SALEM (WSLS 10) - Thirty eight percent of children in Virginia are on or below the poverty line.
That number is even higher in some school districts in Southwest Virginia.This week teachers in our area are learning how to better help those low-income students.
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Monday in Salem, about 150 educators from Southwest Virginia with the Copenhaver institute for teaching and learning focused on "stressors."
Those are factors like hunger or an unstable home environment that commonly distract students.
According to the group these distractions can cause students to fall behind in school and become more likely to drop out of high school.
Monday teachers learned how to identify signs that children aren't learning because of what's going on at home. Jeanette Warwick with Craig County
Schools says poverty is a big issue in Craig. She says in 2009 nearly 30-percent of students in the school were on the poverty line. Now, it's almost 50-percent. She says it's important that teachers realize what happens to students before they come to school.
"They bring all of that into the classroom with them and I think sometimes that if teachers don't understand the impact poverty can have they can't make the best instructional decisions in the classroom," Warwick said.
The seminar will run through Wednesday at Roanoke College.