Teachers experience poverty firsthand
Families affected by poverty face many daily challenges. With limited funds they must prioritize life decisions. Should they purchase school supplies for their children or pay the water bill? Should they miss a day of work to stay home with a sick child or pay for childcare?
Iola Middle School teachers took a walk in their shoes Tuesday afternoon by being placed in similar scenarios.
Jack Stanley, IMS principal, and Sean Ozbun of the Southeast Kansas Community Action Program (SEK-CAP), provided a poverty simulation for teachers. Stanley said poverty is an issue within the community and school system.
The 2013 poverty level for a family of four in the U.S. is $23,550, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In Allen County, 15.4 percent of individuals live below the federal poverty standards.
“I wanted to bring an understanding of what people of poverty go through,” Stanley said. “The southeast Kansas area is really affected by it.”
He heard about the simulation from other schools in the area and proceeded to reach out to Ozbun.
“We have done simulations at Coffeyville High School, Coffeyville Community College, Pittsburg State, Neodesha Elementary and we will do one in Fort Scott later this year,” Ozbun said.
Ozbun, who has been with SEK-CAP for seven and half years, said there is an objective to the simulation.
“We want to make people more aware that a good number of students are living on a day-to-day basis,” Ozbun said. “We also want to inspire action to fight poverty.”
THE SIMULATION was set up in the middle school gym. Teachers were instructed to sit in chairs that were placed in the middle of the floor. Those who sat together became family members. The families opened up a packet and received new identities. Some became young children, teenagers, grandparents or parents.
Teachers were not the only participating members of the simulation. Stanley reached out to various community businesses for the simulation. Business leaders, law enforcement officials and attorneys voluntarily “set up shop” in the middle school gym and acted as their real life roles. There were about 25 community members at the event.
“I have done 50 or 60 simulations in the area but I’ve never seen this much community participation,” Ozbun commented.
Although everyone was given a new role and were instructed to act out the roles it was not a game.
“There is often a temptation to treat this event as if it’s a game,” Ozbun said to participants. “I encourage you not to do that and take this very seriously.”
Each teacher had to act out a different scenario. Some had to visit pawn shops to sell their belongings so they could afford to pay their utilities. Others visited social services to apply for food stamps so they could feed their family and buy groceries at the mock grocery store. Participants couldn’t simply walk around the simulated town. They had to purchase transportation passes from the Quick Cash shop in order to travel.
Children were the only participants who had free travel on the school bus. Jean Johns, who played a teenager during the simulation, couldn’t go to school one week because she had to stay home with her little sister because she was sick. Johns, a gifted education facilitator at Iola, said she thought the simulation was a “great idea.”
“It helps us think about what some of our kids go through and the choices they have to make,” Johns said.
Jack Koehn, USD 257 superintendent, played the role of the school.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what their take away will be,” Koehn said. “We all deal with poverty differently and it puts them in the middle of it.”
Selina Wallace was at the Iola Ministerial Alliance station and Gena Clounch was at the InterFaith Services and Child Care station. Both women said the simulation would bring an understanding to the faculty.
“A lot of people only think of poverty as a statistic,” Wallace said.
The participants went through multiple “weeks” in their new roles and had to deal with many unexpected life crises.
After the simulation the participants had a debriefing. The event lasted from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
