In the
beginning I thought I was going to have success contacting someone from around
the world. As this process has continued, my success has seemed less likely. I
do hope that I will have better success further in the semester so that I can communicate
with a colleague from around the world. As a result of the lack of success I
was having, I chose to listen to a podcast instead in order to complete this
project.
The podcast I
chose to listen to is called “The Poorest Children in America”. Here is a link to
the podcast: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/09/17/poorest-children. The podcast is by Jonathan Kozol
and it tracks the lives of the poorest children in America, and where they go.
It is from September 17, 2012, so it is also fairly current.
This podcast
was very interesting to me. I very much appreciated the fact that this man has
literally followed and tracked the lives of the poorest children in America
since the 1980’s. He talks about the children’s experiences and how the young
children tried to support their families. He also talks about homeless families
and how they were moved from a shelter to the poorest neighborhood in the South
Bronx. Hearing him talk about the poor living conditions as well as the
personal connection that he made with these families was incredible to me. The
maltreatment of these families was something I had never heard of before. The
lasting emotional damage that some of the families and children incurred was detrimental
to some of the people involved. It was so sad to me to hear a mother discussing
her experience as a parent in this situation. She felt so genuinely bad about
not being able to help her child. She wanted better for her son, but her son
unfortunately was a victim of circumstance. Another topic of this discuss was
children who possibly had PTSD as a result of living in poverty and being moved
from the poor conditions in the shelter to the South Bronx. The last thing that
they discussed was what happens to these children once they are involved in the
school system. It can be quite a struggle for these children for a few reasons.
There is no perfect way for a school system to work, but unfortunately children
growing up in poverty go from struggling at home to struggling at school.
I think I
gained a lot of new insights regarding poverty. One of the biggest things was
just how different the true story is rather than the statistics. I have some
experience working with children living in poverty, but this gave me a broader
perspective on the matter. I think there is a misconception about what life is
like for children growing up in poverty. We do not always hear the whole story.
It is difficult to fully grasp the struggles and problems for these children
and families and how to help them if we do not fully understand what they are experiencing.
