Poverty & Hunger (Blog Post #6)
Welcomeee back!! I hope everyone had a great spring break! π₯«
This week I wanted to talk about a social issue that I've helped with for manyyy years. That social issue is hunger and poverty. Ever since I was like 13 years old, I've served food to people in need with my family members. I've also gone on some trips to Texas and Missouri to help rebuild and clean parts of cities after natural disasters occur.
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| (some friends and I cleaning trash from a pond) |
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| (I'm somewhere in this picture, but we were cleaning out an abandoned apartment) |
For this week, I read the following books:
I also watched the following videos:
Here is my book talk for this week that talks a little more about the texts and videos above!
That's all though for today! See ya real soon!! π‘
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Hi Emily! Thank you for sharing your collection of texts on introducing the topic of poverty and its impacts to a younger audience. I found your book talk so well organized and it is clear you put a lot of thought into how to effectively introduce the topic and the texts to an audience, especially with your opening introduction. The framing of hunger and poverty in these texts and your approach in organizing them as a set work very well to build empathy in young readers, who would be engaging with these texts, and help them to understand complex ideas like how it is not individuals fault that they are in situations of poverty but many times there are broader systems at play that perpetuate conditions of hunger and poverty. These types of texts are critical for all young people to understand, and exposure to them at early ages through children's books and graphic novels can build skills for civic engagement and advocacy that grow with young people as they age. Thank you for sharing!
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ReplyDeleteI like that you included the books/videos in your discussion. I loved that you went in depth with watching videos as well. The video about the wealth care gap is something that is incredibly important to talk about when we think of being educators in an urban school. There is that line as you stated that you may make too much to receive benefits but can't afford them on your own. I went through this personally with health my health insurance last year. It was difficult being 22 and working two jobs to afford healthcare while in school. Yet, if i didn't work two jobs I couldn't afford food. I think it is critical to talk about in classrooms because many children rely on food stamps and yet that is being taken away by the government or their family does not assist them and kick them off right away. It is incredibly important to raise awareness on this topic because it builds empathy and that trope that welfare = laziness dissipates. Poverty is a huge issue in America, and if we don't address it, how will students understand other people's situations? I love how organized and passionate you are about this, it really shows how well you will implement this in your classrooms.
Hi Emily! I really enjoyed your post for this week and the fact that you decided to focus on an issue like poverty. Something that really stood out to me was your discussions of poverty as being an issue that we don't always see because people try to hide it. We very well may be in a situation in our classrooms where we don't that our students are struggling with things such as food insecurity or homelessness, and they may act out in disruptive ways because of it. It's always important to remember that you don't know all the ins and outs of a student's life and to be empathetic towards every situation because things may be going on behind the scenes that we're just not aware of. Another thing I appreciated about these texts was that the solutions focused on a change in the system, not a change in the people who are actively struggling through poverty. A lot of the time in American society, the individuals themselves are blamed for their situations when, in reality, there are a lot of barriers put in place that prevent people from climbing up the social ladder, such as racial bias and other inequalities. Certain caveats exist such as welfare traps like you discussed in your post that keep people from escaping poverty. It's important that we stress to students that it is not the fault of the person in poverty for their struggles and that we should work to help, support, and advocate for them and for change in our own systems. Again, great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Emily! Ignore how late this is...I loved your book talk this week! It was incredibly well put together and well thought out, I'm truly super impressed! Also, I simply LOVE your line "And this just really shows how hard it is to chase a dream when you don't have enough resources." It really encapsulates your issue really well, and it's like a punch in the gut. "A person's dream will never die!" (IYKYK) but not being able to pursue it makes life incredibly difficult. Thanks for making this, it was really amazing!
ReplyDeleteHi Emily! This book talk and topic is amazing! You had such great sources and you covered the topic perfectly! This is super important to address, especially in classrooms. You bring up such a good point that people are always trying and pushing through to make money and achieve their dreams, it's not like people aren't trying! I think the hunger with children book is so important to look at! I've even noticed being/working in schools and daycares that hunger with children is no joke! It completely ruins their focus when they are hungry and when we exercise our brains so much in school, we get more hungry. So, adding in poverty with this hunger is very important when we think about children in schools.
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