Poverty doesn’t matter! Really?
“Homelessness and poverty up close is hard. It smells, actually in my room this year, it takes from the very fiber of a being, it is destructive to those that stand in uselessness looking as well as those suffering it. I’m dealing with a woman and her child suffering terribly now — she should never be alone in this, her faculties are not good enough to deal. She can’t go grow food on some family place, she’s like a forgotten being. And so are the supports that should exist, dysfunctional. But my concern is a child, one not washing, that can’t get into a shelter til after 9 at night that’s out by 5AM, that hasn’t had a real bath in a month. No costume for him. And I need to go buy him a pair of pants or two really, couple shirts and get his clothes and wash them. Among the realities in my teaching work I think I’m beginning to understand what I really need to articulate is what poverty is like to a learner. A child that didn’t pick, nor make any of this. And who is so sweet.”
Sarah Puglisi: 3rd grade teacher in California
I actually heard two people the other day say that poverty doesn’t matter when it comes to the ability of a child to learn.
It seems that the only people who say poverty doesn’t matter when it comes to a child being ready and able to learn are people who have money, want to keep their money and have no idea what poverty really looks like.
Poverty means that you’re hungry, that you’re cold because you don’t have adequate clothing or heat. It means that you don’t go on vacations or to summer camps, it’s the reality of never having enough of anything, that there is no safe place to be after school or a welcoming home to return to at the end of the day.
It means that your parents aren’t able to help you with your homework because either they don’t know the subject or are working their second job. It means that you don’t