New Blog on Poverty and Education

For our readers who would like to continue their understanding of issues on poverty and education that was the focus of our Winter 2009 issue of the journal, "The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education," I came across a new blog this morning that might be very helpful. It is called, "Living and Learning in Poverty." According to the blog, the blogger, Paul Thomas, is an associate Professor of Education at Furman University, who has taught high school ELA in North Carolina for eighteen years at a rural school with "significant poverty issues."

This is his description of the blog's purpose and goal.

"This site is dedicated to storing and exploring all available research and resources related to poverty as it impacts the lives of children and the learning of children....Our society and our schools are failing our children, but not in ways often popularized in our wider discourse about schools. Our free society is still plagued by social inequities related to gender, race, and affluence—all of which are accidents of birth placed upon children. Our schools remain reflections of our social inequities, but in order for those schools to help children attain the empowerment that is also their birthright, society must lay a more solid and level foundation for children before school and during their education.This site is dedicated to housing the best possible data available for all stakeholders in the lives of children—including the children themselves—in order to overcome the plague of poverty in the lives and learning of children."

Nina's Song: Honoring a Farmworker who Died

Editor: Nandini Gunewardena, author of "Pathologizing Poverty: Structural Forces versus Personal Deficit Theories in the Feminization of Poverty" that appears in our winter, 2009 issue on "The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education," sent in this e-mail. Dr. Gunewardena gave us permission to reproduce it on our blog. The author can be reached at: nandini@ucla.edu Nina’s song, in commemoration of the life and death of farmworker, Agustin Gudino, gives a human dimension to our articles.

POST FROM AUTHOR, NANDINI GUNEWARDENA

This is to share the poignant song composed and sung by twenty-year old Nina Marie Fernando, my niece (Ramani's daughter), a junior at Redlands University, in memory of a farm worker Augustin who died in the Grape fields due to heat stroke on July 21st, 2005 in Kern County.

She sung this at a prayer vigil last week in downtown L.A. for all farm workers who have died in the fields, including the pregnant teen who died recently - part of her work as an intern at CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), Los Angeles.

The words are below. Click on this link youtube.com to listen to Nina's haunting voice, and enter "Nina Fernando" in the search field to get to the song. [Or go directly to:

Nina Performs "Agustin's Song" ]

Agustín’s Song

by: Nina Marie Fernando

Escuchanos en los campos
Nuestro dolor y nuestro sueño
Queremos ver los colores
De justicia y unidad

Remember us at your table
How each fruit was plucked with a dream
How we thirst to be acknowledged
How we hunger to be seen

I became a sacrifice
To the sun that gives us life
We are lost, apathetic, in darkness
Shine a path toward what is right
I came here with nothing in my hand

But I had strength in my heart
My voice was silenced, my strength exploited
Now hear my plea
As I stand, take my hand

A Scholar and a 14-Year-Old Take on the Issue of Poverty

With our winter 2009 issue on "The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education" now being read and discussed by our readers, we thought we might add two more sources that we recently found on the web. One is by a scholar, the other by a 14-year-old on YouTube. We invite your thoughts.

David Berliner's report, Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success

14-Year-Old Student, John Wittle, looks at his school's invitation to Ruby Payne on YouTube, Ruby Payne Does Not Understand Poverty

Check them both out.