Anyone who has been in education has students who stick with them, some for a lifetime. Sarah is one of those students for me. I first met Sarah when she joined our YouthBuild program. YouthBuild is a federally funded project that combines completing high school credentials with learning work readiness through construction (the students actually build a house). I remember our first conversation because she was really upset about something she thought was unfair. I was struck by just how upset she was, but I was also impressed by just how articulate she was about the topic of who got to go to McDonald's and who didn't. By the time we resolved the great fast food fairness debate, I knew she was going to do well. Sarah completed her HSED while she was in YouthBuild and also was awarded 9 college credits through our use of Credit for Prior Learning, a poverty informed practice I've referred to in earlier essays. (John's Story) Sarah is currently a student at Western pursuing her dream of working with children. She volunteers extensively at her church and works with homeless people on a regular basis, including hosting a Super Bowl party at her home last year for a number of people with no place to go. She's pretty remarkable, but her path has not been easy. But I'll let her start that part of the story.
Like a lot of students we meet, Sarah had a challenging background. The more we learn about poverty informed practice the clearer it is we could have failed her early on because she didn't know the norms some would have referred to as the dreaded "common sense", which I've described my dislike for before:Things not to say. Fortunately for us, Sarah started in YouthBuild and our Adult Diploma program, which embrace poverty informed practice by approaching students from a strengths-based perspective and providing them with the support they need to thrive. And although Sarah didn't use the syntax or grammar we might expect of students someday, her instructors could tell immediately that she was extremely bright and engaged in the world. In fact, her life experience was truly an asset and she parlayed it into 9 college credits even while completing her HSED! She turned out to be quite a student, but as we got to know her, it turned out she's an even better person.
Sarah has been a regular presence in our department as she's worked her way through college. I like to think we are a safe home base and she is part of our extended family that we create for students, and I suspect that is all true. But Sarah is unique and embodies some practices we seek to emulate. I asked her to tell a story that served as an example:
I've mentioned in earlier writings my admiration for the sharing culture of people in poverty, but Sarah's Super Bowl party took my breath away. An idea like that would never occur to me. And she certainly wasn't doing it to show off or to impress. She was doing it because people had no place to go and she had a place they could be. She did it because being homeless shouldn't mean you don't get to enjoy America's secular holiday, Super Bowl Sunday. One of our poverty informed premises is that the students with barriers teach us how to improve. Sarah taught me a lot that day.
Poverty informed practice means understanding the norms of our colleges are constructed by humans and are therefore fallible and can be changed. Poverty informed practice means looking at policies and procedures and making sure they serve students, not punish students. Poverty informed practice means challenging ourselves to see what barriers are simply human constructs that exclude the talents of people like Sarah. Barriers include the obvious ones like child care and transportation, but they might also include the academic calendar (Amarillo cut all courses to 8 weeks), attendance policies that don't allow for the reality of crappy cars, textbook lending policies designed for traditional students who are on campus, archaic financial aid rules, and myriad other pieces of "common sense". Poverty informed practice requires us to look at all of those things and see how we can make them serve Sarah.
A two year college is a promise. It's a promise of opportunity. A division like mine, that serves students on the very front end of that promise must strive to create opportunity for everyone. We must start with the premise that if a student can't succeed, we must not have the right policy, procedure, or person in place to help them succeed (liberally borrowed idea from Amarillo College). That is a powerful premise and runs counter to the narrative I hear so often. That narrative says students must meet some arbitrary standard of "readiness" and it betrays the promise of our division in my opinion. In my Division readiness will be signified by entering our door. I had the opportunity to address our college on our College Day in September and I tried to share that message as part of a movement. A piece of that video is below.
"They bring us their dreams, and they bring us dreams they don't even know they have yet." That is a powerful responsibility and every day I see Sarah at the College, I'm reminded that I made a promise I need to fulfill. And if our division isn't poverty informed, how can we expect anyone else to be? I can't wait to see where Sarah's dreams take her.
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