Poor and homeless students
Peter Edelman suggest that in order to reduce poverty groups like ,government, business, unions, foundations, churches, civic leaders, ordinary citizens, and poor people must join the battle to find ways that everyone in such groups help poverty. Edelman also believes that poverty plays in a form of a cycle, where children follow the same pattern of choices as their parents so in order to prevent the cycle form replicating young children must be educate and learn about options and resources available to overcome poverty. However this is very difficult especially for families with very little resources. They often don’t belief or view school as important instead they see school as an obstacle that prevents them from working and providing food in their table. In the reading “where are the poor students” the author exposes a different view of how children in poverty communities view education.
Howard makes a significant observation that I before assumed was true. He said that everyone was under the belief that students today don’t face obstacles in perusing a college education as long as they work really hard. He explained that there were bigger realities like the quality of k-12 education that many in low income communities or the lack of role models in their communities. Everyone assumes that it’s simply money that prevents poor children from attending school but the reality is not only money but additional circumstances. I’m sure there are more people who believed that the obstacles poor children faced were much smaller. I still can’t belief what I was reading and how issues like such affect most of the poor communities and only few students try to overcome to achieve more in life.
Students that are homeless for example like Tenisha in the article “Homeless” definitely faced difficulties and struggles deciding whether to attend college or not simply because meeting more urgent needs like food and shelter were far more important than education. Unfortunately theirs not many resources that can help homeless students, they can apply for financial aid but that will only cover partial of the cost that the school demands throughout the year they can try speaking to administration but only small amounts of universities are able to accommodate homeless students. Similarly a student form Miami named Joshua Williams faced as finish his education. He was homeless for almost the entire time he was at the university he went without telling anyone about his circumstances of being homeless until the very end. Luckily Joshua obtained help from the school and community groups and completed his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and is able to tell his story to others. Being poor does not make it easy for those trying to better themselves in life and it’s really sad to know that we all know many students who had the opportunity of going to college but decided to work instead for pleasure knowing that around the nation we have lots of poor students who would really appreciate the opportunity of attending college.
