Education Of Homeless Children And Adolescents Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Families with children, as well as unaccompanied children, comprise a large percentage of those who are considered homeless in the United States. The changing face of the homeless has shifted from an unemployed adult without a family to working families who simply cannot afford to pay for housing on their incomes. These families keep up with their housing payments as long as they can, but when unexpected financial hardships arise (loss of job, unforeseen medical costs, car accidents, and so on) and the family cannot make their housing payment, the result is loss of housing.

Homeless children have consistently displayed academic and emotional problems, as well as poor social skills. In addition to these factors, homeless children are disproportionately at risk for health problems and often suffer from malnutrition. This entry briefly describes how homelessness affects all aspects of a child’s life and then looks at some educational approaches that may help homeless children.

Impact Of Homelessness

Homeless children seldom receive the routine medical examinations that are recommended for all children, thus they receive little to no preventive medical care. The result is that homeless children are often in poor health and are often chronically ill, both of which adversely affect their development. Families are often denied access to shelters if a family member is ill, and this leads to periods of time spent sleeping outdoors, often in inclement weather. More than children who are not homeless, homeless children are affected by common childhood illnesses such as respiratory infections, ear infections, skin disease, common colds and flus, and diarrhea. Hunger and malnutrition are other factors that adversely affect homeless children’s health.

In addition to physical health, homelessness also adversely affects children’s development and often leads to psychological and behavioral problems. Homeless children’s lives can be described as chaotic. Living in a shelter, on the street, or in an automobile is not conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. Homeless children often suffer from sleep disorders and/or sleep deprivation, which can often be linked to short attention spans, distractibility, and an inability to see a task through from start to finish. Behavioral and psychological problems that homeless children are disproportionately affected by, include but are in no way limited to, the following: short attention span; aggression; separation anxiety; poor social interactions; delays in gross, motor, speech, and language development; high levels of stress; and depression. These health, developmental, behavioral, and psychological dynamics make it no surprise that homeless children are also typically behind their peers academically.

Schools For The Homeless

To meet the myriad needs of homeless children, individuals and groups have founded schools that educate solely homeless children. One such example is the Thomas J. Pappas Education Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The school, founded in 1990, serves a large number of students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The Pappas School is founded on the principle that homeless children face extreme amounts of humiliation and stress in traditional public schools, and removing these feelings will foster academic achievement, as well as psychological, emotional, and behavioral development. The school is designed to give homeless children the kind of stability that housed children have in traditional public schools. This stability is believed to foster homeless children’s abilities to make and maintain friendships, which is believed to directly affect a student’s ability to thrive in other areas of their lives.

Upon enrolling in the Pappas School, each student is met by a counselor, nurse, outreach worker, and Welcoming Center coordinator to assess the individual child’s needs. After assessments are made, and the student’s needs are identified, a member from the team designs an individualized learning plan. This plan includes how to deal with academic, emotional, behavioral, and psychological needs. The school also attends to additional needs; for example, the clothing room distributes clothing, food, and toiletries.

The school’s academic structure is quite different than that in traditional public schools. Reading, writing, and mathematics are the core subjects at the Pappas School. Children are grouped, by their abilities, into MALTs (multi-age learning teams). Students progress as their abilities, and not their age, dictates. Students are classified by, but not grouped by, their grade level. Classrooms are also structured under the premise that behavior problems will be the norm, not the exception. Students’ behavioral problems are dealt with in a positive, problem-solving manner, and not a punitive manner.

While the Pappas School provides an example of an entire school that is designed to serve homeless children, a majority of schools consisting exclusively of homeless children are one-room schools that are located within a shelter. Children of all ages and abilities are all in one classroom, where the teachers are usually not required to follow standards and curricula dictated by the states to traditional public schools. The basic premise of schools that exclusively serve children who are homeless is that these children have a great deal of stress and uncertainty in their lives, and schools should be designed to meet all of their needs (with the exception of housing) on site. There should be no need to access outside community resources to meet a child’s needs when the school can do it all in one place. This is in direct opposition to the prevailing ideas of how traditional public schools can meet the needs of homeless children.

Other Educational Approaches

One dominant model that public schools employ to meet the needs of homeless children is often called the communities of learning model. The model is founded on the principle that schools know how to best educate children, but homeless children need more support than is typically given to the average student in order to succeed academically. They also recognize that the other factors (behavorial, psychological, emotional, etc.) that children must cope with will have a dramatic effect on their ability to learn. Therefore, communities of learning incorporate family support, adult education opportunities, the expertise of social service providers, and the expertise of school employees to best meet homeless students’ needs.

In this model, schools work with shelters and other service providers to forge a partnership that results in a collaborative effort that best meets homeless students’ needs. There are tutoring programs: adult education programs that also provide transportation and day care; and supportive services such as counseling, behavior therapy, and so on that are offered in locations which are convenient to children and their parents. An important piece of the program is the adult education component because parents who value education are more likely to promote the values of education to their children. Many schools do not possess the desire or the ability to institute a community-of-care model. This does not, however, mean that these schools are not doing anything to better serve homeless youth.

A common practice in schools that are actively attempting to better serve their homeless students is to have their staff go through intensive training on the issues surrounding homelessness. It is important for all staff who come in direct contact with students to receive training, and the training should in no way be limited to teachers and administrators. Secretaries, bus drivers, and other support staff are often the first contact a student has with a school employee. Unfortunately, these individuals seldom receive the kind of training that is necessary to sensitize them to the needs of homeless children. This training is necessary because these employees often set the tone for the type of experience a student will have.

In addition to educating the school community, many programs reach out to the larger community to educate the general public on the issues of homelessness, how children are affected, what can be done, and so on. The common elements of public schools’ efforts to best meet the needs of homeless children are as follows: collaboration with outside service providers, transportation and child care assistance, teacher and staff training, availability of tutoring, adult education opportunities, focusing on the relationship between the curriculum and the children’s daily life experiences, and flexibility.

While not all elements of a child’s life can directly be affected by their schooling, schools are an integral piece in the comprehensive approach that is needed to make substantial gains in a child’s chances to flourish as an adult. It should not be assumed that the school should be solely responsible for implementing programs that can have a positive influence on the lives of homeless children. Schools, working in conjunction with parents, social service providers, and other community resources, should all come together to realize the dramatic effects they can have on homeless children.

Bibliography:

Burt, M., Aron, L., Douglas, T., Valente, J., Lee, E., & Ewen, B. (1999). Homelessness programs and the people they serve: Findings of the national survey of homeless assistance providers and clients. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Gewirtzman, R., & Fodor, I. (1987). The homeless child at school: From welfare hotel to classroom. Child Welfare, 237–245.
Huesel, K. (1995). Homeless children: Their perspective. New York: Garland.
Kusmer, K. (2002). Down and out, on the road: The homeless in American history. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reed-Victor, E., & Pelco, L. (1999). Helping homeless students build resilience. Journal for a Just & Caring Education, 5(1), 51–72.
Stronge, J. H. (1992). Educating homeless children and adolescents: Evaluating policy and practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
United States Conference of Mayors—Sodexho, Inc. (2005). Hunger and homelessness survey: A status report on hunger and homelessness in America’s cities. Available from http://www.usmayors.org/hungersurvey/2005/HH2005FIN AL.pdf
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Woods, C. (1997). Pappas School: A response to homeless students. Clearing House, 70(6), 302–304.
National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY): http://www.naehcy.org
National Coalition for the Homeless: http://www.nationalhomeless.org

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