Montana elementary teachers team up to battle poverty's impacts

As school poverty rates goes up, learning and test scores fall. At Gildo Ray elementary school in Washington state uses a teaching method called director or explicit instruction, in which children learn from a structured approach to teaching with teacher-guided practice. Gildo Ray’s test scores in math and reading are among the highest in the state.

In many countries, a lack of teachers leads to a common challenge - one teacher instructs students at multiple grade levels all at once. In the rural Rishi Valley region of India, instructors are straying from the traditional lecturing pedagogy to embrace a new "multigrade multilevel" learning philosophy: students follow "subject-specific 'learning ladders,'" with each lesson requiring varying levels of assistance from teachers. The method allows for a "personalized education that one usually associates with very developed economies" and "makes that affordable for low-resource environments."

How can rural African children learn to read when there are no books in their languages? Save the Children helps kids to create their own books, creating a homemade library for their village.

To enhance learning, Smart Primary School has integrated peer-mentoring in its curriculum through the Buddy program. Each student in the first grade is paired with a fifth grader who tutors and guides the younger one with lessons and activities for the next four years. The program has not just helped them improve their language, communication, and mathematics skills, but also helped enhance the school atmosphere through the trust and bonding students build in the process.

Back in 1988, Bina Sheth Lashkar, started noticing that students who lived in Slums were dropping out at high rates because they had to work to support their families. So, Bina and her colleague created Door Step School.“If children can’t go to the school, let the school come to them.” What began as a class of 25 students has now evolved to 200 centers in Mumbai and Pune, and a schools-on-wheels project.

Only about 40 percent of students in the fourth and eighth grades in the U.S. are considered proficient in reading. A group of parents in Arkansas, whose students are dyslexic, are introducing new strategies informed by their children's experiences to change the way reading instruction is taught to all students statewide.

An elementary school in Detroit works to give low-income students the resources and education they need to be successful. From supplying children with uniforms and breakfast to cleaning the school to provide a better work environment, teachers and staff address the underlying affects of poverty in the classroom.

A South Bronx charter school is trying an innovative approach to educating all students, including the one third of its student body in foster care. By adding teachers, behavioral specialists, and extra academic support and relying on a trauma-informed and repetitive structure, Mott Haven Charter School has gradually seen improvement, with its foster youth outperforming other children in the welfare system.

Cherokee Point Elementary School in San Diego became a trauma-informed school in 2015, and since then suspensions have fallen to zero (and remained that way since) and they no longer need a campus police officer. The school's approach includes revised disciplinary practices, social-emotional instruction, free breakfast, school-wide training about trauma, strong parental engagement, and intensive individual support. They even partner with community organizations that all them to create and offer a wider variety of services than the school could on its own.

Trauma impedes a child's ability to learn as well as making them overly stressed, for children growing up in violent neighbourhoods this translates into poor academic performance. Some schools are now turning to mindfulness, meditation and other techniques to help the students relax and limit the affect trauma has on them.