Youth Homelessness and Displacement
Introduction
Like many critical issues that American’s face in today’s society, youth homelessness and displacement is frequently addressed in children’s and adolescent literature. However, the true definition of “homelessness” has become rather ambiguous, leaving no solid base for elementary and secondary school teachers to start from when addressing this topic. During our exploration of texts that address youth homelessness, including those targeted for third and fourth grade students, sixth through eighth grade students, as well as tenth through twelfth grade students, we were able to operationalize a more solid definition of what homelessness truly means, and what its definition encompasses. From the variety of texts we have chosen, it has become more obvious that while teaching homelessness, it is important to teach students that poverty and homelessness are not necessarily the same, and that homelessness is not simply “not having a home,” but more so having no permanent place to call “home.”
As we chose our text set were conscientious of the ways each text described homelessness and the way it would interpreted, as we are aware of the difficulty of choosing a widely accepted text for our classrooms. As said by Lauren Freedman and Holly Johnson “too often teachers choose not to use certain books for fear that these texts will lead to controversies leading to confrontations with parents, the members of the wider community, or school administrators.” When reviewing this text set, it is important to view the entire set as a whole, rather than just broken down by age and grade level. While each text varies in Lexile level and is targeted toward a certain grade, all texts should be considered for all ages, depending on the ability and skill level of each student individually. This text set is intended to target students starting in third and fourth grade. We chose to omit younger students due to the appropriateness of the topic as a whole, and with hopes that students would bring some prior knowledge or preconceived ideas of what homelessness and displacement mean. According to Cindy Giorgis and Nancy J. Johnson, “children readers bring to the experience their own perspectives, which may change or be enhanced through interactions with different texts and/or illustrations.” This topic, for third and fourth grade students, is timely because it focuses on helping others in the community, and it engages students as a whole class for discussion and revelation of the topic. For middle school students, this topic is appropriate because homelessness is presented as a critical issue that requires solving, and gives students the chance to possibly relate to the text. For high school students, the material is intended to show students what brought the characters to homelessness, in order to show students that their assumptions may not always be correct. The texts to be read by high school students are intended to challenge students’ preconceived notions of homelessness, particularly the assumption that laziness and a lack of ambition are the primary causes. As stated by Lorna Collier, “Young adult literature is also an invaluable resource in today’s English classrooms, engaging students with relevant topics, relatable characters, and accessible language.” For each intended grade level, texts were chosen that have main characters close to the age of the intended audience, with hopes of giving students the opportunity to connect and relate to the characters they read about.
Included in our text set are two children’s picture books, two non-fiction articles, a photo essay which appeared in Life Magazine, two full length novels, two documentaries, and a full length, multi-award winning feature film, The Pursuit of Happyness, which received numerous awards including a Teen Choice Award, the MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Performance, the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture, and a Kid’s Choice Award. Activities planned to go along with our vastly diverse text set include “Writing Letters After Read Aloud of The Lady n the Box by Ann McGovern” for third and fourth grade students, “Defining Homelessness through Compare and Contrast” for middle school students, and “Constructing Home from Artifacts of Janet Wallace’s Life” for high school students.”
The activities planned are related to specific New York State Common Core Learning Standards which can be viewed in the respective tables below:
Resources
Grade 4:
Abbi, S. (2011, October 11). The power of we. Time for kids. Retrieved from http://www.timeforkids.com/news/power-we/15391
This article is about kids from around the world that struggle with poverty and how other kids can help them out. This article was amazing; it speaks about a fundraiser that was put together by kids for kids in poverty.
This article can be used to show kids how they can also make a difference in the world. It’s a great read for elementary students. If they are too young it can also be a great read aloud.
I would use this article as a start to a lesson plan on how students can help other students that are less fortunate around the world. Students can come up with their own ideas of how they can help and what they may be able to donate. Students can also write their own articles and letters and send them into Time for kids.
Bunting, E. (2000). December. Mooloolaba, Austrialia: Sandpiper.
December is a story about a boy and his mother during the holidays. They both stay in a box on the street and call this box home. On a cold winter night they are visited by an old lady who would like to stay with the both of them in their small box. She resembles the angel “December” in the boy’s picture. She stays the night and when they all awake in the morning she is gone. The boy starts to wonder did this really happen or was he dreaming about it?
This book connects to our topic because it is about a mother and son living in a box. They may be without a roof over their heads but this card board box is what they call home. It goes back to peoples perceptions of “homeless” and how there are different types of homelessness in the world.
This book can be used for elementary students. For this unit it will be used specifically for 4th graders. Teachers should not focus on the fact that the book is centered on the holiday of Christmas, because this may be challenging if there are students in the class that do not celebrate the holiday of Christmas. Teachers should focus on the type of season and the struggles the family goes through in the story and what the lady visiting them may symbolize and what it does for the boy in the story. In lexile the level is AD510L.
McGovern, A. (2000). The lady in the box. Turtle Books (New York, NY).
This story ironically is about a woman who lives in a box on the streets of New York City. Every day she is confronted by two children who both decide they want to help her. Through the process of reaching out to the homeless women they both learn the value of friendship and helping others. They also learn the value of sharing and begin to learn the concept of community.
This book connects to our topic because it is another perspective in the life of a person who is homeless. This time it’s an older women living in the streets of New York City. She has nobody except these two children that decide to take it upon their selves and help her.
This story will help my fourth graders learn what it means to help others and what they can do to contribute to people around their community that may need help or may be less fortunate then they are. This will also act as a beginning to an activity that will connect directly to the text. In Lexile the level is AD370L
Literacy Activity: After reading The Lady in the Box I would have students to brain storm ideas of how they would help someone that was homeless. I would also give them a prompt for students that needed guidance or as a way to jump start their ideas and writing. After brainstorming I would give the students an audience (a homeless person, the president, a child in poverty from another country, Time for kids, etc.) and have them write a letter to this person. The letter can be persuasive or it can be questions and concerns that my students may have about this person. The student will write the letter and then publish it and present it to the class before it is sent to the person or possible magazine that it was written for.
Royall, D. (Producer) (2011). Homeless - a short documentary on the homelessness in charlotte,
N.C. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cWl61pa_Ek
This video shows Dwayne Royall interviewing homeless people on the streets of Charlotte NC. The soundtrack in the beginning of the video motivated me to continue to watch. Which I feel will do the same for students. The homeless people that are interviewed tell you how they became homeless and the struggles they face.
This video connects to our topic because instead of students reading about homeless people, they are watching a real account of someone that is homeless. It shows them a different perspective and how someone can go from having so much to having nothing.
I will use this video to motivate students into the unit and to actually see what someone goes through that is homeless, a person(s) who lives on the street and struggles every day to find a place to eat or a place to sleep.
Grades 6-8:
Carey, J. L. (2004). The double life of Zoe Flynn. New York: Atheneum for Young Readers.
Janet Lee Carey’s The Double Life of Zoe Flynn is the story of sixth grader, Zoe Flynn, and the transition her life takes after her father loses his job and her family is forced to move out of their “big and beautiful” old house at 18 Hawk Road in California to small town, Scout River, Oregon. As Zoe struggles with the move and with making new friends, her father struggles to find a new job to support the family. In their battle against homelessness, Zoe has a goal: never to let her new classmates know that she is living out of a van, and to find a way to return to her old life and her old friends in California.
This text would work best for middle school students, grades sixth through eighth, and would be useful as a literature circle selection. The main character of this text, Zoe Flynn, is eleven, and experiences many of the challenges young girls may experience when moving: moving away from a best friend, difficulty making new friends, and keeping a “deep, dark secret.” This text does not necessarily encompass poverty in relation to homelessness, but instead focuses on the transition from having a home to homelessness and the emotions associated with this experience.
Muccino, G. (Director). (2006). The pursuit of happyness [motion picture]. Los Angeles: Sony
Pictures Entertainment.
The Pursuit of Happyness, based on a true story, starring Will Smith, is the story of a father, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) and his five year old son struggling to find stability in San Francisco. Working as a salesman, Chris is determined to make ends meet. However, when his girlfriend, Linda, moves out, Chris is faced with the challenge of raising his son alone and working to build their future. When Chris lands a unpaid internship in a stockbroker-training program, he sees his future looking brighter. But, the catch is that only one in twenty interns will be promoted to work for this company. The Pursuit of Happyness follows Chris and his son as he struggles to excel in his internship while battling homelessness; without a salary Chris and his son are evicted from their apartment and forced to make a home on the streets.
This film, rated PG-13, is both current and relevant while teaching a unit on homelessness. Used as a supplement to an anchor text(s), The Pursuit of Happyness provides further insight on homelessness, and challenges the question of “what homelessness means.” This film would be best used in a middle school classroom, preferably grades seven or eight, but could just as easily be used in a high school classroom. It would be helpful to show this film as a culmination of a unit, especially if literature circles were used throughout the unit, in order to tie the unit together and to address any ambiguity left in students’ understandings of the topic.
Slattery, D. & Moore, T. (2012, Sept. 9). Number of children in city's homeless shelters hits
19,000. Teen Francheska Luciano said living in shelter is like a living hell. NY Daily News. Retrieved from
Francheska Luciano, age fourteen, is one of the thousands of kids living homeless in the Bronx. This article from NY Daily News tells a young teen’s perspective of her experience with homelessness, and the adversity she faces each and everyday. Francheska is not an only child; she is the oldest of four siblings, her younger sisters being seven, four and two years old. This article tells the sobering reality of Francheska’s life, fighting to survive the dangerous streets of New York, when it is impossible to predict which shelter she and her family will land in next.
This article would be best if used as a supplement to another text on homelessness, and would be best if used for middle school students, grades sixth through eighth. With an 1090 Lexile level, this text is at seventh to eighth grade reading level. This article, which covers the true story of a fourteen year old girl, would be relevant to middle school students who are so close in age. This non-fiction text would be great if used in comparison with a fictional portrayal of homelessness, and would be an excellent source to use when asking students what “homelessness” means, and if all cases of homelessness are the same. (1090 Lexile Level)
Literacy Activity:
After reading The Double Life of Zoe Flynn and the article “Number of Children in City's Homeless Shelters Hits 19,000. Teen Francheska Luciano Said Living in Shelter is like a Living Hell,” students will be asked to compare and contrast Zoe and Francheska’s stories, one of which is fiction, and one that is non-fiction. Students will be given a worksheet containing the outline of a human, which they will be asked to fold in half vertically designating one half to Zoe and one to Francheska. Using their comparisons, students will then be asked to come up with their own working definition of “homelessness” encompassing both Zoe and Francheska’s experiences. When students have finished, the class will discuss as a whole what it means to be homeless, and will, together, come up with a definition for “homelessness.”
Grades 10-12
Walls, Jeanette. (2005). The Glass Castle. New York: Scribner.
This is a memoir of Jeanette Walls' childhood. Her father is an alcoholic and her mother is a day dreamer and an unsuccessful artist. When the bills are due, they drop everything and move on, most often in the middle of the night when no one can follow them. She and her siblings find themselves sleeping in shacks without furniture, in one of their broken down cars, or sometimes under the stars, and always with a positive spin on their situation. As she gets older, the hunger, her father’s alcoholism, and her mother’s depression all become worse. It becomes apparent that she and her siblings need to remove themselves from the situation, and they make lives on their own in New York City.
The theme, which is narrowed to defining what it means to be homeless is certainly present throughout the entire novel. It is a powerful moment toward the end of the book when Walls describes her parents sleeping on a park bench, realizing that they are officially homeless. However, I would like students to question what it means to be homeless in the context of Walls' childhood. Of all of the places that Walls described living in, are any really a home? Which ones and why? Do you have a home if you are constantly running away from debt collectors or do not have anything to put inside the walls and roof? Or is home just being with her family? Essentially, this book can help students to define what home is.
This book can either be taught in a unit on homelessness, as we are placing it, or it can be kept in a classroom library as an independent read. It has a Lexile level of 1010, which puts it at a 7th or 8th grade level, but some of the content might be more mature, which makes it a great independent read for high school students who might read at little lower level, while it still has a high school age interest level. As a memoir, it follows the life of one character, and therefore her view of race, class, and gender in the context of her experience are reflected. For example, when living in Appalachian West Virginia, Walls describes her experience with the African American students in her school. Eventually she recognizes that poor has no color. The book can appeal to students of all race, gender, and even social class.
Literacy Activity:
The students will be asked to keep track of artifacts that define "home" for Jeanette Walls as they read. These artifacts can be pictures that they search for, or objects that they might take pictures of to upload. When the book is finished, the teacher will model how to use PhotoStory, which is a program that allows you to make digital stories. Then the students will make their own stories to create a definition of "home". They will be asked to write a script for their stories, directly connecting their artifacts to the story.
McCall, C. (1983, July). Streets of the lost: Runaway kids eke out a mean life in Seattle. Life.
Retrieved from http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-021.html.
The article tells the story of five teenagers living on the streets of Seattle in the early 1980s. It starts by explaining that the teenager are runaways, but did not leave for adventure. Most of them were escaping abuse and violence, and life on the streets seemed better than their lives at home. The teenagers are vulnerable to drug abuse and rape, and often become involved in drug trafficking and prostitution. They are under aged and undereducated, and therefore they have nothing else to sell and no other means to make money. They live on the streets or in abandoned buildings, and frequently spend nights in jail because of the numerous jaywalking and littering tickets the get each day. This has a clear connection to the homelessness theme, as it is literally about teenagers living on the streets.
The text of the article has a Lexile level of 1150, putting it between a 10th and 12th grade level. What might be more powerful, however, are the pictures included in the article. They show vivid images of the experiences of these teens. Parent voices, authorities, and shelters are missing from the article. This leaves room for the students to challenge it and question what other options these teens have. It could even lead to an inquiry project exploring these options, and therefore defining homelessness. The article can be a little graphic, and should probably be used in 11th or 12th grade classrooms. It is also important to keep in mind that it was written in 1983. The economic recession of the time is mentioned. Another good use for the article would be to put it in a historical context, and pair it with a text that discusses current economic conditions.
McCall, C. (Producer), & Bell, M. (Director). (1984). Streetwise. [Motion Picture].
(Available on YouTube).
This documentary follows the lives of teenagers living on the streets of Seattle. It was inspired by the Life Magazine article, "Streets of the Lost" by Cheryl McCall. It follows the same teens from the article in their day-to-day lives, panhandling, dealing drugs, buying and selling weapons, in jail, and visiting health clinics. What's powerful about the documentary is, although you must always watch things knowing that the producer makes the final cuts, it is the teens themselves telling their stories. A few other voices are heard, such as Erin's mother and various doctors at health clinics, but the teenagers are at the forefront. Again, this is a literal representation of homelessness, made powerful in a high school unit because it is about teenagers.
A major criticism is that the only African American voice is that of a teenager who became a pimp. Perhaps it is a reflection of the fact that the documentary was made in a different era. It casts racial differences in a negative light. Something I think was done well was showing differences in gender for teens. They all share similar hardships, but there are differences in the way that the different genders choose to survive. The documentary is about an hour and a half, and it contains some mature language and content. The best way to use it as a text in the classroom would be to chunk it. Certain clips could be very useful, such as Rat and Mike showing their "room" in the abandoned hotel and explaining the different types of dumpsters they encounter, or any of the teens explaining how they became residents of the streets. Similar activities can be done with the documentary as with the article (or with the article) such as an inquiry to explore options for abandoned, abused, and neglected youth.
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