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Chapter 3

Teaching the Homeless, and Fighting a Trend

Teaching the Homeless, and Fighting a Trend

This activity contains 3 questions.

	What are the arguments presented in the article that supports separate schools for homeless children?   "The school has mentors and tutors who work with children individually. It has showers and a clinic, and every child gets breakfast and lunch. But there are more subtle nods to the children's situations, too." "The Pappas schools' very separateness makes Phoenix's homeless children highly visible, attracting a flood of community donations, enough to maintain a food pantry where students' families can get groceries, and a toy room for birthday presents, and a clothing room where every child can choose three new outfits a month." ''If a child falls asleep at a regular school, you wake him up and tell him to pay attention,'' said Dina Vance, the principal. ''But when I taught here, I'd pick up the child and carry him to a spot where he could sleep for a few hours. This is a place where these kids feel comfortable, where they're free to pop up and say, 'I need a shower.'' ''I would love to see these kids in mainstream schools getting all the support and help they need,'' Dr. Dowling said. ''But as a practical matter, that's not what happens.'' "For children in homeless families, who move frequently, transportation is often the biggest hurdle to school attendance. But the Pappas buses shift routes as children move, and outreach workers track where the families are living. Most of the students get off the bus in the morning carrying nothing -- no backpack, no books. Teachers know that homework is hard to manage in the students' living situations."

	What is the downside the homeless children being segregated from mainstream schools?   "Pappas is not academically outstanding -- no surprise, since most of the 25 or so new students who arrive at the school each week are two or three years below grade level." "In Phoenix...about 95 percent of the homeless children attend the Pappas schools. And that...is part of the problem. Separate schools...make it much easier for shelters and social workers to refer students there than to fight for the transportation and support they need to stay in a mainstream school." "Classes are large, and in one squirmy first grade, the teacher spent an interminable half-hour on a simple worksheet with pictures of things that started or ended with ''k'' -- an activity that engaged no more than a handful of the children."

	What has changed about the nature of homeless families in the past 20 years that supports the rationale for schools to provide significant social supports for homeless children?   d Historically, homelessness was seen as a short term crisis that would temporarily interrupt a child's education, now it is a chronic problem among families and the education of their children gets lost with the many moves and transitions. ''When I first started in the field, 20-some years ago, the fact that children were homeless seemed like a temporary crisis, a problem that could be eradicated,'' said Steve Banks, attorney in chief at New York's Legal Aid Society. ''What's so shameful now, whatever the programs to help them, is the national acceptance that there are homeless children.'' k d

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