school events because they are catching up on sleep between their two jobs." I completely agree. The author has proved just by her experience alone that it is almost impossible to maintain housing on less than two jobs. So imagine throwing kids in the mix. There is a possibility that both parents, if the child lives in a 2 parent home, may have to work 2 jobs just to put a roof over their heads and food on their table. And what does this mean for our students? It means that they may not have help with their homework because their parents can't be home to help them. Or in more severe cases, that they were responsible for caring for other siblings while mom or dad had to work. There is a chance that students will come to work sick, because they don't have medical coverage to go to the doctor. Or because their parents can't afford to take a day off to let them stay home and recover. So what have I learned from all this? That we can't assume that our parents don't care just because they can't return a phone call, or come to open house. And we can assume that every student who falls asleep at their desk is just lazy, or stayed up all night playing video games. The only thing we can assume is that each one of our students will have a different situation at home and it is our job as teachers to be aware and provide any accomodation possible to help these students achieve greatness.
Question #7- Ehrenreich found that she could not survive on $7 per hour-not if she wanted to live indoors. Consider how her experience would have played out in your community: limiting yourself to $7 per hour earnings, create a hypothetical monthly budget for your part of the country.
If this situation played out where I live, there would be several factors to contribute to the undeniable poverty she would have encountered. The first issue would be transportation. Where I live, it is a small community. You must own a car if you wish to get to anywhere of value. So hypothetically, if you were actually able to obtain a job, you'd be looking at approximately $60 dollars a week in gas, plus a car payment (unless your car is payed off). If you choose to use public transportation, there is one park and ride in my town that goes into Tampa, but you must buy a bus pass, have transportation to the bus stop, and obtain a job who's hours allow you to be promt to the bus stop because it only has 2 departure and return times all day long. If you're a mother of 2, like myself, even with extreme couponing, we spend at least $100 per week on groceries and toiletries. We spend $200 per week on childcare for 2 kids, and this is the discounted rate. We pay approximately $190 per month for electricity, and we own our home, so we pay $2400 per year in homeowner's insurance and $1500 per year in property taxes. If you were to rent, which I helped a friend do some research recently, the cheapest apartment in town is going for $575 per month and requires first and last months rent up front plus a $50 security deposit. So, if we imagine that you are in good health, and require no more than the occasional over the counter medicines, we can assume that you will need approximately $495 per week, which means you would have to make at least $12.38 per hour. Good luck there, the average starting pay in this area is about $8 per hour. So I think regardless of geographical location, if you're at the bottom of the socioeconomic food chain, you're bound to remain there for a very long time.