When students come to the Resource Room, Tess is friendly and open. She often jokes with them to help them feel relaxed and comfortable before offering assistance with academic work that is difficult for them. The students seem to like coming to her room and it is always observed to be a centre of activity. Tess engages literacy learners in reading authentic texts for genuine purposes and offers them the chance to bring these books home to read to their parents to extend the school learning. In turn, she is helping them to acquire power.

Recognizing the Power

Many educators erroneously assume that the school setting is a power-neutral environment. Some of the teachers in my study internalize negative stereotypes about the lower class and do not even recognize the power relations in existence. In one situation, when a mother did not attend a parent-teacher meeting at school, the teacher was quick to suggest that the parent was not interested or did not care about the child's schooling. In reality, the parent may not have the resources to be able to attend the meeting. Lower-class parents are just as interested as any parent in their own child's education, but some lack the support needed to enable them to remove barriers for their participation. They are also poorly-equipped financially, psychologically and socially to compensate for deficits they perceive in their child's education. That is, they cannot afford to buy computers or other educational resources, pay for a tutor, offer their children opportunities for outings with a broad circle of people or support them adequately emotionally.

Some general factors affecting the schooling experiences of these children from low-income circumstances include the high number of family separations and frequent reorganization of the family unit with temporary adult members. These low-income families have fewer resources and less power than the middle class parents to be able to directly influence their children's schooling. The women also appear to lack the same sense of entitlement as the middle class mothers. Due to their reduced familiarity with educational practices compared to the middle class, they are less effective than the middle class in following through with educational practices, or in trying to influence school policies and practices.