Defintion of poverty re: income

Parent Cafe
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<p>… trying to figure out how we can have a caring country if many in the helping professions are terrible hypocrites and those whose “personal franchise” is at-risk kids are driven by self-interest. So who is doing the caring and how do they demonstrate it? It’s easy to say we care about children in this country, but why would a teacher endure the kind of loathing expressed in post 146 to do a brutally difficult job for unimpressive pay if he/she did not care about children?</p>

<p>Not to speak for dstark (I’m a fan, guy :)) but perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that we punish at-risk kids, rather than blame them. </p>

<p>And I agree with ucbalumnus’ post above about how many people care about their own children, not necessarily other people’s.</p>

<p>The bile - the complete lack of respect - expressed for teachers on CC, and not only in this thread, is stunning.</p>

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<p>Did change of fortune change your view about public education system and teachers? I’m not happy with every teacher but grateful to most.</p>

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<p>Long ago, I was a teacher for a decade or so in two different states, but both jobs were in areas that I wouldn’t choose to live in or to raise my own kids in. Many free and reduced lunch families, lots of Section 8 housing, a few families who “camped” during the warmer months and spent the deep winter months in cheap hotels and shelters. </p>

<p>I would respectfully like to know what, exactly, Sewhappy would have done if she had been a teacher in the school she described as one where there were rapes and murders?</p>

<p>I do believe there are crummy teachers out there. Just as I believe there are crummy baristas, and crummy politicians, and crummy doctors and crummy lawyers and crummy customer service agents and crummy general contractors. Is there a job or a profession in the United States that is free from low life scum? I haven’t come across any.</p>

<p>But there is something about the teaching profession that makes everyone an expert. Not a lot of jobs exist that allow us to just wander in and observe, and yet every classroom allows parents to do just that. And since we’ve all been students, we all have opinions on how classrooms should operate.</p>

<p>Personally, I was somewhat unprepared for the realities of day to day life as a teacher. Oh, I figured it out as I went along, and was well respected… and loved and in the end I won a few awards. But what I really needed to know wasn’t taught in undergrad (though now there is a lot more preparation in these areas). I didn’t know how to counsel a third grader during the year her mom died of cancer. I didn’t know how to recognize exactly what it meant when a third grader was using the edge of her chair to masterbate. I didn’t know how to recognize signs of abuse hidden under clothing. I didn’t know that I would end up with a little boy being mainstreamed into my classroom, whose inability to keep up manifested itself in him soiling himself. </p>

<p>And in the midst of all of that, I taught every subject, delt with every kid, called every parent, did my level best to be sure that wherever on the spectrum a kid was when he entered my classroom he had made a year or more of progress by the end of the year. </p>

<p>If you haven’t worked as a teacher, you have no idea. We here on CC mostly talk about 1st world problems. </p>

<p>I “retired” as a paid teacher the month before my oldest child was born.</p>

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<p>My relative attended a HS featured in Newsweek, where they locked the kids into the classroom & had A LOT of other security measures way back in the 1970s. He was the ONLY non-black person in the entire school. His sisters attended a private HS. He still got himself into the prestigous flagship U for med school & makes a fine living as an MD.</p>

<p>I have nothing but appreciation and gratitude for teachers & administrators who do their best under very trying circumstances. Many of our good friends & relatives are teachers & administrators, who labor under very challenging situations but perservere.</p>

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<p>Oh, by the way, the public school teachers in the very wealthy county where I now live are (mostly) wonderful. They can’t, however, afford to live in this county unless their spouse is employed in some other profession.</p>

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<p>We do blame the kids.</p>

<p>When you hear somebody that comes from poor beginnings (it doesn’t really have to come from somebody with poor beginnings) say, “Hey. I made it. So can you.”’
Or, “you should have made it”, that is blaming. And we hear and read this all the time.</p>

<p>People that say the above don’t understand. They are outliers. They should be proud of themselves for getting out of a ditch, really proud, but they are outliers.</p>

<p>Then there are actions that result in hurting the kids…like cutting programs that work…like Head Start. The kids should be able to make it like me. I didn’t need Head Start, so let’s cut the program.</p>

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<p>I agree with you on that, dstark. We who haven’t lived it (and certainly I have not) tend to take the example of a kid who “made it” out of terrible beginnings as an example to hold up everyone. It is one thing to say,“see, it IS possible”, and another thing to imply that pulling oneself up by the ol’ bootstraps is a viable method for kids who don’t even own a “boot”, and have never met a soul who has a “boot”.</p>