Jumping Into the Issues: Homelessness

After exploring the history and concept of the Human Rights Declaration, as well as some of the specific rights, we finally began our first mini unit.

Last week we began focusing on homelessness.  I think this is one of the best issues to start off with because all students are familiar with the topic.  Some have seen homeless individuals on the streets downtown, others have watched movies or tv shows that somehow touched upon the topic, and some of my kids have personally struggled with finding a permanent home.

One of my major goals while teaching this unit is helping students realize that homelessness, hunger and poverty are not always easy to spot.  Many kids assume that someone must live beneath an underpass and wear old, dirty clothes to be homeless. Kids, along with most adult, hold a variety of stereotypes about homelessness.  While doing my own research about this issue, the most shocking fact I learned was that teens and single mothers are among the fastest growing groups of homeless individuals in America.

We also discussed the unavoidable issues of substance abuse and mental illness.  I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of maturity that most kids showed when talking about drug use is often a way for those struggling with mental illness to self medicate.

There is a great article about the myths of poverty that I stumbled across a few weeks ago.  I did not share the whole article with my kids, but we did discuss the myths. I will link the article to my resources page shortly. After going through these myths, as well as discussing the cycle of poverty, I received this email from a student:

I was surprised to see that many homeless people were homeless because of low minimum wage jobs, under the poverty line and because some of them are single parents.  Surprising to know that usually the people who are in poverty wasn't due to abuse of alcohol or drugs.  My mother always told me that homeless people were homeless because they were abusing drugs or alcohol and because they don't have jobs for being lazy or couldn't find any.  Now I know more than she does and what she said was mostly myths. 

Ok, I hope she doesn't go home and call her mom out for being uninformed, but hopefully she will share this new information and help her mom become a bit more sensitive about this issue.

In addition to sharing these myths and discussing the cycle of poverty, we also talked about the best way out of poverty - EDUCATION!  I hope my kids know that I honestly believe this to be true.  I'm not so naive to think that it is easy, or even that a good education is something every individual has access to, but I do believe it is one of the only ways to change the cycle of poverty and create change individually and systemically.

Another one of my favorite things to do while teaching this unit is to watch an episode of Morgan Spurlock's television show "30 Days".  In the episode we watch, Morgan and his girlfriend Alex move to a new city and try to live on the minimum wage for 30 days.  This proves to be challenging, disappointing and frustrating to the couple.  It is an extremely honest and thought-provoking look at the lives that many Americans are forced to live.

Before we take on our action projects, we also spent a few days reading a short story by Walter Dean Myers called, "The Treasure of Lemon Brown."  While the story is multilayered and discusses a variety of issues, it does include a homeless character and briefly delves into the events that lead to his homeless state.  While I love to have my students read non-fiction articles to really get the facts about issues, I also like the more human element that is garnered after reading a story with dynamic, relatable characters.

I'm currently away at the Illinois Reading Council Conference (aka a reading teacher's wonderland) in beautiful Springfield, but my kids are back at school beginning their action projects.  I can't wait to get back and see what they have decided to do to create some change in our community!