This study examined the perceptions of three inner city principals on how poverty impacts the school experience and success for children attending high poverty schools in the Winnipeg School Division. This study focused on how three principals defined and understood poverty; how they created a vision for their school as well as exploring the sustainability of their work. The study examined and explored the frameworks and strategies that each principal worked from in an effort to address the impact of poverty on their schools. In doing this, the thesis attempts to tell the stories of three school principals who spent their entire careers working in the inner city district of the Winnipeg School Division. The schools examined in this study exist within a current reality in stark contrast to the one sought in the Mission and Vision for all students by Manitoba Education. The study found that there is a need for greater professional development for principals on the issue of complex poverty and how it impacts schooling. Although participants outlined a great deal of programming that is already in place to support children attending high poverty schools, all felt that much more can, and should, be done to improve conditions for children impacted by poverty. Findings suggest that policy and practice at the school, district, and provincial levels need to be examined and, where necessary, changed to address the needs of students and families impacted by poverty.

Much research has been conducted on what can be done to retain teachers in education. This study is an examination of what keeps teachers in high-poverty middle schools. The purpose of the study was to examine why teachers choose to stay in high poverty schools. According to Ed. Gov.(1999) high poverty schools are defined as schools that have 75% to 100% of students on free or reduced lunch. Eight teachers were interviewed from 2 high poverty schools located in the southeastern region of the United States. These teachers had been employed by their school for at least 5 years. Data were gathered and analyzed to reveal why teachers stay in high poverty schools even though the work can be extremely difficult. This study showed that the teachers interviewed feel working in a high poverty school can be more difficulty due to issues such as behavior and lack of parental involvement. However, rewards such as student growth and the love they develop for the students are worth the extra labor they put into their jobs. The good they find in their jobs seemed to outweigh the bad.

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Teachers represent a large percentage of the workforce in the United States, yet there is a high demand for teachers every year due to a large number of teachers exiting the profession (Ingersoll, 2001). Staying beyond the first five years is a feat nearly half of the teachers in the United States do not accomplish which leads to problems within the school community (Ingersoll, 2002; Ingersoll, 2004). Through an exploration of the positive stories of teachers' experiences this study identifies some of the common themes found within those stories that led teachers to greater happiness in their profession. While this study provides important information regarding specific experiences of teacher happiness, it is also a closer look at a lesser-known but powerful tool of Narrative Inquiry, story cycles.

This capstone project was part of a team project completed by two school principals in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for meeting the needs of our students in urban high poverty schools being supported by varying district turnaround initiatives. We looked at our district’s previous and current attempts to increase student success in high poverty schools. We questioned the ways in which supports and resources were provided, and we explored ways through which success in high poverty schools might be increased by redefining the supports and resources provided. Our appreciative exploration of the topic was guided by the question, what successful examples of services and supports have contributed to an increase in success for students in high poverty schools? More specifically, I was interested in school-based health centers (SBHC), their benefits, and their impact on student academic outcomes. I looked for literature using the following keywords: wrap around services, school based health centers, health and student achievement. School-Based Health Centers improve access to healthcare, which can help to identify and address health risk behaviors and contribute to more stable attendance at school. More instructional seat time can contribute to improved academic outcomes. The preventative role played by SBHCs can reduce barriers to learning, such as treating undiagnosed mental and physical illnesses. School-Based Health Centers provide wraparound services so that issues impacting students such as obesity or asthma can be addressed on a school’s campus where key mental health, medical and school professionals can collaborate to meet the needs of students.

Changing patterns of immigration have caused schools in the U.S., which previously encountered few to no English Language Learners (ELLs), to see classrooms filled with many ELLs (Massey & Capoferro, 2008; Walker et al., 2004). Existing research on teaching ELLs focused heavily on the work of pre-service or early years educators’ teaching in secondary or post-secondary settings (de Courcy, 2011; Flynt, 2018; Rahman et al., 2018). This study uncovered the teacher lore of four veteran teachers of ELLs employed at a Title I, urban elementary school in the Rocky Mountain region. Data collection and analysis utilized techniques of narrative research, with a priori coding based in Bandura’s (1989) theory of reciprocal determinism (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Kim, 2016). The stories shared by these experienced educators revealed nine categories of teacher lore about the reality of teaching ELLs. Based on the lore revealed, this study concludes that 1) teachers need the freedom to exercise their professional judgment when teaching ELLs, and 2) the amount of resources available directly influence what any teacher can accomplish. The findings of this study apply to other teachers of ELLs, professionals interested in designing teacher-led, context based professional development, and policy makers interested in improving academic outcomes for ELLs (Marlowe, 2006).

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<p>The education field is experiencing a shortage of qualified teachers, especially in high-poverty schools. All school districts struggle to find ways to prevent the increasing turnover rates in their schools; however, school districts serving impoverished populations have to deal with the impact of teacher turnover more frequently. This qualitative study focused on the lived experiences of four elementary school teachers with ten or more years of experience in Steele Community Schools, a high-poverty school district. This study focused on factors that have led participants to remain in their teaching positions. Using the framework of Fredrick Herzberg’s two-factor theory, the researcher examined motivation and hygiene factors to determine which factors had the greatest impact in increasing a teacher’s likelihood to remain in the profession; more specifically in high-poverty schools. The results of this study provides an understanding of the factors that impact a teacher’s decision to remain in their position and may serve as a reference for school districts that continue to experience high teacher turnover. Through semi-structured interviews, data were collected from four veteran teachers with ten or more years of experience in their district. This study found that, of Herzberg’s motivation and hygiene factors, coworker relations, salary/benefits, and the work itself had the greatest impact on a teacher’s decision to remain in their teaching position in a high-poverty school. The study also brought to light a element outside of Herzberg’s theory which has had just as great of an impact on teacher retention; the outside community. Based on the findings of this of the qualitative study school district leaders could potentially take a deeper look at factors that have been referenced in this study as having had a positive impact on teachers’ decisions to remain in their positions in a high-poverty school and increase teacher retention.</p>

When it comes to improving schools, context always matters (Murphy, 2013, p. 260). School leaders are "masters at brokering" (Murphy, 2013, p. 259) change. These changes are usually through the transfer of programs, interventions, and structures that worked elsewhere and pay little regard to the conditions and context that made them work (Murphy, 2013). School improvement reform will require "substantive systemic change" (Adelman and Taylor, 2007, p. 55) that considers the "current culture of schools and intended school improvements" (Adelman and Taylor, 2007, p. 56). This study will use a qualitative, multiple case-study methodology, a semi-structured interview protocol, and a document review to identify how school leaders in five, accredited high or mid-high poverty Virginia middle schools both identified and provided resources to address barriers to student learning. The instrumentation tool for this study was based on the learning or enabling components of the Adelman and Taylor improvement model (2008). The tool was used to qualify the school leaders' site-based school resource allocation and then analyzed for common themes. The study found that some learning or enabling supports were more represented than others. The study also found that there were three key leadership traits among school leaders who had effectively resourced the learning supports: instructional leadership; human-resource leadership; and culture and expectations leadership. Implications from this study include the need for further research on models for school improvement that require schools and districts to identify, plan, and provide for barriers to student learning. A second implication is the need for further study on leadership traits that might exist in school leaders who not only recognize but are able to inspire the implicit and explicit need to plan and provide for overcoming barriers to student learning. / Doctor of Education / The process of improving schools is important. The decision-making and school improvement structures that most schools employ is one that focuses mainly on classroom instruction with little regard to planning for students who may struggle because of outside barriers, like the effects of poverty, lack of exposure to background knowledge, or insufficient schooling and experiences. This study used a qualitative, multiple case-study methodology, a semi-structured interview protocol, and a document review to identify how school principals in five, accredited high or mid-high poverty Virginia middle schools both identified and provided resources to address barriers to student learning. The study used the learning or enabling components of the Adelman and Taylor improvement model (2008) to qualify the school leaders’ site-based school resource allocation and then analyzed them for common themes. The study found that some learning or enabling supports were more represented than others. The study also found that there were three key leadership traits among school leaders who had effectively resourced the learning supports: instructional leadership; human-resource leadership; and culture and expectations leadership.