General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis Is What Poverty Looks Like
by Dawn Meehan
I recently read an article by Babble blogger Alice Gomstyn about Sonya Romero-Smith, a kindergarten teacher in Albuquerque who helps her students that are living in poverty. The first questions she asks them each morning are: Did you eat? and Are you clean? It shocked a lot of people but not me.
I happen to be one of those educators, working in a title 1 middle school in a very high-poverty area. When I say poverty here, Im not talking about a family whose dad has been laid off from his job or a family going through divorce or sickness. Im not talking about a sudden, temporary, or even long-term shortage of money. Im talking about families who have lived in poverty for generations. Families who dont know anything but poverty. Generational poverty is very different from families experiencing hard times mainly because they often view education as a stressor, and school a place they do not belong, making it extremely difficult to end the cycle.
<snip>
At the beginning of the year, I used to say things to my students like, At least its Friday, right? Youve got to love the weekend! Do you have any plans? I said this until one too many students told me, Id rather be at school. I was incredulous at first. What kid would rather be at school instead of at home on the weekend? And then I learned. A kid who doesnt eat over the weekend. A kid whose dad is back in jail. A kid whose mom will spend the days off somewhere leaving that student to care for his four younger siblings with no food or diapers in the house. A kid whose moms drugged-up boyfriend will yell and hit. My students dont look forward to days off school, they dread them.
<snip>
A couple of years ago, a student had to be transported from school to the hospital via an ambulance. His parents didnt get to the hospital for seven hours because they had no transportation. For seven hours this student was sick and alone without his family there.
<snip>
When you read that more than half of U.S. Public School students are living in poverty, you think that these kids just dont have a lot of money. But it goes so far beyond a lack of money. The effects are remarkably pervasive, creeping into every area of a students life. Its hard to learn when basic needs arent being met. And its hard to care for a child who acts out, swears more than Eminem, disrupts your class, tells you off, and starts fights. The educators who take the time to talk to, listen to, sympathize with, and understand their students situations are the ones who make a difference. The ones who remember that the kids who need love the most will ask for it in the most unloving of ways, change lives.
more: http://www.babble.com/parenting/this-is-what-poverty-really-looks-like/?
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,505 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)chervilant
(8,267 posts)I used to get sausage biscuits for the students who came to my tutoring sessions. I had so many students who grew up in poverty.
Warpy
(111,359 posts)and men at the top won't be happy until we are all living like this.
randys1
(16,286 posts)To me it is a war....
hopemountain
(3,919 posts)i know of a teacher who lobbied to have a couple of showers installed and available for kids who had no hot water at home. there was clean, donated clothing for them to change into, as well.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)JEB
(4,748 posts)KMOD
(7,906 posts)in our country.
Kick and rec
csziggy
(34,138 posts)Starting in the 1970s my sister was a counselor at an elementary school in Pasco County, Florida, where many of the students were from poor families. Some but not all were from migrant families living there during the winter harvest season. The school back then experimented with a quarter system rather than two terms so the children of the migrant workers got to finish a section of their lesson plans before their parents had to pack up and go to somewhere they could get jobs for the next season. Not all the students who needed help were from migrant families - a lot were from the long time resident poor of the area.
She had students who didn't have sufficient clothes, students whose only meals were what they got at school, not just on school days, but all week, kids from families who had to take turns coming to school because they only had one pair of shoes for three children. Since she shopped at thrift shops for her own clothes, she began buying children's clothes and shoes to give to children in need. Much of her work became social work - trying to help families get food aid and other assistance.
For a while in the 1990s things got a little better in that area, but beginning around 1999 assistance programs got tighter and kept getting worse and worse until she finally retired a few years ago. What happened in Florida in 1999? Jeb Bush was sworn into office as governor of Florida.
KMOD
(7,906 posts)Your sister is an absolute angel. We can certainly use more people like her.
Our school district in New York State has some nice safeguards. They not only offer free and reduced cost lunches, but breakfast as well. In elementary school, the school supply lists sent to parents list more supplies than one student could use. I believe it's done to save the children from embarrassment when their parents can't afford supplies. They also do a coats for kids drive every year, where you can donate coats. The local police have a program at the junior high, where they bring in bicycles that have been discarded, and the students repair them and give them out to children who can't afford them.
This week I read that Senator Gillibrand is introducing a Summer Meals Act.
http://www.twcnews.com/nys/binghamton/news/2015/02/23/gillibrand-summer-meals-act-binghamton.html
We need to do so much more though. No person, but especially no child, should ever have to go without food and clothing.
csziggy
(34,138 posts)I couldn't have stuck it out for one year, much less the decades she poured her heart into her job. Since she retired, she's gone back to protesting the way she did in college. She is very dedicated to trying to change the world!
Every child should have three good meals a day, decent clothing, medical care, and a free education. But this country would rather give tax breaks to billionaires and spend money on foreign wars.
KMOD
(7,906 posts)It really makes me sick.
appalachiablue
(41,177 posts)appalachiablue
(41,177 posts)it's a crying shame- so many distressed Americans in burned out post-industrial cities, rural areas & even suburbs. Yet other folks, esp. ones I know on the west coast are very aware & sympathetic to global deep poverty in Africa, Haiti & elsewhere because of more recent, needed attention.
Thank you. We don't see enough of this kind of posting on DU.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)i know because I look for them now to be sure to kick them back up at least once.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... my comment was more of a lash at the frustrating bickering that goes back and forth so much of the time here lately.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)is smart and so much more deserving.
YarnAddict
(1,850 posts)It is caused by a lack of expectations that there could be anything else.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)It effects every aspect of life.
I saw this on the rez. When I first moved out here almost no one had jobs. and my son-in-law was the first to graduate and go on for hirer education. Even though the tribe hires a lot of their people at that time it was at the most part time low paying jobs.
Then they got permission to build the casino and only those of us know that remember what it was like understand that having jobs may not fix this but it did allow for a good start. Yes we still have some families that are still caught in the rut but we also have families that are going to work every day and children talking about what they want to be when they grow up and parents who are giving their children more support in education. Things are much better and it never would have been without the jobs.
It is a vicious cycle and making a really big impact on the cycle is what it takes to break it.
In black communities something that will employ parents for a long time is the only way IMO to counter this.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)jobs.
IOW, if you live where there are few jobs, it's quite likely you'll behave like someone who doesn't have a job, whose parents don't have a job, whose friends don't have one, etc.
Revelation.
erronis
(15,355 posts)My thanks to the teachers in these environments. Especially since funding for supplies and sufficient resources is so lacking.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)the community were not hiring. Once the casino started hiring and they saw that their stereotype of Natives was wrong that also changed.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)When everyone you know is in poverty, when everyone your parents knew were also in poverty, it's damn hard to figure out how to make a better life for yourself. Most poor kids hope for a better life, they just are lacking in the tools to accomplish it.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)tation.
There's no jobs. Whether you grew up when jobs were plentiful, or you grew up when they were scarce, if there's a job shortage, it's likely you won't have a job. How difficult is that to understand?
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)Why? Because it's more complex than simply a lack of jobs. It's a lack of reliable transportation, a lack of education, a lack of child care options, a lack of jobs with stability, pay, and benefits that would allow one to live in self-sufficiency. When everyone around you has similar struggles, when your parents and the parents of your peers have tried for 30 or more years to get ahead and never have, there is a pretty strong message that you shouldn't expect or even try to get ahead --unless there are supportive programs, persons, or agencies to help you navigate out of poverty.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)I don't think we're saying anything too different.
where there are few to no jobs, people don't have jobs. not a big surprise, and you don't have to invoke some special 'culture of poverty' or mindset to explain it.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)is not helpful in terms of ending poverty. It goes way beyond a lack of jobs. It's a lack of skills because of poor primary and secondary education. It's a lack of resources needed for getting and keeping employment (reliable transportation being a big one as is child care.) It's the lack of even basic access to dentists, optometrists, and other health care. It's the lack of safe, affordable housing.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)despite low education levels and most of the other hindrances you mention. People had jobs and worked hard and basically led decent lives with the average level of amenities for the time.
Today unemployment is over 10% despite people having more education, more access to health care, more access to public transport, etc. But people's lives are worse -- drugs, depression, obesity, etc.
Because they don't have JOBS.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)For example. high tech companies are squeezing out historic low to moderate income residents of some neighborhoods in San Francisco. There are plenty of jobs -- just not many for the current residents.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)worker.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)and that's why saying "it's a lack of jobs" is too simple as an explanation of poverty.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)education to change anything.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)A good education provides the skills to be flexible in an ever changing workplace. It doesn't guarantee a job, let alone a good job and certainly doesn't guarantee the ability to succeed. It just changes the odds.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)hiring and the fact that most Natives wanted to return to the rez not move around chasing jobs. As I said once they had jobs in the casino it became evident that if they wanted to run their own business they need to educate themselves and their children. The outcome has been fantastic. With profits from the casino they have been able to start many other small businesses and many more jobs.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)People don't want to leave the only safety net they have, namely their community or culture. Some say that the solution is just to move to where the jobs are but that ignores the soft and concrete benefits of staying where there is a strong attachment.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)development that is need in these situations.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)homeless, rootless slaves to the machine. That's the solution!
Or we could all have local jobs.
"Inner city groups" my ass. I don't live in the inner city, and I still don't want to move. I have family and responsibilities here, I'm old, etc.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)we not going to follow the jobs. We chose to live close enough to each other to have family support.
As to inner city I was thinking about Ferguson MO. - places that are more or less isolated from the rest of the city.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)I'm trying to bring one to mind. There's Bernie, but not really a Democrat. Some of them talk of big banks and high finance as millionaires are prone to do, a few even mention the alleged 'middle class' upon occasion but the poor? You suggest that there is a group of Democrats with a leader that are energized around poverty issues and I do not think that is anything close to accurate.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)"You have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton said.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)not part of the master plan, which is more about bringing cheap labor to the states and sending American labor to the third world, all to rachet down the global cost of labor while racheting up the cost of life support to further empower global elites.
democrats would much rather talk bullshit about women's rights and gay rights, even though without money and work you have no rights, gay, straight, male or female.
but dividing people into little 'rights' categories keeps them from making common cause while they're being screwed.
which seems to be what all the aggressiveness on DU is about; participants attacking others for not being politically correct enough.
trumad
(41,692 posts)FSogol
(45,529 posts)azurnoir
(45,850 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)the likes of Blankfein and Kissinger. Her Majesty doesn't soil her shoes walking where the "little people" live.
randys1
(16,286 posts)ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)more interested in monitoring whether you criticize the Clintons -- especially if you criticize the Clintons' economic record, or their own personal money-grubbing.
PatrickforO
(14,592 posts)last uttermost farthing of PROFIT, then we'd all be better off.
I was at the supermarket the other day and looked at a jar of peanut butter. It felt light, so I turned it over to find that the bottom of the jar had a heavy concavity. I got to thinking about this, and came to the conclusion that capitalism is like...
A GIANT TAPEWORM...
Think about it. The company that makes the peanut butter put that big concavity in the bottom of its jars so we consumers could be charged the same price for LESS peanut butter. And, believe me, the workers in the factory aren't seeing any of that extra profit. Nope. It's all going to the almighty shareholders.
So that peanut butter I didn't get to eat because the space inside the jar is smaller might as well have been eaten by an intestinal parasite, which is exactly what capitalism is...a PARASITE in the intestines of the world.
But, I know that I'm VERY lucky, and so are you if you have eaten today, have a roof over your head and a job that allows ends to at least meet. The poor little girl...the little AMERICAN girl in this picture does not have that. There is no excuse.
And yet, we the people swept dozens of Republicans into office so they could continue their destructive policies. In one post on here I suggested we have the government we deserve because we're so stupid, ignorant and apathetic, but this little girl and hundreds of thousands like her do NOT deserve to live like this. It is an affront to our very humanity.
Arkansas Granny
(31,532 posts)brer cat
(24,615 posts)Thanks for posting, tenderfoot. So many people have no idea what poverty really means.
KG
(28,753 posts)best to pretend it doesn't exists while bemoaning the travails of the middle class.
Autumn
(45,120 posts)It doesn't bother them one bit to create that poverty but they go to great length to pretend that class of people doesn't exist. I can't remember when Obama last mentioned the suffering of the poor in one of his major speeches. Bernie's all over it.
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)Autumn
(45,120 posts)She teaches in a high poverty area. She saves some of the breakfast foods sent to her classroom to feed the kids. What isn't used is to be sent back to the cafeteria. She sends it home with some of her grade schoolers so that they have something to eat on the weekends or when they get home in the evening.
I buy school supplies all year long and send them to her before school starts so her kids can have supplies. When did it happen that our children don't matter to the people we elect to office and why do we put up with it?
A sad rec for your OP
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Because school was all they had to look forward to.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)K&R
Corey_Baker08
(2,157 posts)Response to Corey_Baker08 (Reply #26)
JimDandy This message was self-deleted by its author.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)kids from families that have jobs (low income ones) fit this description. I know a lot of kids in my once middle class community that rely on free breakfasts and lunches at school for their food for the day, wear hand me down or rummage sale clothing and do not get to participate in extracurricular sports because no one can afford them. It is becoming the rule rather than the exception.
WDIM
(1,662 posts)Then Nixon came with his war on drugs which caused more poverty and law enforcement attacks on the poor drug users while the rich drug users go untouched.
Its not in corporate america's best interest to end poverty. They need employees willing to work for low wages and doing menial jobs.
There would be no super rich if there was no super poor for the rich to take advantage of.
Then the right wingnuts say oh you are only poor because you havent tried hard enough havent worked hard enough. Which is laughable because the people that work the hardest in this country get paid the least and the mega rich have never worked hard a day in their life they owe all their money to an interest rate.
We as a people need to demand that we are valuable. Our time is valuable. Our life we give to our jobs is valuable. We all have value and we need to demand that we are paid what we are worth. Nobody who works full time should be worried about having a place to live food to eat clothes for their kids the basic necessities tha make life possible. Yet more and more the working poor grow and the middle class crumbles and the ones at the top act like its all theirs and they deserve it all.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)Little did I realize that 50 years later, I would be looking back at the last Liberal Democratic President.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)So never mind!
Borchkins
(724 posts)B
WillyT
(72,631 posts)byronius
(7,401 posts)Stories like this make me a Leveler. Take every penny from every wealthy conservative and turn this sinking ship around.
Kochs first.
BronxBoy
(2,286 posts)Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)they cannot get out of the trauma. Thus poverty becomes cyclical. There will need to be a massive effort to treat people in poverty trauma, while at the same time educating, teaching job and parenting skills, improving housing and transportation, providing healthier food.
AwakeAtLast
(14,134 posts)and make them feel stupid when they fail. They are winners for making it to school, in some cases.
alittlelark
(18,890 posts)of poverty so many live in... w/ our R governor it is only getting worse and worse. These children are the generation that will take care of us - how can we allow them to become so scarred? WTF is wrong w/us?
handmade34
(22,758 posts)I know what poverty feels like... I was fortunate, other family members, not so much...
"...kids who need love the most will ask for it in the most unloving of ways..." one reason it is so hard to eradicate... another is collective apathy, no matter what people say... until we walk the talk, it continues
jopacaco
(133 posts)I teach in Central Maine. We have 90% free and reduced hot lunch, a poverty indicator. The nurse is always collecting food for backpacks for weekends and vacations so kids have some food.
When I first moved to Maine, this was a fairly affluent town. When the shoe shops left, so did those with money. We have mostly minimum wage jobs for those left behind. Drug abuse is a growing problem.
With our current governor, any positive change is impossible and further deterioration is extremely likely. It is very depressing - and now we get to spend March through May testing grades 3-8 with a battery of online tests that, I believe, very few have a prayer of doing well on.
Ruby Payne has written some really enlightening books on the culture of poverty and how it relates to education. Her work helped me better understand my students and their families.
mike_c
(36,281 posts)This level of poverty exists in one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. I does not exist because of any material deficiency of any kind-- it exists solely because a few are exceedingly greedy, and they insist not only on hoarding wealth for their personal benefit, but also upon creating social systems that feed back and further concentrate wealth into the hands of the greedy few.
In fact, I don't believe much of the conventional wisdom about our having a poverty problem in the developed world, and certainly not in the U.S. Most of our poverty problem is actually a wealth problem. We allow wealth to concentrate beyond all decency. Poverty is just another side effect of greed.
BeanMusical
(4,389 posts)annabanana
(52,791 posts)there is a world of truth and sadness in that line...
stage left
(2,966 posts)Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)I worked for Head Start and I've seen it firsthand.
annm4peace
(6,119 posts)the elementary school I went too has such poverty.
my two good friends teach at such schools, one in the city and one in the country.
my uncle was a principal at a barrio school in Los Angeles and his wife taught in a outlying city of L.A.
my cousins now teach at such schools.
what I read is what I would hear from them. My friend once said to me.. the one thing she can control is that when the student is in her class room.. they will be feed, they will know they are important, they are safe, and they are loved.
Next weekend I am meeting this same friend in Montgomery, AL and we are going to Selma the next morning to participate (listen to others) in the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma.
I will go back home to do my day job and be an activist in my free time. She will go back to her classroom.