I’ve taught entirely at Title 1 schools during my brief teaching career. If you asked me what a Title 1 school was last week, I could have provided a brief definition, albeit insufficient. After pondering this question again, I did my own basic research and I’ll get to that momentarily. Just so you know though, Title 1 schools have a sort of stigma attached to them. Now, this is based on my own bias and anecdotal evidence. In any gathering of teachers, mention that you work at a Title 1 school and you will receive several different reactions. You might get the look of pity, which implies, “Aww you poor thing how do you manage such an arduous task?” I’ve even got the furtive, condescending glances that suggest, “Better you than me.” So, why would teaching at a Title 1 school elicit such seemingly unenthusiastic response?

Doing some quick research on what designates a Title 1 school as such, I found that it can vary from district to district. Prince William County Public Schools website has a good overview of what Title 1 means (http://tinyurl.com/juo5sm3). What automatically makes a school Title 1 regardless though, is if 75% of the students at the school receive free lunch. Now take a school like Neal Magnet Middle School where I once worked. Out of 882 students, 85% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. That’s roughly 750 students. We’ll cover this bit of data further at a later time.

Now let us get into some figures behind what makes a student eligible for free or reduced lunch. We’ll just use a family of three- two parents and one child-, which is the size of my own family, as a baseline example. To receive reduced lunch that family’s net income can make no more than $37, 167 per year, that’s $715 per week (interestingly many teachers would fall into this category). To receive free lunch that family cannot have a net income over $26, 117 or $503 a week. Now put this figure into context. The federal poverty line for a family of three is 20,090. That means that many students who receive free lunch are likely living just around the poverty line. If only 1 adult in the household is working a full-time, 40-hour week, they can’t make more than $15 an hour. Two adults working fulltime would have to make just above the $7.25 federal minimum wage to qualify for free lunch.

Why does this matter to me? Why is it important? What am I trying to get at? Besides teaching at schools where a majority of students receive free and reduced lunch, I received free lunch during my entire schooling and I attended Title 1 elementary and high schools. I came from a household of 11 and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I never knew it growing up but I came from a household whose income was far below the poverty line. Maybe the reason was because at the schools I attended, there were kids worse off than my siblings and I. Don’t get me wrong when I say worse off, but if someone is homeless and you’re not, that’s not an enviable position to be in. However, like most students at these schools we just had the basic necessities. We never had the latest fashions or played with the coolest toys. We made due with our imaginations most of the time. The thing about America is people can make a way. Someway, somehow, everyday, people lift themselves out of poverty. One can forge a path out of poverty. The question is… how can it be done?