Wealth and Poverty

This teacher helps students find commonalities between their own complex lives and the experiences of children a world away.

I recently confronted my prejudices. After teaching for many years in a low-income, high-violence area of Oakland, Calif., I decided to do some private tutoring. I sought to avoid the stress of politics in the district and the uncertainty of having a new principal every year for over eight years. Although I had outlasted all of the teachers I had started working with, I felt guilty because this was the population I wanted to serve.

When I was a kid, I attended two different elementary schools in the same town. They were very different. One was large, suburban and within walking distance to downtown. The other was very small, outside the city limits in an agricultural area and had a significant number of Spanish-speaking students.

This year our school district launched an iPad initiative for the kindergarten teachers and students at our Title I elementary school.

Students who don’t see well don’t learn well. There may be a place to buy eyeglasses in every mall, but for many children, a visit to the eye doctor is a rare event. These children struggle with undiagnosed or untreated vision problems because they don’t have access to screenings or treatment.

My students had questions about the central character in the story Fly Away Home written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Ronald Himler. And even as 2nd graders, they knew something about the problem.

"Homelessness is mean," said James.

My middle school students had started to use words like “bum,” “creeper,” and “hobo” to describe people who are homeless in our city. To my eighth-graders, it was comic relief.

“Jamilla may have to quit,” my friend Bob said. “She’s not the only one. This new ‘pay-to-play’ policy could wipe out two-thirds of my team.”

Bob was the girls’ soccer coach at our urban high school. For several years he had been growing his program. Finally, his girls were becoming competitive in their league.

During spring break, I was reminded of what a huge impact a small decision can make.

I caught up on information about two former students: Richard and Patrick. They were quite similar when I had them as eighth-graders nearly four years ago. Both were over-age (16 years old) and received special education services. Both got into trouble regularly and were suspended multiple times. However, due mostly to a couple of seemingly small decisions, their lives changed in vastly different ways.