The Value of Helping

1 out of every 5 children in the United States
 will go to bed hungry tonight.

According to Share Our Strength, No Kid Hungry

 (http://www.strength.org/childhood_hunger/)

“Changing the meaning of education to make it purposeful and relevant to people living in poverty requires learning about what they have passion and motivation for. For many, a strong motivator is the desire to stop the poverty-related suffering of the people they love. Therefore, service professionals need to show students and families in poverty how education can truly help them to move out of poverty.” (Dr. Donna Beegle, "See Poverty ... Be The Difference! page 71)

So, the questions came to me … How can we work towards eradicating hunger for our students? How can we show families in poverty that education can help them move out of poverty? How can we tap into this competency that children living in poverty already have … this desire to help those they love? Can we use this to teach them important, relevant skills and work toward solving this hunger problem at the same time?

What about a classroom project based off the model of “backpacks of food” programs that are taking root in communities around the country and were shared with us Monday night in class.  These programs provide a backpack of food for homeless or hungry students (who may only be eating at school when they can get free or reduced breakfast and lunch) to take home over the weekend. My idea is to empower students themselves to make this happen. While I initially thought this project could only be done in an intermediate or junior high classroom, I actually think with the right support primary students could effectively plan and pack backpacks of nutritious foods and put them in a designated spot for pick up by the students who need them.

There are so many educational lessons that could naturally stem from a service project like this.  As a group project, it requires cooperation and collaboration.  Getting enough food each week to pack the backpacks requires good recordkeeping and planning. The whole thing requires math – counting, keeping track of inventory, graphing usage. There’s nutrition – the backpacks would need to be nutritionally balanced and healthy, so students would need to learn about that. There might be writing if the students were the ones to solicit the food from food banks and from their school community. There would definitely be a social justice component as children would need to learn about poverty and unfairness.   In addition, students would be learning to help, learning that their efforts can make a difference in the world.

I am still wondering about how this could be done discreetly so that students receiving the packs aren’t stigmatized by their classmates. These kids face enough already, I don’t want them getting teased on top of it! I thought about using the schools sponsoring other schools idea that came up in class, but I want the project to be local. I want kids to be able to help their friends and neighbors and their own families through this project. I want the project to be relevant to what they value – their own communities and families. Perhaps together the kids could come up with the best way to distribute packs discreetly. Perhaps they might even come up with something bigger than what I have – a bigger way to impact their families and communities.

When the quarter started I wasn’t sure the role of teachers should be to teach activism.  But I am starting to realize, especially after our readings/lectures on educational paradigms that there are big problems facing our world and the leaders of tomorrow need to be empowered to find solutions to them.  This requires us to teach our students leadership and collaboration. This requires that we teach our students to dream of “what might be.” (Seth Godin, “Stop Stealing Dreams,” section 19)

 Might there be a future in which children aren’t hungry? Might there be a world in which children themselves are part of the solution?