Disadvantage groups

Homeless Students

Urban Academy is located in the heart of downtown St. Paul, MN and it is surrounded by a few homeless shelters. Because of the location our school is an elementary school that welcomes a lot of students who are disadvantaged by not having a home, children that are homeless.

In my 1st grade classroom I have had a hand full of homeless students throughout the years. I have always thought about how a 1st grader can understand the concept of being homeless. Then I thought about the fact that most of my homeless students don’t know better, that they have a different definition of a home. For them a home is a place where you sleep, not necessarily a safe place; a place where you stay for a while and then you have to leave behind. Based on that I have changed my way of thinking about what the meaning of a “home” is.

I have always tried to encourage my homeless students and help them as much as I can. Openly communicating with the parents is the best way to reach the child and really get to know them and their needs. Some homeless families are just in a temporally situation and are in the process of finding their own place. I had a family that was staying in a close by apartment shelter because of a recent divorce; the mom was trying to get a way from the dad and was in the process of finding a stable job after moving to St.Paul MN from Chicago. The homeless apartment shelter they were staying in was just a temporary situation for them. The children were taking the move hard but were very optimistic about the future.

In the same time I have had families that are staying in a different shelter every night not knowing where they will sleep the following nights. In a situation like that it is most likely to see behavior problems related to their life conditions; students like that simply need stability in school that they don’t get from home; they need a steady schedule and a follow through discipline.