Project Connect, etc.

Because I've been interviewing high school teachers I've been able to hear some stories about how difficult and frustrating it can be to approve new and/or challenging lesson plans. One person I interviewed quit teaching out of frustration and another teacher has been soldiering on with over twenty years on the job, despite hating the last four years of her administration and an anti-teaching climate. So when I started to try and raise donations for Project Connect (an event for homeless and people who are at risk of becoming homeless) I remembered an assignment I had in a middle school English class. We were supposed to write letters to our favorite businesses, telling them how much we like their products, and the incentive was the idea that they might send you something for free. So I wonder how hard it would be to change an assignment like that to writing to businesses to ask for donations to charitable causes. It seems like such a small change and such an important one because as a class discussion recently reminded me, many people are completely ignorant of history and when you're ignorant of the history of activism you can be ignorant of your own political power and your own influence over the market should you choose to exercise it.

Anyway. . .
I am writing to DIVA CUP at divacup.com, the makers of the GREATEST MENSTRUAL PRODUCT EVER!!

I know, they scare some people (even me, at first) but they're wonderful and they seem like they'd be a perfect fit for someone without the money to buy tampons or pads. Over the past three or four years I've saved tons of money. I hope all my compliments and information will convince them to donate their product.

This whole event has me thinking about homelessness and poverty and how skewed the debate becomes because the discussion is so often framed in one or two stereotypes. Again, this is where stories in education are so important.

When I think of the homeless I think of . . .

- The GLBT kids in Salt Lake City that I saw in a documentary. They were squatting in abandoned buildings and homes because their parents kicked them out for their sexual orientation.

- My husband, who lived in an abusive home and was kicked out of the house before he could graduate high school. Sometimes he couch surfed, other times he squatted in abandoned buildings, crack dens, etc.

- My cousin who has been living at home and recently found herself pregnant with twins. Her mom wants her out before the babies are born. . .but this is a much longer story.

- People who are homeless because of a drug addiction.

- People who have a drug addiction BECAUSE they are homeless.

- The mentally and emotionally ill.

- The physically ill.

- People with disabilities.

- Veterans.

- Mothers, Fathers, but as the statistics for the last Project Connect tell us, mostly it's children.

- I think of my mother, my sister, and me. I think of how easily we could have been homeless after my parents divorced and how the only thing that kept our disasters from destroying the roof over our head was my mother's very supportive and wonderful parents who I owe more to than to anyone.

- I think of my uncle who was blinded from complications resulting from his premature birth. I think of how that 1950's doctor recommended he be institutionalized and I think of all the people I saw while working at the library in Ann Arbor -- many people who had been institutionalized but then were released and had no where to go. I wonder how many of them suffered the fate my Uncle could have had my grandparents not said No. I wonder if they have family or if institutionalization blunted their emotions and kept them from building normal familial bonds.

- Anyone.


There are stories that need to be told.