Andrea's Story

The end of the fall term brings success stories, the fuel that keeps educators going. In the last two weeks, it has been a joy to see students meeting their goals by passing a class in their program, earning a High School credential, combining that credential with the poverty informed magic of Credit for Prior Learning, or any other goal they have put in front of themselves. Our approach to poverty informed practice believes we should acknowledge and celebrate success at ever opportunity. We know we need to build the self-efficacy of people who have received a different message about their worth for most of their life. Which brings us to Andrea... I've watched Andrea move her way through our classes for the last two years, although I found out she actually started earlier with us while incarcerated. It's been fun to watch her carry herself differently as she worked with her teachers to rediscover her dreams and find her place in the world. Poverty Informed practice is about knocking down barriers and creating a sense of belonging for students. Our students teach us everything and this week, Andrea was kind enough to sit with me and share some of her story. It's about 8 minutes long and she is amazing, I hope you will watch.

Andrea (on the left) and 2 of her biggest supporters

"No matter what, you have a chance." That's what Andrea said near the end of her visit with me. How remarkable is her optimism? Aren't we obligated to support her determination? Andrea was homeless and a recovering addict when she found Western. Our version of poverty informed means she signaled she was ready by the courage to walk in the door. She was fortunate to connect with great instructors and our exceptionally poverty informed Project PROVEN (More about PROVEN), but we were just as fortunate to be allowed to be in her life. One of our guiding principles is when we figure out how to successfully help students with the greatest barriers, we figure out how to help just about everyone. Andrea's success is teaching us about success for so many. Her message to other women is powerful, and I can't wait to see what her future becomes. Thank you Andrea, for letting us be part of your journey.

Love

This week I thought I'd write about love. Just typing that makes my Midwestern, Scandinavian soul a little uneasy, because it seems a little out there. But, there it is. I hear the folks at Amarillo talk about "loving the students you have" and it is powerful. I hear Dr. Lowery-Hart and his team talk about "loving them (students) to success", and it encapsulates what works. In my own evolution toward becoming more poverty informed, I've called that love lots of different things: engagement (when I'm feeling academic), giving a s^*t (when I'm less academic), and lots of other code words, but at the end of the day we are talking about love. A few months ago I compared our "plowing the road" (read about it here) to what those of us who are parents do for our children when we can. Our students aren't children, but that behavior comes from love. So today, I want to talk about what loving the people we serve means to me.

Sarah and Chad

Love means you become partners in people's dreams. That's my friend Sarah (to the right) and getting to know her in a real way this last couple years has been transforming. Loving your students means you acknowledge they have rich full lives and all the complications that come with them. I've learned Sarah had a deep, complicated story before she came to us (Sarah's story), but more importantly I've learned she has a huge heart and is one of the most generous people I know. Sarah works endlessly to help people who are homeless, and she has become my ambassador to the helping community around that issue. Without unconditional love (and yes it still feels weird typing that, but I'm committed), I'm not sure I ever take the time to see all her gifts. And maybe, the connections she has made on that level with Western staff are part of what propels her forward as she pursues a degree in Human Services.

Loving the students you have means you are going to suffer a little. I have written pretty extensively about Emmie (Emmie's story), a student I met through "The Bowl", our hospitality snacks in our

Emmie and Chad

lobby. And because our poverty informed practice tells us students need to be loved to success, I have become a friend and partner in her pursuit of her dreams. It would certainly be easier to stay at a distance and not know, but if we are truly going to love the students we have, we need to dig in and see how we can help. We must deal with the pain that Emmie has had to fight to protect her possessions, like her laptop, while she has been living on the street and going to school. We must deal with knowing her personal challenges and being relegated to only being able to offer safe space and comfort some days. And we must deal with the fact that success is rarely linear and even though she is doing well today, Emmie remains in a precarious situation. That knowledge makes us vulnerable and being vulnerable and human is part of loving students to success.

This evolution we are going through is catching on internally. If you've been reading a while (and thank you if you have), you remember John (John's story). He's our student who was a commercial fisherman among other things and graduated with his High School Diploma, 6 college credits, and admission to our Precision Machining program. Unfortunately, machining hasn't been the best fit for John's skill set, and he struggled with parts of it (and excelled in others). In another time, in another version of Western, that would have been the end of the story, but things are different now. To be honest, if you go back toward the beginning of my career, John probably doesn't even make it to a program, but things are different now. In a Poverty Informed Western, John has been surrounded by support instructors from my division, and program instructors from Integrated Technologies (the division that his program resides in), and they love John. He's a pretty amazing guy.
So, his instructors pulled together a meeting with all of them, and with John, and instead of doing a postmortem of what he couldn't do, they looked for the things he could do. And all these people who love John and want him to find his dreams, helped him find welding, and they will love him through welding starting next term.

So being Poverty Informed is a lot of things, but one of them is love. When you love the students you have, you become a partner in their dreams. When you become a partner in their dreams, you see the barriers that must be removed. And when you start that work, you give up the comfortable distance and privilege that keeps you "safe." When you love the students you have, you decide that "readiness" is signified by the audaciously courageous act of coming to us and telling us you want to go to school. If someone you loved told you they wanted that, how would you react? If you decide to love your students, shouldn't you react the same way? My own discomfort with the concept made me want to write a humorous title this week like "Love the one you're with" or "All you need is love", but I fought my own instincts and wanted to be direct. Our evolution has lots of pieces, but it must include LOVING #RealCollege students for our shared dreams to come true.

First Things First

I've been in education for most of my adult life, and for the most part we educators mean well, we really do. However, we tend to be thinkers and idea people, and perhaps that causes us to unnecessarily complicate things or as an old coaching friend of mine used to say "make the routine look impossible." As my team and I go further down this road of Poverty Informed Practice, it seems more and more clear to me the solutions we are seeking are not complicated, they are just hard. I had another topic in mind in mind this week, but a late Friday afternoon planning meeting put me in this mindset, so I'd like to talk more about putting first things first.

Last week, on Friday, I was part of a team working on what our Resource Development (aka grants) department calls Compression Planning. It's a nifty little method for putting together successful grants in a relatively short time and like many planning processes, it involves generating ideas and using an affinity process, and we love to put sticky dots on post-its to identify priorities (just the way everyone spends a Friday, right?). I admit up front, I'm not awesome in planning meetings that move fast (I like to think my ideas are deep, but maybe they are just basic, or maybe I'm just old and grumpy:)), but I have been in numerous meetings like this over the years, and it is remarkable how often my dots go on post-it's no one else chooses. I was trying hard to stay open-minded during the discussion Friday, but I'm struggling with discussions of "systems change vs band aids", and incremental processes. I even caught myself creating a "Triangle of Poverty Informed Practice" that might have been cool and borrowed liberally from Bloom's Domains of Learning, but I just kept coming back to how much does any of it matter when people can't get enough to eat or a secure place to sleep?

A Twitter friend shared a slide from a presentation by Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab recently(hence my
amateur screen shot photo), and it stopped me in my tracks. Half our students who are failing are food and/or housing insecure...Half! I think it would be hard to find anything else that 50% of our failing students have in common. To me it screams for action, not deliberation. It kind of renders irrelevant the idea of whether we address systemic issues or individuals first, the answer is obviously neither can wait! I've often heard Dr. Goldrick-Rab say we can't food pantry our way out of this issue, but she acknowledges a pantry is a start. The danger is if we think we are done and pat ourselves on the back... I'll note it again, 50% of failing students are struggling with housing and/or food. By the way that number isn't much different for our students overall.

 

Occasionally when I go to write this over the weekend, a little gift pops up to make my point better than I can. This morning my television brought the leader of the #RealCollege movement to my television set. Her video is above, and she makes the case so effectively that we need to start with basic needs or at the very least acknowledge that any student success effort that doesn't address basic needs puts 50% of the people you are trying to help at a serious disadvantage. Our vision of Poverty Informed practice doesn't have much time for lengthy debates about things like the importance and prioritization of appropriate rigor vs great teaching (that really happened by the way). All those topics are important, but we think you start with a foundation of basic needs. When we talk about removing barriers (every one we can), those have to get priority. But, we also have to have the courage to walk and chew gum, meaning we address basic needs as a default, but we never stop there. Our vision of Poverty Informed practice says you must build experiences and systems that acknowledge students' strengths, suspend judgment, and look forward relentlessly. And lastly, we believe that respect for students means we take every opportunity accelerate their path to success and stability. They have waited long enough.

I want to leave with another story that happened Friday. A student I met while doing some connecting with the homeless community near campus, reached out to me through another student to ask for help. He has cancer... he's afraid to go to the doctor alone and the people he thought of going with him were me or my Associate Dean because he doesn't really have other support. I'm calling him tomorrow to make the appointment, and we will go together. So in one day, I saw the macro and micro of what we are doing. It all matters but if we don't start with first things first, we will not succeed, and we must succeed.

Emmie's #RealCollege story

Emmie sharing her book

I've written more than once about my friend Emmie. There was the time she told me about how she was eating once a week until we started providing snacks (The Bowl). And more recently when we shared about how inspiration from Emmie keeps us going and about her newly published poem (find article here). And while Emmie is just one of the students we serve, and I know there are many more with equally large obstacles to success, I think it is important for leaders to have direct connection to student stories so we remember why we do what we do. At least I know it is true for me. So, this week I want to try something different. Emmie was nice enough to share some of her story on video this week. I took a very amateur effort at editing it, and I will let her tell her own story today. It's about 8 minutes of video and I think it's worth watching.

"So this has been a long time dream..." That's what I said to Emmie at the end of that segment. Poverty Informed practice requires us to remember that all of our students come to us with dreams, both big and small. They wouldn't have the courage to enter our doors if they didn't have a dream. It provokes anxiety for me when I think about it that way. It is such an act of trust and courage to bring us those dreams and to be open to dreams you may not even know you have yet. We are so privileged to be trusted with that responsibility and that privilege requires us to make every effort to reduce the barriers that could end those dreams. Reducing barriers and believing in dreams... sounds poverty informed to me.

Overcoming Resistance

I looked today, and this is the 17th article/essay (or whatever these are) trying to document our evolution towards Poverty Informed practice and the reasons behind that choice. In reviewing them, I realized I have been pretty rosy about our experience. And while this has been affirming and even life-changing on some levels, it has not been easy. So, in the interest of full disclosure, today I'd like to share where we find resistance, how we try to overcome it, and why we keep going. There are days when I feel like we are part of a movement and changing the world, and there are days where it seems getting people to do literally the least they can do is almost impossible. The reasons are simple and complex all at once.

Which word jumps out?

The first place I've noticed resistance is in processes and systems and the loyalty that develops to them. It defies logic in many ways, but as a colleague said "people will work very hard to do new things the old way." It's a pretty brilliant summary really. Back in July, I wrote about trying to change the language we used on signs, textbooks, test booklets (pictured with the big NOT), and in classrooms in my building. (here it is again) What I didn't tell you was that small change was met with agonizing resistance. The people who had created the stickers on tests came to me and said they would have to relabel all of them, and it was hundreds of booklets, and could we please wait until fall or just do it from now on... That was a hard one for me to hold my ground on, but it mattered. It seemed like literally the least we could do, and even then, I briefly caved and said we could just do new ones the new way and had to change my mind overnight. It seems silly in hindsight, but changing stickers and signs took months, when it could have taken hours. I would argue the people fighting it weren't even sure what their objection was, they were just loyal to the current system, and somehow had decided because it predated most of them, it was "right." There are lots of other examples, but when you try to change a paradigm, loyalty to processes and systems will be an issue. My best advice is having the courage of your conviction and stay the course.

Maybe it's a little redundant but in an organization our size, bureaucracy will also combat you. My writing generated enthusiasm on our campus and suddenly there was a rash of signs disappearing if they looked unfriendly (i.e. STAFF ONLY on locked doors).

In case being locked wasn't clear enough...

Now the game had started to go outside my sandbox, and pretty soon the physical plant weighed in. There are great people in our physical plant, but they weren't thrilled with random sign changes. I had a choice at that point, go to war, or look for a way to bring them in without losing momentum on campus. I'm a great compromise maker (which actually hasn't always served me well), and I was able to meet with the director and get my area declared an "experimental sign zone." I really have to give him credit for creativity on that one. We are heading towards remodeling, and he said we could look at sign options that gave us our poverty informed ethos and let us prepare for the best possible remodel. It was an elegant solution that let us change the bureaucratic structure slowly, but also let my enthusiastic team move with the urgency they felt. The only downside was some other areas had to put their signs back up, but we will get there. I think the lesson for overcoming resistance here is to pick the hills you are willing to die on. Sometimes a compromise can earn you an ally, and a battle makes you an unnecessary enemy. Pick your battles wisely.

The next area of resistance is less concrete, but it is everywhere. The constant evaluation of who is deserving of help is pervasive. I've written about it a number of times (including here), but it is worth revisiting. Dr. Donna Beegle is so eloquent at challenging all of us to find our underlying bias when she asks us to imagine what someone has to do to be worthy of your help. This form of resistance is more insidious and subtler. It comes up when people question the sustainability of The Bowl (our lobby snacks), or say things like "couldn't a business sponsor that?" It shows up when they tell me that our mantra "Every Barrier That Can Be Removed Should Be Removed," feels a little too much like "welfare." It shows up in seemingly well-intended conversations about why would you do this just for these students, shouldn't this be for everyone... That last one is particularly challenging because they are right in some sense. We believe that Poverty Informed practice is a form of Universal Design and solving the barriers for #RealCollege students solves things for students in general. But my history and sense of urgency says students in the crisis of poverty can't wait for the world to find universal solutions. For once, the students I'm advocating for get to lead the way, not wait for the rest of the world to be ready to help them. Can you see the subtle judgment within that other approach? So while it is better to fix systems than to fix people, we aren't asking the "people" to wait, at least within the best of our ability. Someday maybe the world will realize our students with the most barriers teach us everything, but until then we will plow the road for them the best we can. So, my advice to anyone working through this issue is twofold. First, give up on the notion of universal acceptance. This work will require upsetting people, and if you can't get comfortable with that, it will be hard. In all honesty, it's my biggest challenge... I like to be liked. Second, openly embrace what you are doing. Belief seems to attract belief and passion seems to attract passion. For everyone who has questioned snack purchases or lack of screening for assistance, there are two people telling me they love their job more than ever, and they feel like they understand our purpose.

I will leave with this. If you want to take on systems, processes, bureaucracy, and implicit bias, you better have reasons that keep you going. I admire the students we serve and personal connections with their stories keep me going. I'm pictured with my friend Emmie.

She shared a lot of her story with me last week on video, and I'll be sharing that soon (I'm not an expert editor, and she gets a chance to review), but I see her at school every day and realize she came back to college after years of homelessness and with barriers most of us would crumble under. But she embodies hope, and I think we owe her every effort to do whatever we can to shrink and remove barriers for her. Emmie is also a recently published poet, and I want to leave you with her poem "I AM." It's worth a reread on the days where the journey to real Poverty Informed practice seems too far. We can't stop. Emmie deserves our best effort.

Lessons from my Mom

My Mom's name was Dawn Simonson and Friday, November 9th would have been her 67th birthday. Unfortunately, she got lung cancer in 2012 and we lost her in the summer of 2016, so she isn't here to celebrate. But as I was pondering what I wanted to write this week about our evolution toward poverty informed practice, it made me think about her and the lessons she imparted, many of which she wasn't probably aware of. Like many parents her impact was more in what I observed, than what she told me, but we had spirited discussions as well. I was able to make a presentation Friday on Poverty Informed Practice and I closed by calling this my "life's work." Thinking about Mom over the last couple days has made that even clearer. Let me try to explain.


me (right) with my brother and Mom circa 1976



 

One of the basic tenets of our poverty informed approach is the fact that people bring their entire selves to the educational enterprise. That means they are complicated and lead rich full lives that may support or hinder their pursuit of their dreams. My mom was a very complex individual. She was a bride and mother at age 18 (2 kids and divorced by her early 20's, there we are to the right) who eventually worked her way through multiple college degrees to have a couple of high impact careers. She was a well-respected non-profit executive who struggled with addiction most of her adult life. She ran a side business counseling people convicted of domestic abuse after escaping a pretty nasty second marriage. Poverty informed practice requires a belief in people regardless of their background. When my parents divorced, we went from poor to really poor for a few years. It would have been easy to give up on my mom and write her off, but she wouldn't let that happen. Our version of poverty informed practice says we don't give up on people, and we don't require mom's heroism to get what you need. That last part drives some people nuts by the way... it is amazing how virtuous we require people in poverty to be to "deserve" help.

Graduation celebration

We also believe help must be normalized and de-stigmatized. I learned this from my mom too, but in a circuitous way. About the same time as the picture above of my Mom, brother, and me was taken, mom made the decision to go back to school. She was working at the non-profit she had helped found and would eventually become Senior VP at (after coming and going a couple times), but after dropping out of college to help my dad finish (he didn't that time, but that's another story), she knew her options would be limited without a college degree. So, she went back, in the 1970's, in a world that didn't really understand non-traditional, single moms, and certainly wasn't set up to accommodate them. My Mom was an original #RealCollege student I realize now as I type this. Anyway, she needed help and she got some. Although she continued to work, money was short, and I could draw you a picture of the food stamps we used for a year or so. To the day she died, Mom denied that we ever used government assistance to get by, even though I know what government cheese is and can distinctly remember the brightly colored stamps we took to the grocery store. That's the power of shame. One of the reasons we provide food for ANYONE in my department is I cannot abide the kind of shame that would cause my own mother to not remember the help that worked so well for us. She was a role model for how helping programs work, and the stigma wouldn't allow her to even remember that they did. Mom and her big brothers are pictured above on the day she got that Bachelor's degree that she worked so hard for, with help. I think I was 10.

Success is not required to be linear and in fact, we expect that it won't be. While Mom had great successes, I've alluded to the great troubles she had too. A couple of failed marriages that required starting over financially at least twice (although I'm not sure the first one required too much starting over, since she and dad had next to nothing anyway), struggles with alcoholism, and leading as a woman in an era where that was only beginning to be accepted were just a few of the things she dealt with. Later in life, she had one of her two sons struggling with a serious case of "failure to launch" (still feel bad about that), and at age 60 she was diagnosed with lung cancer. If she, or the world, had made a final reckoning of her worth at one of those low moments (or one of mine for that matter), who knows where the story ends. Instead, she just kept moving forward and eventually times got better. The picture below is one of her best moments, a family trip with her sons and their families to Disney World in 2012, shortly before her diagnosis. What if we approached our students

Disney World May 2012

with the assumption that we were the beginning of an upswing and when they struggle, we know that it is temporary? What if we acknowledged that sometimes people just need more to get back on track and that is not the same as "failure" or not "wanting it" bad enough. Someday I will write more about the resistance this little movement meets. The most common objection is "why would we treat students from poverty different than any other student?" My radical answer is that it is reparations for a lifetime of getting less than others, but my simplest answer is that we try to give people what they need. One of my heroes, Dr. Donna Beegle, recently shared that without poverty informed supports, the odds of success for a student in the crisis of poverty is 11%... Our principles say that we can't live with that, people get what they need within our ability to give it to them.

We had a service for my mom on July 12th, 2016. It was a remarkable day really and though losing a parent is never easy, it was amazing to hear from people for hours about the impact my complex, formidable, flawed, and imperfectly human mother had on their lives. I got to hear about how all those things that knocked her off track inspired her to make a difference. The non-profit she helped lead served individuals with developmental disabilities and that had come from watching a little girl get mistreated on the bus when Mom was just a kid. I also had conversations and got messages from so many women who said my mom was their mentor as a leader and tried to pave the way for them in ways she probably wasn't helped. And so many people came up and told me they knew my mom from the recovery community and how much she had meant to them. I knew Mom's recovery journey had certainly been neither linear nor smooth, so that one surprised me. And when I got up to give the eulogy, I said a line I had not planned. I said that part of Mom's legacy was the idea "that if you can help, you should, and in fact maybe you are required to." That sounds suspiciously close to our poverty informed mantra "Every Barrier That Can be Removed, Should Be Removed." And her commitment to mentoring feels like the relationship building we know is crucial to helping people move from poverty. So, when I say this is my life's work, I know where it came from. Thanks Mom and Happy Birthday.


Changing the Reflexive No

One of my favorite moments of this year was a phone call with Sara Goldrick-Rab a couple of months ago, and not just because of my excitement that she wanted to talk to me. I had reached out to her in January about starting an emergency fund on our campus that I wanted to model on her FAST Fund and wanted to use the name. She had graciously allowed it, but now we found that we hadn't quite done it the way it was intended, and our faculty union was also applying to start a fund that we hoped to merge with. I'm glad to say that we found solutions, but what I remember from my conversation with Sara was at one point she said, "I'm sorry, I didn't actually realize you were an administrator." (or something close to that) It made me laugh and felt like a compliment, but it also made me think. What was I not doing that made me seem less "administrative?" It made me think about what I have come to call the "reflexive no." Changing it has probably been the biggest personal change for me since our commitment to poverty informed practice.

This era of austerity tends to make many of us in higher education risk averse and even if you were an envelope pusher early in your career, it's hard not to get more careful as you get more veteran. That had certainly happened to me; I had defaulted to being "reasonable." In practice that meant that if you brought me an idea that was outside of the box I had developed, my instinct was to start with "probably not" instead of "why not" or "how." It was an insidious change because my position and veteran status gave me some status and an air of authority which made my reflexive skepticism seem wiser than it was. It also rewarded comfortable, policy and procedure-based thinking, which is not as person-centered as a poverty informed approach should be. All with the best of intentions, I had developed a reflexive "no" to new ideas and novel solutions. It seems very stereo-typically administrative. I'm not so reasonable anymore (our little movement) and let me tell you how I got there.

First, I was lucky to be surrounded by some excellent colleagues who believe (as my friend Cara Crowley from Amarillo says) that "no is the beginning of the conversation." I've talked about Tonya, our Project PROVEN guru, and Mandy, my associate dean, before but it's hard to explain how hard they have had to work to bring me back to my senses. They are the brave souls who got me to understand the irony of advocating for FAST type funds and then having a GED fund that required students to meet with me for approval. (read about it here). They also have a standing joke about the day I told them they could not bring me "anymore new ideas." I remember saying they couldn't hit me with new ideas first thing in the morning, but they are pretty sure it was a permanent ban, one they didn't follow by the way. Over time, I started to see that their tendency to say 'yes' and 'why not' led to really good results for students. In fact, my best "management" of either of them was to marshal resources to support their ideas and tendency to have a reflexive yes and not my reflexive reluctance.

So, with that experience I started to see things differently and that meant information was processed differently. Once I dropped the reflexive and "wise" initial no, I could see flaws in thinking more clearly and particularly in our lack of poverty informed practice. So many of our rules were based on this notion of "readiness" that doesn't seem valid through new eyes. To assume there is such a thing as being ready also assumes we have decided that there is a thing called college and we know exactly what it is and exactly what it takes to succeed there. It seems farcical to me through that lens. I work at an open admission institution in the division that is supposed to embody the promise of open access. If we define "readiness" as anything else than entering our doors, I think we are doing a disservice. One of our tenets of poverty informed practice is that we examine policies and procedures to find ways to support students, not punish and exclude them (credit to Dr. Donna Beegle). Dr. Beegle recently shared on social media that without poverty informed supports, a student in the crisis of poverty has roughly an 11% chance of succeeding. That is awful and requires us to default to yes when thinking of ways to support them and eliminate barriers. But, before I shifted to yes and why not, I did not have the courage of my convictions. In fact, last winter, I helped craft a student success document for our college and one of my statements was "every barrier that can be removed, should be removed." I predicted it would get pared out and it was... It seemed reasonable. Now that statement is the fundamental premise that guides our poverty informed work within my division. That's a shift and it's important. That statement has driven more change in my division in six months than in the prior 6 years.

I don't like stories about me, but I am a great example of the mind-shift needed to move toward poverty informed practice. 12 months ago, if you would have asked about me, people would have told you I was an advocate for students in poverty and really made them think. But, thinking was about all that happened. Defaulting to yes instead of a reflexive no changed everything. It made me see that our students with barriers teach us how to improve like other students never could. It made me realize that most barriers at the college are human constructs and therefore subject to change. I have become fond of saying just because a decision was made a long time ago, it doesn't mean it's any more valid or well thought out than one we could make today, so why not make the one that goes toward access and support? At the #RealCollege convening in September, Dr. DeRionne Pollard challenged us to show "raw courage" and be willing to experience "good trouble" on behalf of students. Defaulting to yes and losing the reflexive no seems like a good way to meet that challenge.

Sarah's story

Anyone who has been in education has students who stick with them, some for a lifetime. Sarah is one of those students for me. I first met Sarah when she joined our YouthBuild program. YouthBuild is a federally funded project that combines completing high school credentials with learning work readiness through construction (the students actually build a house). I remember our first conversation because she was really upset about something she thought was unfair. I was struck by just how upset she was, but I was also impressed by just how articulate she was about the topic of who got to go to McDonald's and who didn't. By the time we resolved the great fast food fairness debate, I knew she was going to do well. Sarah completed her HSED while she was in YouthBuild and also was awarded 9 college credits through our use of Credit for Prior Learning, a poverty informed practice I've referred to in earlier essays. (John's Story) Sarah is currently a student at Western pursuing her dream of working with children. She volunteers extensively at her church and works with homeless people on a regular basis, including hosting a Super Bowl party at her home last year for a number of people with no place to go. She's pretty remarkable, but her path has not been easy. But I'll let her start that part of the story.

Like a lot of students we meet, Sarah had a challenging background. The more we learn about poverty informed practice the clearer it is we could have failed her early on because she didn't know the norms some would have referred to as the dreaded "common sense", which I've described my dislike for before: Things not to say. Fortunately for us, Sarah started in YouthBuild and our Adult Diploma program, which embrace poverty informed practice by approaching students from a strengths-based perspective and providing them with the support they need to thrive. And although Sarah didn't use the syntax or grammar we might expect of students someday, her instructors could tell immediately that she was extremely bright and engaged in the world. In fact, her life experience was truly an asset and she parlayed it into 9 college credits even while completing her HSED! She turned out to be quite a student, but as we got to know her, it turned out she's an even better person.
Sarah has been a regular presence in our department as she's worked her way through college. I like to think we are a safe home base and she is part of our extended family that we create for students, and I suspect that is all true. But Sarah is unique and embodies some practices we seek to emulate. I asked her to tell a story that served as an example:

 

I've mentioned in earlier writings my admiration for the sharing culture of people in poverty, but Sarah's Super Bowl party took my breath away. An idea like that would never occur to me. And she certainly wasn't doing it to show off or to impress. She was doing it because people had no place to go and she had a place they could be. She did it because being homeless shouldn't mean you don't get to enjoy America's secular holiday, Super Bowl Sunday. One of our poverty informed premises is that the students with barriers teach us how to improve. Sarah taught me a lot that day.

Poverty informed practice means understanding the norms of our colleges are constructed by humans and are therefore fallible and can be changed. Poverty informed practice means looking at policies and procedures and making sure they serve students, not punish students. Poverty informed practice means challenging ourselves to see what barriers are simply human constructs that exclude the talents of people like Sarah. Barriers include the obvious ones like child care and transportation, but they might also include the academic calendar (Amarillo cut all courses to 8 weeks), attendance policies that don't allow for the reality of crappy cars, textbook lending policies designed for traditional students who are on campus, archaic financial aid rules, and myriad other pieces of "common sense". Poverty informed practice requires us to look at all of those things and see how we can make them serve Sarah.

A two year college is a promise. It's a promise of opportunity. A division like mine, that serves students on the very front end of that promise must strive to create opportunity for everyone. We must start with the premise that if a student can't succeed, we must not have the right policy, procedure, or person in place to help them succeed (liberally borrowed idea from Amarillo College). That is a powerful premise and runs counter to the narrative I hear so often. That narrative says students must meet some arbitrary standard of "readiness" and it betrays the promise of our division in my opinion. In my Division readiness will be signified by entering our door. I had the opportunity to address our college on our College Day in September and I tried to share that message as part of a movement. A piece of that video is below.

College Day address

"They bring us their dreams, and they bring us dreams they don't even know they have yet." That is a powerful responsibility and every day I see Sarah at the College, I'm reminded that I made a promise I need to fulfill. And if our division isn't poverty informed, how can we expect anyone else to be? I can't wait to see where Sarah's dreams take her.





 

 

Our Little Movement

I applied for a big job at my college this spring and was a finalist (spoiler alert they hired someone else), and the process is what started this journey toward poverty informed practice in my division. In preparing my materials and getting ready for interviews, I needed to boil down what I believed in, and I needed to do it in compelling and concise ways. Poverty has always been an area of advocacy and interest for me, but I haven't pushed as hard as I might because I wasn't sure if others would follow... Would it be too much? Would I be written off as a bleeding heart? It was the day before my all-day interviews for finalists that it hit me. I was sitting in a hotel room in Springfield, Illinois attending my 2nd day of Donna Beegle training when it hit me. Our students with the greatest barriers teach us everything. They teach us how to get better in ways that students with more advantages never could. Basically, it became clear that removing barriers wasn't just the right thing, it was the smart thing! Building structures that work for people in the crisis of poverty is a form of Universal Design that benefits everyone. For years, I have given the same advice to folks who asked me to mentor them: "Don't worry about what you want to be, worry about want you want to do." Now it was time to take my own advice, and when the college chose someone else (she's great by the way), I knew nothing had changed for me. I knew what I wanted to do. And I wrote my first "Poverty Informed Friday" email to my staff the Friday after I found out. I was going to lead toward removing every barrier that was removable because it's what I believed was best for students. I'd like to share a little about what has happened to us since we committed to poverty informed practice.

First a piece of data that has my attention. We monitor enrollment very closely in my division because it is connected to state aid and performance-based funding. Like most institutions our funding situation is challenging, and we have had to make tough staffing choices. So, it seemed counter-intuitive when I realized our enrollment for our summer session had increased 25% over the prior summer. Can that be attributed solely to our poverty informed efforts? Of course not, but it seems worth exploring. Our premise is that we are going to create the most welcoming environment possible and create a level playing field where we work with people versus doing things for them. Enrollment credit in our area increases when we retain students (state funding tracks actual attendance), so I would also suspect that a welcoming atmosphere, sense of partnership, and our commitment to removing barriers has to have some positive influence on enrollment and retention. For sixteen years I've been told that retaining students is more efficient than recruiting new ones. Perhaps we can quantify the payoff of changes in signage, hospitality, and behavior as we have more time and more evidence. Data is always key in making the case for what we are doing.

So, there is some empirical evidence that this matters for us. But there is also cool anecdotal stuff happening. You can feel a movement take hold as it spreads and this week we had the story of Tim and Eldioju (who we all call Dio). I've shared multiple times before about The Bowl where we provide snacks for anyone who wants them (Food for Thought.) The Bowl has grown to lots of people donating things and last week Tim knitted several hats to put by The Bowl.

Tim's wife teaches in our County Jail and Tim is currently unable to work because of debilitating back pain. But he can knit, and he cares, and he made Dio very happy without ever meeting him. My friend Dio is pictured modeling the sky-blue hat just days before the snow begins to fly here in Wisconsin. This is just one example of what committing to an idea seems to do. We've seen hundreds of dollars in donations come in to support food in The Bowl. Our VP of Finance asked if he could join me on our walks to connect with

the homeless. (Theory to Action) And staff from every corner of our stressed out, overworked institution have reached out to say they want in. In fact, someone I had not met yet emailed me today to say she felt like she should "join the movement." If there is a lesson for other aspiring poverty informed practitioners, I think it is simply to lean in and be committed to the idea. It's not just right, it's smart, and raw belief will attract people to what you are doing.

 

Perhaps just as exciting as our internal movement growing is finding likeminded people across the country and across the globe. In just months we have connected with Amarillo College, Paul Quinn College, Sara Goldrick-Rab's #RealCollege crusade, Dr. Donna Beegle and many others inside and outside of education. Our relatively tiny action has inspired conversation and created possible partnerships already. I am in awe of the people I just listed, and they are miles ahead of us, but they have embraced us as part of a genuine movement. My staff and I are working as hard as we have in years, but this unifying belief and purpose is very sustaining. Connecting with others and telling our story and learning from theirs is edifying and inspiring at the same time. It's interesting that one of Dr. Beegle's tenets we adopted is that we must create belonging for people because it is a basic human need. Turns out that belonging is just as important for us, who knew? :)

 

So, our little movement is in its infancy, but we are not going back. We can't, it's too important. We know the tough discussions are coming and we are going to have to make the case for what we are doing, to individuals who aren't sure if people "deserve" what we are doing. I'm no crusader, and we certainly haven't found the perfect formula or gotten everything right. I'm just your typical middle aged, middle manager, but I find inspiration everywhere. Today I found it in the words of the

amazing Brené Brown. We will continue to choose being "brave and afraid. At the exact same time." Isn't that what our students do when they cross our threshold and trust us with dreams they may not even have dreamt yet?

Project PROVEN

One of the guiding lights of our growth to poverty informed practice is Dr. Donna Beegle. I was fortunate to attend a training Dr. Beegle put on in June and left with her book See Poverty... be The Difference.

We also have a trained Beegle Poverty Coach on campus, but more on her later. In fact, I started writing these articles right after returning from that training because I wanted to document our transformation and the concrete action that Dr. Beegle helped inspire. One of the best things about Dr. Beegle's book is the practical list of recommendations for leaders, teachers, and others. Her guidance to make sure we understand leadership for serving people in the crisis of poverty requires flexible, comprehensive approaches, and a long-term commitment to daily focus on the vision of helping people succeed made me think of the best and most poverty informed project at Western; Project PROVEN.

PROVEN is a re-entry from incarceration project we started with a Department of Education grant in 2013, one of three in the nation (and the only one in a county jail). It started as a demonstration project to implement a new reentry model with education at the center (shown to the right),

but it has grown into a comprehensive anti-poverty program that has taught us a lot about becoming poverty informed. PROVEN is a program that partners with multiple entities in our community to provide a comprehensive and holistic support network for participants/students. PROVEN provides meaningful coursework both in the jail and on campus that can be taken seamlessly between the two classrooms and along with strong case management, propels people toward a stable life and their dreams. Not only does this meet Dr. Beegle's guideline on using community partners, it honors our premise that we do not throw people away in our community. To quote Dr. Beegle "People living in poverty are not deficient and have tremendous potential when given adequate support." That statement might define our evolution. That statement also begins our fight to show people what "adequate" is. But more about PROVEN...

Case management is an essential feature of PROVEN. We believe that relationships are critical for working with individuals afflicted by poverty and having a case manager that you meet in the jail and see on campus or vice versa is part of that. Help is normal and available where you are, not where we expect you to be. We have exceptional staff leading this project and my role as Project Director has gotten more tangential over time. However I stated regularly in 2013, one of our markers for success would be when we discussed class locations for the college and "the jail" just rolled off the tongue as one of them. I think we have achieved that goal. A poverty informed program doesn't care where you start, it only cares about helping you start. So, while in the last year our division has adopted the mantra "every barrier that CAN BE removed, SHOULD BE removed", we have been practicing that in PROVEN for years. The case manager(s) have also been our eyes into how our policies align for people in poverty. PROVEN is a constant lens into how we unintentionally erect obstacles that don't need to be there or accidentally put us in a mode of deciding who "deserves" help. Those moments are red flags that we are getting it wrong.

Dr. Beegle challenges us to reflect regularly on what we are doing and does it work or not work for people in poverty conditions. PROVEN has a weekly staffing that includes project leaders, case managers, and instructors to answer exactly those questions and to make sure we are doing everything we can for participants. It is a group that embodies my ideal of adult education: "Optimism and Amnesia." For many years, I have told our staff across our coursework and programs that we must unconditionally believe in our students' ability to succeed and when they don't succeed, forget about it and believe again. That is optimism and amnesia, and it's not completely poverty informed, but it's a heck of a place to start. So PROVEN is a beautiful microcosm of a comprehensive poverty-informed program. That means figuring out where it fits on campus can be a challenge. College campuses tend to have isolated "silos" and PROVEN is clearly "unsiloed", as is poverty informed practice in my opinion. Is PROVEN an educational program, or an adult education transition program, or a retention effort, or a community vitalization program, or maybe the beginning of a non-profit agency? The answer to those question is "yes" with the possible exception of the last one since we believe being at the college is part of the "secret sauce" that makes PROVEN go. We direct students to many of the same services and partners that a Human Services agency would, but we do it by stealth as part of going to college. The stigma is reduced. A poverty informed practice suspends judgment and we do that relentlessly.

So, I'm not just a do-gooder. Programs like PROVEN are a great investment and the resources allocated to it pay off with a huge multiplier effect. Students in the County Jail will be released, and they will be our friends and neighbors. It is in everyone's best interest to help them succeed emotionally, socially, and economically. Investments made in these students (who are motivated and in college) reduce recidivism and give choices that move people from the crisis of poverty. That benefits everyone. I'll leave you with the story of Jordan. Jordan had struggled with addiction and had been incarcerated multiple times. He was ready to make a change, but he also met Tonya (project coordinator and Beegle certified poverty coach) and the staff from PROVEN. They approached him with a strengths based approach and unconditional belief. If you have time please watch the 4 minute video of Jordan winning a 2016 Job Honor Award. You can see the cross-functional approach, the respect for Jordan's strengths and motivation, and the belief and love (yes love) PROVEN staff brought to his life. Jordan says one minute into the video that Project PROVEN "saved (his) life", but in reality he showed us the way to do what we needed to do. Jordan's video

From Theory to Action

When I returned home from #RealCollege last Monday night, I was ignited and overwhelmed all at once. The enormity of the issues facing our students was never clearer, and it was hard to know where to begin. As I mentioned in an earlier article (A Call to Action), the reality of homelessness in Philadelphia was moving, and I came home wanting to do something. After hearing Mark Horvath of Invisible People say that the greatest barrier to solving homelessness was our inability to relate to it, I decided to take his advice and go out and see if I could do a little to help and meet people as people. I made up some woefully inadequate introduction kits pictured here. 

It was just two pairs of socks and some granola bars I hoped would break the ice, and I could see what else people might need and perhaps even preach the gospel of the poverty informed education we are trying so hard to offer. Mandy, my associate dean, who had been so moved the weekend before, wanted to come too, so we waited until Friday. Right before lunch time, we threw a few baggies in my messenger bag (aka man purse) and her bag as well and set off to the neighborhood around the college.

We started out at the park across from our Administrative Center, which has had a number of people in it all summer but is emptier now as the weather is changing. On this day, we could only see two people. There was a man sleeping next to a wheelchair and about 20 feet away there was a young woman. We didn't want to wake anyone up, so we approached the young woman, and I quickly realized we had no real plan. "Hi, are you staying out here?" is what came out of my mouth... She responded "No, I'm just waiting for a friend," which was clearly not true. Now I began to see this exchange through her eyes and realized what I saw as two very nice adults looking to help could be seen very differently for a young woman alone in a park. Mandy could sense the awkwardness as well and jumped in and asked if the young woman was a student at Western and told her we worked at the college. She also assured her we were not selling anything or handing out bibles. That didn't seem to ease her anxiety either, and in hindsight might have sounded like we were telling her she couldn't be there... At this point, I knew we needed to move on, but I wanted to reassure her. I said, "My name is Chad, this is my friend Mandy, and we are just seeing what we can do to help people." She let down her guard a little and told us her name was Maddie, but as we walked away, she quickly got up and walked across the street to the public library. It was hard to believe we had done anything but frighten her. It was not an auspicious beginning.

After a less than successful encounter with Maddie, we walked on and engaged in some gallows humor about how bad we were at this, but we resolved to keep trying. Our discomfort seemed mild in comparison to the people we were meeting. A couple blocks away we came across a young man sitting in a sleeping bag next to a bicycle. I still didn't have a good opener, so I went with "Hi, how are you" this time. Fortunately, he was very friendly and outgoing and said hi back. I offered my socks and granola bar package, and he enthusiastically accepted. I introduced myself and he said his name was Brandon. Mandy asked him what else he thought he might need, and he said he wasn't interested in money, but if we could ever help him with a good bike lock it would help him protect his bike. The idea of him having to sleep with one eye open to protect that very important asset has stuck with me. I asked Brandon a little about how he had ended up outdoors, and he shared he didn't want to stay at the Salvation Army currently and felt like he had what he needed where he was. I asked if he had ever considered coming to school, and to my surprise, he said he was a student at Western. When I asked what he was studying, he said he was just "brushing up" right now but was thinking about the paralegal program. As he said brushing up, I realized I had seen him before, and he was a student in my department. This was real college indeed...

As we were talking with Brandon, we were quickly approached by a couple from further down the block. The man introduced himself as "Joe Johnson from Wisconsin", and his partner introduced herself as Lynn. Joe was a frenetic character and took a bag of socks and immediately put on a clean pair. Lynn was more reticent and said the socks probably wouldn't fit in her shoes because they were thick athletic socks. We made a note to have some bags with socks for women the next time out. When we asked what else they might need, Lynn mentioned a cup of coffee cost $.94 and Joe said he could use a couple dollars too. We were glad to help out. As we got to know each other, Lynn shared she had been on the streets for three years. I asked what they did as the weather got colder, and they mentioned that the warming center would open November 1st for overnights and when I asked what they would do during the winter days, they said "survive." Lynn shared she had 4 children she didn't see very often, and it was very hard to get off the streets once you were on them. She said she struggled with alcoholism for much of her life as well. Mandy may believe in education as the path out of poverty more than anyone I know, and she jumped right in to asking Lynn if she had considered coming back to school. Lynn said she wasn't really thinking about it, but had considered going back for a GED maybe. Our college is 3 blocks from where Lynn was staying, and she didn't know anything about it. Mandy told her classes were free, the building is warm, and we provide snacks for guests. Her interest perked up and I hope we see her soon. What an audacious act of courage it would be to pursue her GED. Wouldn't it be our moral imperative to do everything we could to make that happen? And if nothing else, she knows there is a place in town where she could be warm, get a little something to eat, and people would believe she has a future. I wish I'd been brave enough to ask these three to let me take a picture, but I didn't that day. I hope to see them again and take one if they will let me. I can't help but just hope they are safe. I drove by their spot yesterday, and they weren't there, so I don't know how permanent it is.

So, it was an interesting morning with a pretty bumpy start and a finish that showed us the humanity of people in our community. Poverty informed practice says relationships matter, contexts matter, and community matters. If we are serious about trying to help people change their economic reality and the arc of their future stories, it seems we must start by simply engaging. It was an emotional morning, and the things we could bring to them seemed so woefully inadequate, and our own lives seem so privileged and a little ridiculous in comparison. Lynn thanked us for stopping to talk and said many people act like they aren't even there. It was embarrassing to think I had walked past people just 5 days earlier in another city. It is hard to know what to do or where to start, but eye contact and some socks at least started a conversation with some people who had names and life stories, and maybe just a little more hope after our time together.

#RealCollege lessons learned and a call to action. Emmie's story.

This weekend I attended the #Real College convening with two of my most trusted allies at work. To say that the conference was great would be a gross understatement. It is rare at this stage of my career to not only learn new information, but to hear a clear call to action you feel compelled to follow immediately. I was moved by Dr. DeRionne Pollard's challenge to show "raw courage" and be willing to experience "good trouble" in the name of making sure basic needs issues don't prevent us unleashing the talent of ALL our students. I met several of my heroes from Amarillo College and made many connections I hope will lead to future work together. In addition, I spent some time in a breakout session with Mark Horvath of Invisible People and even got to talk with him personally later (I might have followed him out of the bathroom, glad he didn't mind), and that conversation led me back to a story from campus last week.

Emmie and the author

I've shared before about our snacks in the lobby (Food for Thought), which our students now affectionately refer to as "The Bowl." The Bowl has taught us so much about community and connection, and false perceptions of scarcity, but those lessons can be shared another time. Last week, The Bowl taught me about homelessness and heroism. Emmie (pictured with me to the right) is a full-time student at Western. She is working her way back from incarceration and participates in our Project PROVEN, a poverty-informed initiative that will get its own story here some day. I have noticed Emmie at The Bowl pretty regularly and even got a chance to have a brief conversation with her last week over some snacks. But I didn't know the whole story... Emmie's Case Manager, Jessica from PROVEN, pulled me into her office one day saying she had a story I needed to hear. Emmie had come into her office and asked "are those snacks really just for anyone?" Jessica assured her they were, and they are a simple act of hospitality. Emmie shared she was afraid she was taking too much, and Jessica assured her we have no limits or rules on guests eating food. Emmie's next response stopped me in my tracks. She said, "Good, because I stop there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (her class days). Before those snacks, I was only eating on Tuesdays..." I didn't know, but Emmie is homeless and going to school full-time. Our trail mix and granola bars are helping her make it through every week of school. What an audacious act of courage (credit to Dr. Pollard) it is to choose education in that situation.

Fast Forward to #RealCollege in Philadelphia a week later, a week I had spent much of thinking about Emmie and people like her. I had not been to Philadelphia before and at least the part of downtown I stayed in was a sea of homelessness compared to the relatively bucolic city of La Crosse where I live. Each night as my team and I walked back to our hotel, we saw countless people living on the streets, and it was deeply affecting. We each reacted in our own way, but it's hard to know what to do. Saturday night was the worst as we watched people (including us) walk past people asleep on sidewalks we couldn't be sure were alive, dead, or in need of medical attention. In fact, it was so overwhelming my Associate Dean was in angry tears by the time we returned. She was angry, and frustrated, and sad at the world, at herself, and at all of us that could be doing more to help. She said if we saw people lying unresponsive on sidewalks in any other situation, we would call 911, but we and all the others, just kept walking. No one knew what to do, and I couldn't stop thinking of Emmie and other students like her.

And then on Sunday, I met Mark Horvath and listened to his stories of engaging the homeless. It made me think of an earlier presentation by Dr. Karen Stout of Achieving the Dream, who told us we needed to establish Collective Impact models with our colleges at the center. She and the folks from Amarillo reinforced the role of the Community College has changed and whether we choose to be or not, we are in the social service business now, especially if we want to honor our open access promise and change the economic future of people, their families, our businesses, and our communities. When you combined our Saturday night experience with all this learning, I knew I needed to ask Mark what any of us could be doing, right now. Well as I mentioned, we managed to cross paths exiting the restroom, and he was incredibly generous in sharing what he knew, which was as simple as engaging people and asking what they need. He said he often starts those conversations by just having new socks (aka Freshies) to give to someone who might need them. And now I had an idea...

"Our inability to relate to homelessness is our biggest barrier to ending it." That's what Mark said at his presentation, and it made me think of Emmie, but it also made me think about the park across from our administrative center. There are a number of people there on any given day who are living there. No one on campus seems to know how to react, but I don't think anyone has gone the engagement route. So on behalf of heroes like Emmie, when I get home today I'm going to buy a bunch of socks and put them in my work bag. And tomorrow, I'm going to stop in the park and start the conversation. A poverty-informed approach doesn't throw people away and believes EVERYONE has the right to a future. It's time to put my money where my keyboard is. Stay tuned!

Everyone deserves another chance. A story about my Dad and the power of belief

With my Dad in Colorado a few years ago...

My dad is a local legend and I've been reluctant to share his story, but it teaches me everything about redemption, second chances, and belief. I have a pretty clear memory of a visit to stay with my dad in the mid 70's. My parents (pictured with baby me to the right) had a pretty amicable divorce and so I was able to spend a lot of time with both of them, although the custom of the time meant my mom had primary custody and I saw Dad on weekends and more in the summer. The reason I remember this particular visit was Mom dropped me (and maybe my little brother, but I can't remember) off at an apple orchard where Dad might have been working at the time. I remember that he was staying in a tent and had a cook stove and we had a nice camping adventure. If I'd been a little older, camping in an orchard might have seemed unusual, but it was just an adventure at the time. Fast forward to last June and I'm at a Dr. Donna Beegle workshop and she talked about how only middle-class people could invent camping. She said her family often "camped" which was just a euphemism for a period of homelessness. And the light bulb went on for me... So, on a recent trip to visit family I asked my dad about that visit and sure enough, Dad was homeless that summer. In fact, he confessed to me 40 years later that he had actually stolen the tent and I'm assuming the stove too. I could add this story to my collection of stories from the first 10 years of my life that demonstrated how situational ethics are and how easy it is to do the "right" thing when times are good. Dad "stole" a tree once to make sure we had wood to heat the house we were in and I have some vague recollection of him shooting a partridge once out of season, so we could eat. Maybe he remembers it differently.

Those times were objectively hard I suppose, but I didn't really know that until I was older. Dad was fun and our collection of Volkswagen vans that seemed to not have heaters or occasionally catch fire didn't seem to faze him. He must have been stressed out beyond comprehension, but I don't remember seeing it. In hindsight I can see the insidious hand of poverty pushing him away from dreams and into choices that made less sense all the time. This came to a head when I was about 7 or 8 (maybe 9 I'm not sure I recall). Poverty causes desperation and as my Dad's family grew, so did his desperation. My weekend visits to his small home in the middle of nowhere now involved sleeping in the living room because upstairs, the solution to our problems was drying and getting ready for sale. It was the 70's so marijuana wasn't an unusual thing in either of my homes, but Dad figured out he knew how to grow it, and someone convinced him he could sell it for real money. I remember talk of $10,000 and a trip to Hawaii, but my memories of that time are spotty. I do remember clearly the day Dad and some friends were sitting at the table playing cards or something and suddenly there was an army of police in the front yard. I remember standing outside while they searched the house and I remember telling Dad that I thought they might have missed some and him telling me that would help pay for the attorney. They found everything. My most searing memory of that day is overhearing the police saying they couldn't reach my mom and maybe my brother and I would need to go to foster care until they could reach her. There were no cellphones in those days, but fortunately they were able to reach her, and we went home. Dad ended up being sentenced to 30 days in jail and I suppose his story should have ended there. But it didn't...

After his relatively brief time away (I shudder to think what the sentence would have been in this day and age), Dad decided that his real dream was to be a teacher and a coach. It didn't make any sense for a convicted felon, but he believed and belief matters. Dad returning to school became a family project, although I was only a part-time participant. My siblings who lived with him saw more, but I remember a change jar to save for tuition, I remember a Ford Pinto with over inflated tires to get better mileage (and occasionally too many people stuffed in it), and I remember a family on a mission. I also remember Dad bringing home Shakespeare books and being on fire as he got a chance to stretch the intellect we all knew he had. Dad is incredibly charismatic, and we were all on fire with him. Belief is contagious and people around Dad began to believe in him too. His adviser at college knew that the world needed Dad in the classroom and Dad has shared that every time money was running out, some would mysteriously show up. He realized later that his professor took care of parts of that because of his belief in my dad. That professor changed my life without ever meeting me and it has inspired me to pay it forward including the development of an emergency fund at my college that honors the practice of faculty helping students directly. Here's video of me telling the story to develop our fund with our College Foundation: College Day Speech.

All of that belief led to my dad teaching 9th graders for 30 years. He has a gift for being genuinely interested in them and their lives. His doorway was always full of students from the moment he arrived, often with the most vulnerable kids in the building. He won national recognition for organizing a Renaissance Faire run completely by students. I remember it being written up in USA
Today. He is also a basketball coach with nearly 400 wins. This is picture after win 300, surrounded by family. As I said at the beginning of this article, he's a genuine local legend.

So, what does this teach us about Poverty Informed practice? Everything... We must approach students not to give them just a second chance, but another chance. My dad could have been written off at many points, but those additional chances led to so much payback for the world. This story teaches the power of belief. Not only do our students need us to believe in them, we need to help them create a sense of belief and self-efficacy that will protect them from the inevitable ups and downs. College professors believed in my dad just because they could see his gifts and that changed the whole course of my family. And this story teaches us to never underestimate potential. If we don't believe in students, sometimes before they believe in themselves, the world might miss out on the gifts of the great hiker pictured here

Dad in his beloved mountains
 

Poverty Informed practice does not throw people away, we need everyone.