Sleeping Students: Secretly Homeless?

"One of the devastating realities and the collateral damage of the foreclosure crisis that hasn't gotten enough attention is that it affects our nation's children – they get lost in the bigger picture.”Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

M. was one of my more frustrating students – he would show up to school looking like a mess – always late, sometimes high. He came into class and immediately collapsed into sleep on his desk, drooling and snoring and unresponsive to calls for him to wake up. I spoke to him about this several times over the course of a month and he always gave a different reason for it – “I’m anemic,” or “I was up too late on MySpace.” I suspected that his drug use might have a lot to do with his classroom naps, but when he was confronted by our VP about using drugs, he responded that it was a contact high from friends who drove him to school. All of these things led me to believe that M. was simply not interested in staying awake – so he slept and I gave him zeroes.

My teaching team called his guardian several times, to no avail. We were simply unable to get in touch with her. Finally, we intercepted her on her way to the office to get M. off of suspension - we insisted on a conference. It turns out that M. and his guardian (an aunt) had been homeless for six weeks and living in a local shelter. I felt so embarrassed by my inability to sense that there was something so serious going on with M. After his aunt left, we all wondered aloud – what can we possibly do for them? It seemed like such an impossible situation.

A few months ago, The Washington Post featured an article about the effects of the recession on the children in our nation’s schools (Feb 08, 09, “Schools Face Sharp Rise in Homeless Students). In DC, there are twice as many homeless students this year as there were last year – and in Fairfax County, VA, one of this area’s most wealthy districts, student homelessness is up 20%. The article doesn’t show Baltimore’s numbers, but I can only assume that they have gone up drastically as well.

The article states that there’s much that schools can do to support homeless students (free breakfast and lunch, clean clothes, a sense of continuity in a time of turmoil), yet so many students are reticent to tell anyone about their troubles – male adolescents are especially guarded about this kind of information. Identifying students in need is a responsibility of the school staff, especially teachers – it can be difficult to tell which students are in need of services and assistance (as my story about M. has evidenced) but, as the article states, schools are "often the first safety net for struggling families.”

With all of the daily stressors that go along with being an adolescent, not to mention the other, more tragic difficulties that our students in Baltimore may face, it is important for us to be on the lookout for signs that a student may be homeless, hungry and in need of assistance.

The article referenced can be found at the following address:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020702015.html