Living Situation

A student's living situation can have a dramatic impact on their scholastic and social life. Living situations are varied and no two students are really living the same experience in their home lives, even if the students are siblings or even twins. These situations could vary from a "traditional" upbringing, split custody, foster care, homelessness, or traumatic situations such as deaths to parents or instances of abuse. Regardless of situation, these events have lasting effects on a student as they grow through school.

"Early childhood maltreatment is associated with significantly lower academic outcomes, even after we control for school, neighborhood, race and other key demographics." (Jacob 2018) Students with split custody will often have multiple communities to be a part of. These students face added difficulty in carving out a space for themselves socially. Possibly of less developmental importance, but still difficult at times, students who have split living situations often have different work environments at home. One parent may have internet access, one may not. Also getting materials to and from school can get tricky. For my classes, I know it can be tough for students to figure out who has the instrument.

Homelessness, or even growing up in foster care is often a traumatic way for children to grow up. Children in such situations, particularly homeless children, are quite unlikely to have support to get school work done, not to mention the added difficulty regarding having clean clothes, or regular access to bathing. Foster care can lead students to have to leave a school district suddenly and go to many schools. This makes it hard to develop and hold on to relationships.

In my classes, students are not penalized if they have difficulties getting their instruments to school or if they have difficulty finding time/space to practice since this is not a possibility for all students.

Jacob, B., Ryan, J. (2018) Brookings. How life outside of a school affects student performance in school. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-life-outside-of-a-school-affects-student-performance-in-school/