My convocation was with one of my friend’s who is the supervisor at the Oliver Gospel Mission here in Columbia SC. Their mission is to see that the broken and homeless are sheltered, given the gospel of Jesus Christ, and equipped to live responsibly. This area is, surrounded by corn and soybean farms that often employ migrant farm workers, is a few miles away from one of the most impoverished communities in the state. A state that historically has had a very high poverty rate. We are fighting poverty by adhering to the ideology that poverty is self made by those individuals who refuse to work and can only be undone by deciding to work and the impoverished neighborhoods a short distance away is a public university that graduates about 800 teacher education students per year, 80% of which come from its surrounding communities. I often wondered what situated knowledge my students bring into teacher education courses regarding issues of poverty. How do they build understanding about poverty, what discourses influence their understanding and what impact might this have on their professional practice as teachers? Understanding the discourses of poverty is crucial for teachers.
I learn that the poverty rate in our community is large then I was thinking. Some of the information I was told I could not post but it was very sad. The number of children I told me that com though his program was 259,429 (24.4%). As a teacher, what do we do? Early Heat Start was form to combat this problem but it seems as if the problem is keeps growing larger.
I learned so much this week about poverty and our children.
Christopher, it's great to hear that you are able to learn more about the realities of poverty in your community. Local organizations, like the one you mentioned, are so valuable to the communities they are serving and cities would not be the same without them. Although my focus was on poverty in Finland, I did come across a local resource making a difference here in San Francisco called Project Homeless Connect who's motto is "Never look down on someone, unless you're helping them up" (http://www.projecthomelessconnect.com/). Looking forward to learning more about the work being done to fight poverty in my community.
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