My very first placement was in a school affected by poverty. I accepted the challenge because I have compassion and I thought that was the magic ingredient to serving children who experienced food insecurity, high mobility, and low income. I have always been grateful that our government provides for women with children in the way of welfare, free lunch, and public housing. In my first five years as a teacher, I only had a handful of children who paid a reduced price for breakfast or lunch. All of the others ate for free. I am ashamed to admit that I experienced frustration that children who couldn’t pay for lunch, could pay for ice cream. I had an epiphany when someone in a graduate school class shared out loud that she experienced the same frustration. The very wise professor quipped, “Don’t you think poor children like ice cream too?” He made it very clear that anybody who experienced that frustration was viewing the situation from a middle-class lens. He also laid out very clearly that ice cream is a treat for everyone, of every race, and every socioeconomic background. He said that the dollar that a more privileged child spends for that ice cream represents much less of a sacrifice out of the household budget than the same dollar that the poor child spent. Poor parents have the same desire to give their children a treat as wealthy parents. I was never so glad that I didn’t admit to that out loud but I still have that lesson burned into my shema. 

I will always remember the day I learned from a group of children sitting at my lunch table about the “put-out” man. Now I was college educated but I did not know who the put-out man was or that there was a certain protocol associated with his appearance. The put-out man comes to your house while everyone is gone and hauls all of your furniture, electronics, clothes, and household goods onto the lawn when a family is being evicted. But I had children explaining it to me as if it was as common as visits from the mailman. If you don’t know, this is the protocol.  If you are in third grade and you get off the bus and you see everything your family owns on the lawn, you and your siblings are to run as fast as you can to the pile and cover it with blankets and sheets. Then you all sit on the mountain and wait until your mama gets home and she will figure it out. If you don’t cover the stuff up and sit on top of it, all of the other people in the neighborhood will pilfer through your property and take whatever they want. “There are different rules if the people who want to go through your things are bigger or older. There is a whole new set of rules for the days that follow while you move around from house to house, with only the things you can carry,  until your mama can find another place to live. By the time that happens, usually all of your stuff is gone and you have to get everything all over again. 

I am also ashamed that I have had my fair share of frustration when children were not clean or wearing clothes that fit. I mean, no matter how poor you are, you can at least be clean, right? Not if you don’t have any water at home. Listen for children to tell you how they take milk jugs to the park and fill them up with water every afternoon. Chances are, they have no running water at home, which means no washing clothes, brushing teeth, bathing, cooking or cleaning. I had a second grade little boy who came to school wearing a man’s size 32 pants, cinched up with a really long belt that wrapped around his tiny waist two and a half times. The pants were rolled up six or eight times to get them short enough so that he wouldn’t step on them. I knew he had no mother in his life and a very young father was raising him. I made a home visit because I was worried about the child’s welfare. It was late fall and the weather was cold but when I finally met up with the father, he was wearing athletic shorts, work boots and a t-shirt in cold weather. It was then I realized that when the father put his khaki pants on the boy, he was giving him his own adequate clothing.

Another slippery slope to go down is the frustration for children who are tardy. I mean, school starts at the same time every single day. It looks like the children should get to school in time to start learning as soon as we pledge allegiance to the flag. However, children don’t drive. In my first school, many of them walked so I didn’t think that was an excuse. But I taught fifth grade and I had several students who got themselves and their younger siblings up, got them dressed, and walked them to school because their mother was still asleep on the couch. Before you cast judgment on the mother for sleeping, you may not know that she worked all night because the lights are about to be turned off. There is so much about the homes from which these children come that you don’t know and will never understand. Just own an extra dose of gratefulness for your childhood privilege but understand that everyone is not as blessed. You cannot expect all of your students to come from families with the same values as yours. If you happen to get a job in a school that resembles your experience, there will be a whole new set of challenges. Just keep your mind open for all of the home situations that impact what really happens in your classroom. 

This is all so true of many of our PEC students who are struggling with much more that learning and behavioral challenges. The last sentence in the paragraph above says it all,,,,

“ Just keep your mind open for all of the home situations that impact what really happens in your classroom.”

Pamela Webster, M. Ed., SPED