In honest reflection of this chapter, I believe it was the most difficult to read as an educator. Due to some experiences I have had in the classroom as a teacher trying to do my best to help students living in poverty, I feel overwhelmed by this topic. That feeling continued to grow as I read the chapter and heard more accounts of what students lives are like when they live in poverty. Not only that, but it is discouraging to see that the situation in general isn't improving. This is the one area in education that makes me feel powerless because, as the Taylor stated, how are we to expect these students to sit in our classes and participate throughout the day acting as a typical kid when so many emotional and physical needs of theirs are unmet? I do, however, appreciate the "glass half full" outlook mentioned in Dr. Cantu's video module that talked about what specific strengths students in poverty could bring to the classroom. I have never thought of this as a part of multicultural education, and I think it is one way to view this painful topic in a somewhat positive light.
For the last 3 years, I have had one student in my class who lived and continues to live in poverty. For the purposes of the blog, I am going to refer to her as Sarah. Sarah's mom is a single parent. She has had 4 other children and raised them as a single mom, and Sarah is the youngest. Sarah's mom is unemployed and from what I gathered, she has not held a job for a very long time. They live off of government support including Social Security for Sarah's disabilities of emotional disorder and cognitive impairment. They do not have a consistently working phone and they have no transportation as they live out in the countryside. When Sarah came to high school, she immediately began accessing the general supports in place for all students living in poverty or low income households (eg. Free/reduced breakfast and lunch, Snack Packs for the weekend, and social work services for emotional support). However, I realized quickly that this was not nearly enough to support Sarah in order for her to participate in school to any degree. Sarah had very disruptive behaviors in class and I began to realize the serious medications she was taking for her behavior disorder were not given to her consistently. Her brain was suffering withdrawals and then being reintroduced to the medication frequently because when she would run out of the medicine, it would take days for the family to find transportation to get to the pharmacy. The social worker began picking up the medication for her and Sarah's bus driver would deliver it to her house. Because she lives in poverty, her health problems were numerous. She would go to the nurse's office to call home for someone to pick her up, but Mom would say they had no way to do so and she had to stay at school. There were a handful of instances where we could tell the problem was serious and an administrator drove her home. Due to the transportation issue, she couldn't access the doctor when she was sick until the illness was severe. One time during the school day, I drove her and her mom to a doctor's appointment because I could tell her psychotropic medication dosage was not correct. She was having major hallucinations and her mood swings were making it impossible for her to make any progress in school. We took her to an eye exam because she could not see the board in class. As a school, we felt it was safe to intervene when the problem was hindering her academic performance, but as caring educators, that line was unclear to us several times. Our last intervention was aimed at trying to break her out of the poverty cycle before she graduated by connecting her to a transition program. Our greatest fear was what would happen to her when she didn't have the high school to help her with all the things I mentioned. We took her to a local group home organization and community workshop which she loved, and we began helping her to fill out necessary paperwork to arrange the transition when she graduated. All our ducks were in a row until, to our dismay, her mother told her if she went to one of these places, she would be raped. The girl became scared and the process was stopped because she was no longer interested. We were powerless to help her. Unfortunately, she graduated with no plan but to live with her mom in poverty until further notice.
I tell this story to show the reality of the struggle of poverty. We went to great lengths in trying to meet her needs and consider her situation as we educated her, and I do believe the school did everything we could do to reach out to her. I believe, even though the very end was the most heart-crushing, we did make a difference and help improve her educational achievement as much as we possibly could.
My question to you is: What are the interventions you have done to help meet your impoverished students' needs? Have you done or thought of something that I didn't think of in this situation? Please share!
As teachers it is hard not to think of our students as our own children. It is heartbreaking to see how some students live and know that even when we have done all we can do, sometimes it is still not enough. However, it is commendable that any teacher or school would take their own time and resources to help students (children) in need, even when they are not our own blood. I think what we can take away from this chapter, and from your experience Kaylie, is an understanding of how the other side of society lives. I have never been exposed to this personally, and I assume most of us have not lived in a dire state such as these, but to see this presented in a classroom setting and become creative enough to teach students in this situation is difficult, but expected.
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