The mouths of babes

So tonight marked the begining of my education as a special education teacher. I think its going to be disasterous. Not because I can't do the work, I can. But because so far things seem to be based around some assumptions that I find to be both flawed and offensive.

The big one is that poor people and poverty and being from poverty doom children to lives of poverty and to needing special education. The implication is that somehow parents from poverty aren't as good as parents who aren't poor. That kids from more affluent parents are just getting such a better childhood that just being from a poor background makes a kid at risk of droppin gout of school, ending up unemployed, in jail, or a parent at too young an age (which also pisses me the teen mom off).

I get tired of going to class after class where these people from comfortable middle class backgrounds either teach this or sit and share about how horrible these poor people are. The kids are dirty, cause their poor, the don't have school supplies, because they are poor, they don't have manners, they live in filth, they watch too much tv, they have no culture, they never travel, they are just not as good or as smart or as adept at fitting into society because they are poor. And they are never going to succeed.

ITs bullshit. I'm sorry, but it is. There are lots of poor families who make sure they never miss a kid's play, that the kids have clean, well fitted clothes that look nice, and do homework every single night.

Poverty isn't a cause of failure, poverty is sometimes a symptom of the same thing that causes the failures. Poor parenting. Drug abuse. Addiction that takes parents' time and attention away from their kids, and house work and jobs. Mental illness, a lack of mental and emotional toughness that leaves people unable to move on from setbacks and losses. These things lead both to poor parenting that can result is kids falling behind in school and to permenent poverty.

But they don't talk much about that in education classes. Just about how poor kids are worse off, about how poor people need "help" finding "resources" and about how us knowing about the help and the resouces, we as teachers are better at helping them.

I call bullshit. I say that people who have lived a long time in poverty KNOW who to call for help with groceries when they fall short, how to apply for help with utility bills in cold months, and where to go for cheap food and how to get by without electricity for a few days. They don't need someone who works all day in an airconditioned building who wears nice clothes and drives a nice car and lives in their own nice house telling them these things. What they need is teachers who are willing to see things from the family's point of view and work with them. What they need is someone who doesn't talk down to them and doesn't act like a child turing out just like the parents would be the end of the world.

So, anyway, I get tired of hearing it. And I'm just plain tired because I am short of sleep from dealing with parent night last night, I am sick with a bad head cold, I was late because Tom spent all day texting me begging for money for food. And then this teacher who talks barely above a whisper sets the semester's assignments all in one night, and one is to find "resources" for a particular task and present from the parent's point of view.

The tasks were things like being new in town and finding childcare

Being single parent and needing low income houseing

Being sinlge parent and unemployed and no money

Being the parent of a teen mom

I'm telling you, half this list was things I had experienced to one degree or another. And it hurts me as a parent to keep hearing about what a lousey start I've given my kids. I know I'm a fuck up, but I do my best and I don't need to hear about it all the time.

So on the way home I asked Isaiah if he thought I was a good mom, he says no because I don't pay him enough allowance. I ask him if he feels like he misses out on things, and he says well sometimes I don't take him over to friends' houses when he wants and I don't let him ride his bike to the mall or as far from home as he would like. I ask him if he thinks he should have two patents instead of one, he says he likes our family.

Then he asks me why all the questions. I tell him basically what I jsut told you, and he says "mom, you need to tell those people that's BS".

GOd, I love my son.

I sometimes wonder if I will ever be anything but poor white trash who shops at the wrong stores, has noisy mess kids and is next to a modern day spinster. I wonder if I will ever fit into this field that is so entrenched with old, upper class, conservative ideals. But I love my kid.