this is why I teach!!

We've been reading culturally responsive texts this summer...digging deep into real life issues and struggles that people face. This past week we read Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting, a story about a  boy and his father who are homeless, live in the airport, and try to go unnoticed by other patrons and security.  We also read two articles on homelessness, one about homeless students in Las Vegas and another about homelessness in Nashville.  I was timid about navigating the conversations with my students, wanting to be careful about what I said.  But we seriously had some amazing discussions.

It is BEAUTIFUL to see the compassion and empathy my students have.  And it was great also being real...looking at the issue from multiple sides.  As a culminating experience, my students had to write their opinion answering "Is homelessness an individual problem or a community problem?"  They also had to come up with solutions.

Check out some things they wrote!  AMAZING!

This student on his own decided that homelessness is BOTH an individual problem and a community problem.  I didn't even think of giving them the option to write about both!

This one is my FAVORITE! One of the articles said that homelessness is a "black eye to our community." We talked about what that meant, and how homelessness makes it look like we don't care for our community and may make people feel like our city is unsafe and dirty.  ON HER OWN, this child wrote "So as you can see homelessness is a black eye for our community and homes and supplies are the ice packs."  THE ICE PACKS! What an AMAZING metaphor! :)  This child has learned that we can be part of the solution to bring healing to our broken world. What more can I ask for.  She also definitely needs to grow up and be a writer. :)

Another student had the idea to collect donations of food.  So at the end of the day, we did a quick shared writing activity where we wrote a letter to our parents telling them what we learned and what we wanted to do about it! I typed, and they told me what to write.  We asked students and families to bring in donations...and it's only day 1, check out how much we already have!! :)

The coolest thing about this is that many of my students' families are just making ends meet. One of the students that brought in the most gets donations from our school during the holidays.  But when she brought in the food, in her broken English she said "My dad took me to The One Dollar Tree, because I felt sad for the people. They have no homes." 

These kids inspire me and make my job worth it!