and they are all conscious of one another and share a sense of community that is really special to see and be a part of. The big problem, however, is that the school and the communities lack the resources needed to boost their education. They do not have tools like computers or Internet in many homes even though these things are common in middle class communities.

Rogers-Sirin and Sirin (2009) call for cultural competence in terms of interfacing teaching approaches that are culture-centric with counseling methods to help students from low income communities to process the educational material they are presented with in a more holistic way. Coggins and Campbell (2008) explain that cultural competence can be used to close the achievement gap in this manner. The achievement gap is a serious issue for low income communities because these underserved children are falling behind the academic accomplishments of more privileged communities. They cannot afford the best teachers, the best schools, the best resources or the best education and the problems mount from there. The Cities Project is a good example of a university giving back by way of getting interns and peer mentors involved in these communities. But as a peer mentor, one has to develop ones cultural competence in order to reach these students and help them to connect with the learning material in a more fundamental way, as Rogers-Sirin and Sirin (2009) and Coggins and Campbell (2008) point out.

By being sensitive to the experiences and culture of these students, it will allow the...…for a short time. Thus, getting teachers and parents aligned and on the same page where they are working together for the same end is the biggest leadership structural challenge the school faces. As a mentor, I can help in this department by being culturally understanding and connecting with families in a real way through home visits as the principal advises and helping to show that the world of education and the world of family should be intimately connected if success is to be reached.

O the education side of things, I help with mentoring from a cultural perspective by working on the topics were are dealing with, such as vocabulary acquisition by building the vocabulary of the students through a variety of exercises that are task-based: we do an information gap activity, a reasoning gap activity and an opinion-gap activity. In each activity, we are engaged and learning from one another in an active manner. I will use real world examples from the students culture to help make the lesson more identifiable and meaningful for the student. The overall aim is to increase the literacy of these students.

Summary and Conclusion

There is a clear connection between poverty and education, as underprivileged communities tend to suffer from an academic achievement gap. To close that gap, teachers and mentors like myself have to do more to bring the world of education to the front door of students and their families. Families have to be more involved in the academic life and mentors can help to build that bridge by getting to know these families and getting to understand how they work, what their culture is and what culturally sensitive and empathetic approaches can be used to help students connect with the educational material. As a peer mentor, I can focus on developing these relationships by following the advice of the principal and making home visits and show these students and their families that I am here for them and that I want to learn…