Sixth Graders Come Face to Face with Homelessness

Rachel Cain

“Are you ready?” Ressurrection Graves asked an audience of about fifty sixth-graders.
“YES!” the students cheered. Then they settled down and listened to Graves and other speakers share stories about their personal experiences with homelessness.

The students were from the Maret School and the Washington School for Girls, where sixth grade coursework places a special emphasis upon problem of homelessness. As part of the partnership between the two schools, students volunteer weekly at SOME (So Others Might Eat,) a Northwest Washington interfaith organization that offers a wide range of services to the homeless.

The students also take opportunities to attend events such as the May 28 presentation by Graves and other speakers from the National Coalition for the Homeless’ Faces of the Homeless Speakers’ Bureau.
To some, it might seem that these pre-teenagers, might not be old enough to grasp the complexities of topics such as homelessness and hunger. But Eliza Alexander, Director of Service Learning at the Maret School, said she believes that sixth graders are at the perfect age to begin learning about the issues of social injustice as well as the possible solutions.

“Middle-schoolers have a sharp sense of justice and fairness,” she said. “They’re very outraged about food security and other social issues.”

Nile Speight-Leggett, a sixth-grader at the Maret School, said that he and his fellow students appreciated the chance to help the homeless as volunteers at SOME. In addition, he said, their work sorting donated clothes, packaging gifts and helping with food distribution had given them deeper insights into poverty and need.

“It’s really eye-opening about homelessness,” he said. “Once, there wasn’t enough food for everyone who needed it at SOME.”

To help the sixth-graders further grasp the realities of hunger and inequality, the students participate in a “Hunger Banquet,” in which randomly selected students get to dine on elaborate meals while others have only a few morsels.

“It represents the ‘luck of life,’” explained Celia Waldman, a sixth-grader at the Maret School. “It showed how real it [hunger and inequality] is.”

According to Alexander, one of the best ways to help the students understand homelessness on a personal level is through programs like the NCH’s “Faces of Homelessness” Speakers Bureau. “Faces of Homelessness” features speakers who are either homeless or formerly homeless. These speakers describe their individual experiences with homelessness for their audience.

“The speakers have really been a highlight,” Alexander said. “They make it real.”
Ressurrection Graves told the students that she became homeless because she tried to start a business during the financial recession. When her business failed she also lost her house and entered the homeless system along with her daughter. She worked with another homeless man, who is now her husband, to regain housing.

Another speaker, Dae’Jah Graves, the daughter of Ressurrection Graves, became homeless when she was in seventh grade, only one year above the students in the audience. While she had to deal with the regular difficulties of school the sixth-graders themselves encountered, Dae’Jah also faced the added challenge of not having her own home to return to every night. As the sixth-graders might well have imagined, it was difficult for her to explain to her teachers why she was not able to turn her assignments in on time. However, now she is housed with her mother and is about to begin college at a four-year university.

A third speaker, T. Sanders, became homeless when she was in third grade. As she shared her story of dropping out of school, returning to college, having a child, starting a business, becoming homeless again, and finally getting housing again, she left the students with a final message: “You can get through anything. I worked my way out of poverty. I lost many things, but not myself.”
As Ressurrection Graves shared her personal story, she interspersed it with larger lessons about homelessness. She spoke of different myths about homelessness and then carefully dispelled them. She discussed the idea that homelessness is someone else’s problem, such as a shelter’s. She told the students that homelessness is everyone’s problem. It takes a community to address it.
“Look at what you can do to help,” she advised as they listened intently.


Issues |Youth

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