Title I Poverty

Today is cold, rainy, and dark. Maybe it is one of the few sixty-five days of the year that Colorado claims (with embarrassment) isn’t sunny. The pumpkins lined up at the front door don’t seem to mind. Neither do I, since there is a hot apple pie resting on the top of my stove.

I love autumn like every good Midwester girl does–for the change of pace, pumpkin spice lattes (JUST KIDDING! I draw the line at pumpkin spice), the cool after the scalding heat of the summer we think might never end. But it does. It always ends. Then we blink-adjust our eyes, surveying the leaves falling and crisp in the air. What a reminder! We are never in control of the movement of time. The laws that rule nature, the seasons that divide years into neat compartments–they are reliable, something a human can depend on. Fall is a relief, even if the days are dark.

 

There are other things we can depend on, and I’m faced with the blunt reality every day as I walk the kids to school, the one labeled Title I.

Title I schools exist to “improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged.” Title I waves the red flag at poverty. This is where you belong. Poverty, that trashy, no-good stain on our American soil. Poverty, that curse that our society can’t seem to shake off. Even Jesus promised, “You will always have the poor among you…”

Poverty. You can count on it.

 

It’s interesting, learning about Title I. I don’t immediately associate my kids with the words describing Title I school kids,

“low-achieving children in our Nation’s highest-poverty schools, limited English proficient children, migratory children, children with disabilities, Indian children, neglected or delinquent children, and young children in need of reading assistance…” (US Department of Education)

 

Since we moved here midsummer, I had no choice but to enroll them in the neighborhood school. I had walked out the back door on homeschool, of course. We were jumping back in on faith, banking on the big Guy to catch us if the water was too deep. I didn’t know the demographics of the population around me. I knew that if we’d moved earlier, perhaps mid-spring, we could have opted into a non-Title I school, but I had been confused about that, too. Why would anyone opt out of a neighborhood school and into a different school that was further away? I was a country girl, out of the city and out of touch. It suited me to plead ignorance to the system.

 

It turns out discrimination and privilege toe a very thin line.

 

Several weeks ago I went to a district meeting for parents of GT kids, the goal being to inform families of the opportunities to enroll in GT “center” schools. Center schools are the answer for clustering these advanced learners within a large district. On a school night there were four sessions going on at the same time in different areas of the district area. Schools are spread out over some 750 square miles, so the folks in charge tried to situate the meetings accordingly. It was a twenty minute drive from my house to the venue. When I walked in, I was surprised. Nearly every parent was white and well-dressed.

 

Why was I surprised? If I look at the county’s demographics, 91% are white. Of course they would make a good show. But in my Title I school, it’s virtually the opposite. Only about 10% are white.

 

The wheels started turning in my head. Our neighborhood school has a label, and it screams poverty! What Title I parents were able to read an informational email in English regarding an upcoming GT meeting? How could a low-income, one-car (or no car) family ever hope to attend a GT meeting twenty minutes away? What if they happen to work on Thursday evenings at six?

How could an underprivileged child qualify for GT services if the testing is only in English? Should they qualify, who can take their GT qualified kids to a center school in a different neighborhood, being that there is no school bus to take them there?

This had the markings of unfair all over it.

 

Without a doubt most folks don’t want their their communities to be marked by low achievement and poverty. No one wants their life to tell a story of rags unless it ends with to riches. The rags can stay in someone else’s laundry, not mine. We want to start out and end up well off. And this, I assume, is why many people opt their kids out of one “bad” school and open enroll into a “good” one. We can iron it into some smooth reasoning, ”Oh, it’s just a better fit for my kid,” but deep down there it is planted in our hearts, this idea that we deserve better than the next person. The low achievers. Disabled. Neglected. Delinquent.

Title I will take care of those kids, I’ll take care of mine.

 

And this is where I am wondering where the Christians are, the ones who claim to believe in an upside down Kingdom, the first being last and the last being first. The Savior who, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing…and became obedient to death, even death on a cross,”–would he have opted into a better school?

 

I cannot turn my eyes and unsee it, and it is hypocrisy at its peak when I pretend it isn’t my problem.

 

In his book, The God Who Is There (1968), Francis Schaeffer says this:

 

The Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. But when we say this we must understand that the world-spirit does not always take the same form. So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all. This is especially so for our generation, as the forces at work against us are of such a total nature. It is our generation of Christians more than any other who need to heed these words which are attributed to Martin Luther:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady in all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” (pg.18)

 

This is the battle in my Christian American soul, because it is so easy for the rich man–me!–to snake my way out of something that I could pass off as “not my problem”. We want our liberty, man, but give us our freedom from those needy people! I’ve got my own kids, my own problems.

 

If the spirit of the world in our generation is “me first, everything else second,” it is easy to pretend we are all on a level playing field. Your kids happen to go to a good school while mine go to a bad one. Some kids grow up literate, some don’t.

 

Schaeffer goes on to say:

 

…When the Apostle warned us to ‘keep ourselves–unspotted from the world’, he was not talking of some abstraction. If the Christian is to apply this injunction to himself he must understand what confronts him antagonistically in his own moment of history. Otherwise he simply becomes a useless museum piece and not a living warrior for Jesus Christ.

The orthodox Christian has paid a very heavy price, both in the defense and communication of the Gospel, for his failure to think and act as an educated man at grips with the uniformity of our modern culture. (The God Who Is There, pg. 19)

 

We are so blinded by our privilege. It causes us to forget the one huge equalizer among us–that Jesus died for sinful men. That not one of us is above poverty level when it comes to needing a Savior.

What are we thinking when we look at people and label them Title I?

What makes us think we are doing right by opting out?

 

Staying off the road.

October marks three months in our new digs. The shock of big city is wearing off–the sunsets and sunrises are the same no matter your street address. There are open spaces and parks and green grass and weeds growing out of sidewalk cracks–we haven’t jumped into a concrete jungle with bars over the windows (which I had sort of imagined would be the case). Over the past two years we have moved off of a mountain into a small town cul de sac, and now to a through street in a bustling urban neighborhood. We certainly never thought we would have a backyard that backed up to someone else’s backyard. It’s as if we’ve been weaned off the wild mountain and we are standing on the flat ground, tentatively feeling out our first steps. We are still fake-smiling and hugging that weird question of where do we fit in?

 

But I’ve spent 34 years trying to get God to answer that one for me and all I ever get is a hazy “trust Me”. It’s nearly imperceptible, especially if I drown it out by busying myself with a thousand must do’s and should do’s. Then there are voices shouting above the noise, the news and opinions of the world around us. It’s hard to not get caught up in the commotion and think that doing it all–consuming it all–is what life is all about.

 

Right now the headlines in the news are screaming injustice. The media is begging for a fight, blood that can be splattered in the name of scandal. The world wants us to feel outrage, as if exploding our feelings all over the place will solve anything. It’s tempting to add our voice. It feels good to blow off steam in the direction of someone who we think deserves a little lashing.

 

I don’t want to fit into this culture, if this is what it requires.

 

I turned on an episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood this afternoon for my four year old. This turned into a Mr. Rogers marathon, because Fred Rogers is mesmerizing. He cares about the child behind the screen, and his love for them trumps their feelings and insecurities. Mr. Rogers paints a world where grownups are responsible helpers that want the best for kids.

 

America right now is fascinated with the idea of Mr. Rogers yet is standing on a pile of rocks, ready to stone Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, or anyone who seems disagreeable. I yearn for justice, unless you happen to step on my toe (which is wearing a flip-flop, because I can wear whatever the hell I want and how dare you suggest sensible shoes!) and offend me. Celebrities (those with the loudest voices) show up to lead rallies to stoke a fire, preparing to be arrested, when they could be looking into a camera–I like you just the way you are.

 

So this is the world, and we are living on a through street. It’s up to us to keep our eyes open when nearing the roadway, because traffic doesn’t stop. The hate won’t ease, words flung like venom, but we can choose to be pedestrians instead of revving up and pulling our vehicle out into the madness. We aren’t going to walk into the left-right insanity holding a hashtag stop sign, thinking it covers or explains anything, and heaven forbid we use it as a defensive shield. No one out there is following the speed limit, and all the drivers swerve in and out of their lanes. We will stay on the sidewalk and tread our steady path to school and work, eyes alert, even with horns honking right at us.

Hallway Reader

Today I walk into the school, sign in at the front office and attach my volunteer sticker to my orange sweater. The ladies sitting at the desks know me well and ask me about my weekend. I grin, say it was fine, then we make small talk about the weather for a few minutes. I’m eager to start down the hallway. The people in charge had me sign a volunteer agreement form when I registered the kids for school. I am allowed to slip in and out of the library and the third grade class, to shelve books, sort papers. Library isn’t ever bad, but my favorite place is third grade, Ms. P’s class.

If I am being honest, I can say I didn’t volunteer to benefit anyone other than myself. My own third grader has such a poor track record of passing on important dates and bringing home essential homework that I found it necessary to have a physical window into his world. I wanted there to be clear communication between myself and the other grownups in his life, and volunteering was my ticket. I hired a college girl to watch my littlest kids during naptime, and now I walk the eight minutes over to the school on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

The kids are a rainbow of colors, a jumble of busyness. Their eyes light up when I enter the room. I am just as excited as they are–we get to read together. Disappointment is immediate if their name doesn’t appear on my list, the one given to me by their teacher. I don’t know why they like me so well, but maybe it is the magic that happens in the hallway.

I only have two or three kids in a group with me. We sit cross legged on the floor right outside the door and I introduce myself. Then I invite them to sit close next to me and I whisper-ask all my questions.

What’s your name? What do you love to do? Tell me about your family, where you live. What do you want to be when you grow up? What languages do you speak?

Then we get down to business. “Are you ready to read? I love reading. I want you to love it, too.”

They are obviously the struggling readers. The first time–no, second, third and every time–I am shocked at the low level of reading. My four year old at home can sound out words as well as many of these third graders.

I consider the soil where they are growing. I have no deep knowledge of what their home life is like, if they’ve ever been read to in English outside of school. My initial guess is no, and most kids confirm to me that they only speak a language other than English at home.

How have they been moved up to third grade without becoming fluent in basic vowel sounds or sight words like it, as, the?

They are eager to please me, but I wonder why there isn’t an afterschool resource working with these kids to nail phonics?

Or am I judging this all wrong? These kids have a whole extra set of rules: to learn, in English. I cannot separate out kids who happen to be bilingual from underperforming readers without becoming too nosy. The former are our future translators, negotiators, doctors, nurses–unlimited potential. They could race to the finish and a second language is just an extra badge on their chest. But the latter, their future hangs in the balance. And all are on the cusp of becoming literate. It is crucial. We have got to get these kids reading. Third grade reading proficiency is the top predictor of graduating from high school. High school graduation predicts success as an adult.

Kids grow up into adults. Adults run the world.

Therefore (if for no other reason at all, but there are a billion reasons), kids matter. Every single one.

Reading is a lifeline.

In How Schools Work (2018), former secretary of education, Arne Duncan, describes how his mother began an after school tutoring program in Chicago:

Her center started in 1961 after she volunteered to teach a Bible study class at Kenwood-Ellis Church. She gathered the kids around at her first class, a little nervous. She was a young white teacher and these were all nine-year-old black girls from the neighborhood. Each child took up a Bible, and Sue instructed them to open it to a certain book and page. She read the first couple verses and then went around the room. What she found was that none of these children could read. They were all in fourth grade, and they were all functionally illiterate.

From there, she decided that it wasn’t Bible instruction that was needed but instruction, period. She began an after-school program with virtually no money, getting the church to donate space.

(How Schools Work, pg. 160)

This is incredible to me, completely simple, fundamental, obvious. Yet most of us haven’t a clue. Maybe we are just too consumed by our own problems, but if you are reading this right now, literacy isn’t one of them.

Kids need to have their basic needs met. All kids.

Arne describes how everyday his mom would bring in twenty-five pounds of apples and three pounds of cheese for the kids to eat. Her motto was with love, support, and high expectations, any kid could succeed.

But first, love in action.  

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James 2:14-17

This is where we begin, friends. What door will you take to helping others? Feeding those who don’t have food? Reading? Pulling children close to you and whispering words that say I care about you?

Christians who are concerned about planting churches in needy areas, seeking to convert lost souls and proclaim the Gospel–do you realize the kids in your neighborhood are hungry and illiterate?

Your feet are on the floor. Walk out of your door and see who you can find.

{September}

I wrote the book and have wrapped it all up on this blog, but the story hasn’t ended. We have now been in the big city for two and a half months. The roots are in the ground. I have met every neighbor within a block; the teens across the street, the stern grandpa next door, the darling retired couple with the barky dog, the couple with the chickens, the artist who lost her husband two years ago. There was a mystery episode of a huge nasty lizard in my backyard (escaped from the newlyweds’ doggy door). We picked and canned the peaches from our elderly neighbors’ tree. We have shared birthday parties, pies,beans and cornbread, bar-b-que.

Just today we entered new territory when our kitty climbed a tree in the backyard. We were away from the house at the time and when we returned home, a full-on watch party was happening in the backyard. People were genuinely concerned about the safety of our cat, an animal that the good Lord has graced with supernatural reflexes. They were taking videos and sipping drinks and pondering solutions. This is worlds away from the universe I grew up in.

When we moved, we landed scared, intimidated, and slightly prejudiced. This is the honest truth. We didn’t remember homeless or prostitutes on the corners. We’d forgotten how many denominations and opinions and languages there were. We’d been cornered away from most color and class for nearly a decade. As we had risen the ranks from poor, starving college students to debt-free, middle to upperclass parents, we carried our privilege with us. It didn’t feel heavy, as we had acquired it quite naturally and mostly everyone else around us had the same swanky luggage.

If I were to glance over my shoulder, I could see the path that brought me here. And if I peer way back in the distance I can see the first house I grew up in with plywood, rebar, and gravel floors. My dad filling the bathtub with warm water by the five gallon bucketful. The ladder that leaned up against the landing to the second floor. The walls with the horse hair plaster that crumbled off in chunks. There were years complicated by living with a very sick dad. The shame of wearing my brothers’ hand-me-downs and pretending I didn’t care.

I don’t like looking back. I prefer a steaming hot shower and shiny wood floors. I like early morning runs in the mountains and not laying in the buggy heat of an unairconditioned house, willing myself to fall asleep. I like RX bars and toilets that flush.
As a grownup there was no one in my circle telling me this kind of life wasn’t a God given right.

But it was time to peek back and remember that character wasn’t built in a spotless speck house situated in paradise. And we were fooling ourselves if that little seed of struggle early on in our life wouldn’t grow into a tree that bore fruit. It necessitated a move from comfort to dependence, or else we would become the world who demands social justice but offers nothing of ourselves.

We wanted to integrate. To de-class, desegregate. We were concerned for our kids. It was too easy to picture them growing up in a nice house with this fundamental view of privilege.

This took guts and a lot of uncertainty. Because no matter how poor I grew up, I am still white. I can only backtrack so far before it looks like I’m trying too hard.

It wasn’t comfortable to enroll my kids in the neighborhood school when just last year I walked around quite believably as a confident I-can-manage-life-without-any-help homeschooler. (Have you read the book? The joke is on me!) I was preaching to the choir when I should have been sitting in the service.

The big moment of truth came when we walked into Meet the Teacher night and we were in the minority. We were the ones being eyeballed. We were the ones speaking English as our home language. What was this new life going to be like? Would we find something in common with our neighbors?

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland the Queen quips, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”

Of course she is speaking of the intangible, the dreamlike, the preposterous. She is fiction, after all. But I’ve asked myself for a long time now if I’m brave enough to actually do the six impossible things, whatever they are, and beginning with small impossibles.

Meeting the neighbors.

Looking someone with an addiction in the eye.

Listening to a stranger’s story and crying with them. Or crying in the presence of a stranger as they listen to your story.

Maybe it is putting supper on someone’s front porch. Or hiring a babysitter to watch kids at naptime so you can volunteer at your kids’ school. Maybe it is answering the phone every time it rings instead of checking caller ID first.

Being brave isn’t limited to what one can do on one’s own strength. It is just what happens when I loosen my grip on what I can control to catch hold of God’s greater beauty.

It is a fantastic thing to aspire to when you think about it. It isn’t flashy, but it is thrilling. Six impossible things…and then six more. Repeat.

We have now been in school for one month.

We no longer feel quite the amount of tension as when we moved here. It has taken some confessing on our part to weed out our misjudgment and seek a better understanding of the cultures around us. It demands quiet introspection and tuning out what the world is screaming is important. I walk kids to and from school each day, my eyes open for the people in our path. Twice a week I go into classrooms to assist with reading groups and other tasks. I am falling in love with kids and teachers I would have never known.

It seems holy even if we’re taking teensy little steps. They are steps nonetheless.

An Easter Intermission

Good Friday is here, and I am alone with the kids, dying eggs. My patience is thin and thinning with every sploosh of colored water landing on the kitchen table, every crack followed by an “uh-oh.” The baby has a bowl in front of her and she is smashing her egg into a green vinegary soup. After she threatens to eat it, I hold my hands up. “Okay, okay! We’re done with the eggs. Go outside and play until they dry, then you can hide them.”
After I shoo them outside and survey the damage, I read the crayon writing on the eggs. One says, “Jesus Is Alive!”–classic Easter egg design. One says, “Foy {hearts} pancakes,” and another, “Luke STINKS.”
Not one of these precious eggs has been lovingly dyed. And within two hours, most of them will be stuck in a pokey sagebrush plant in the backyard for some neighbor dog to rescue.

It is almost too windy outside, but I lamely hide the eggs in visible sight and call the kids to come and find them. They spend the rest of the afternoon wearing out all the hiding places as if this were the most epic game ever. Their joy is perplexing. What a normal, boring thing to do, hiding and seeking boiled eggs on a windy day in my prickly backyard.

And then I see them clearly, the clues.

The hunt.

“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Luke 19:10

The plain, unbuffed humanity.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Isaiah 53

The Purpose.

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:19-21

 

Every day and every breath is pointing us to Him, even cracked eggs that spell out the insults of a brother. The monotony of messes, the methodical cleaning up of them.  Jesus came in ordinary flesh to redeem ordinary people. He isn’t counting your sin against you–don’t you want to be found?

 

 

 

 

 

An American problem.

For the past several years, I have been thinking about how one traverses the gap from Have to Have Not. Plenty to Sufficient. Lavish to Meager. It is all very well that we understand the American Dream and our own version of it. But I am convinced Jesus came that we might not pursue the American Dream, but search for something far better. After all, the Son of Man, who came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many, claims He didn’t even have a place to lay His head.

The thing is, most of us start out incredibly rich. Forbes published an article a couple years ago titled Astonishing Numbers: America’s Poor Still Live Better Than Most of the Rest of Humanity. The term “poor” negates itself when we zoom out to see the rest of the world. In America, our basic needs–food, clothing, shelter, are essentially met from the day we are born until the day we die. Therefore our goal, our American Dream is usually to improve in every aspect of life. Bigger salary, larger home, more gratification.

We live in a day where our lives are almost 3-D. Media surrounds us in every form, not just the newspaper that, ten years ago, we could choose to leave on the driveway in it’s soggy plastic wrap. The lowly telephone has morphed into a pocket gadget that accompanies us everywhere, internet in tow. The standard of living is molded by every social media gathering place, every app at the tap of a finger. Here are a thousand pictures of what you could want and don’t yet possess. The sky is the limit.  Our American Dream becomes exponentially bigger then–become a renowned scholar! write a book that changes lives! make seven, eight figures! Imagine and create a dream wedding fit for a queen! Indulge in only the highest quality of food and clothing! Go places no one else has ever been. Build a dream house, no corner unadorned. Be famous, admired. Have followers.

We are incredibly me-centered.

But Jesus twisted all we thought was right and noble and tipped it completely upside down when He said, “he who loses his life will find it.” “He who is last shall be first.” “Do things in quiet, where no one sees.”

It is hard to grasp, this idea of giving up more to have less, yet being better off for it. And, for those us who just happened to be born into a country where we “live better than the rest of humanity”, it is nearly incomprehensible. My kids cannot grasp the idea of having only one choice of cereal for breakfast, heaven forbid they ever become familiar with true hunger, starvation.

How do we wean ourselves off ourselves?

Jesus said it would be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Well now, we have a problem! Something has to change, and it looks like it is going to be me.