Kimber Bermudez is a first grade teacher based in Chicago. She’s been teaching for just two years. Last Tuesday she flew Southwest Airlines to Florida to visit her parents. She was in seat 14C Her seat opponent struck up a conversation with her, asking what she did for a living.
She explained that her students are all low income and some are homeless.
The man wanting to keep the conversation going asked her “What’s the most challenging part of your job?” She said it’s when kids come to school hungry. Most of the parents are immigrants “struggling to provide basic necessities for their families.”
You can imagine that the man leans in, he shares with our teacher hero that “his company donates to schools such as her.” He asked for her digits.
I told him that working at a low income school can be heartbreaking. We talked about the world and how no child should ever do without. In 2018 kids should never be hungry or in need of anything. He asked for my work contact information and told me that his company likes to donate items, time, etc for schools such as mine. I was not intending for him to say that, and then gave him my school email.
But then something happened. Passengers around her were listening. Maybe they were just hoping for another pseudo-passenger love story they could live tweet. But the passengers around her were touched.
[S]he felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see the man seated in the row behind her, who had a baby on his lap.
He apologized for eavesdropping. Then he handed her a stack of cash.
“Do something amazing,” he told her.
Bermudez looked down and saw a $100 bill on top. She remembered from her babysitting days that her parents said never to count money in front of anybody.
…As the plane landed in Jacksonville, a man in the aisle across from her told her he was listening to her conversation as well. He said he didn’t have much money on him but handed her a $20.
Then a third contributor: “As if my heart couldn’t be any happier, the man in front turned around as well,” Bermudez said. He said all he had was $10, and he gave it to her.
…Her mother picked her up at the curb, and when she got in her mom’s car, she counted the money: Five $100 bills, one $20 bill and one $10 bill.
Passengers had given her $530, and she’s going to use the money to buy books for her students who don’t have any at home to read.
That man whose ‘company gives to schools like hers?’ She doesn’t report that he chipped in, natch.
Great story but that is what government programs are for !! To feed these kids etc but some of the moms Connor use their EBT card to feed the kids !!Most communities also help with this n I’ve been involved with what the Salvation Army does to help the community !! But I have a problem when we are feeding their kids meals ( even in the summer) when they have fancy done nails, bejeweled I phones etc and cigarettes !!their kids should but don’t come first!! If u can’t feed 5 kids don’t have 5 kids that the taxpayers need to care for’!!!
“seat opponent”?
@Paul – you must be new here, welcome.
Maybe the guy’s company will come through. No need to be so negative.
Touching story but it kind of unravels at the end. Are the kids going to eat the books so they don’t have to come to school hungry any more?
/yawn
Who cares.
As a young teacher my daughter based on ideals, took a job as an art teacher in the worst school in America. That is what the headline was on the front page of the New York Times, “The worst school in America.” It was a Philadelphia failing school that a non profit, I think it was a non profit, took over to run. The Principal, oh she was an idealist also, she was a university professor whose specialty was teaching and researching about how to turn around failing school. She quit her university position to put her teachings into practice. The administration hired a stellar staff, just stellar, everybody was on board primed and ready to help those kids!
The problem was the budget, there was insufficient money, my daughter had a budget of $200 for art supplies to teach an entire school art for a year. In a phone conversation she told about drooling over an art supply catalog that art teachers order from and how difficult it was to only have $200 to spend. But she was hopeful and ideal, she had a lot of art projects she could do with really cheap materials, she hadn’t ordered yet, she was working that budget.
I talked with my mom about it and together we put $1,500 on the school account of the art supply company. Basically me and my mom (my daughters grandmother & mother) we paid for the art supplies for that school. My daughter was very careful to never take pictures of her students, but what she would do is take pictures of their artwork, and some of her students were HIGHLY talented.
It’s unfair that some children go to bad schools and some children go to schools that are over stocked in art supplies. It shouldn’t be that way, children should not suffer because of where they live and go to school. These children were challenging to work with because of their life outside of school. It is impossible to think that school alone, good teachers, sufficient books and supplies can even the playing field of life for these children, but you know what, it can and does help. I used to object to free breakfast for kids at school as I thought this was a parental responsibility, my daughter convinced me otherwise. Kids really DO go to school hungry and it really does affect their ability to concentrate and learn.
The Principal? She only made it through the first semester and quit over Christmas. She just couldn’t take the rats in her office any longer and facilities maintenance just couldn’t get rid of the rats. My daughter taught through the end of the year and moved on to a school for special needs students, I think it was actually a residential school if I remember right.
This is an aside, but I hope you enjoy it. At the residential school for children with special needs, some children wore diapers, or were intermittently incontinent. Some kids had good to excellent cognitive skills but behavior problems do to mental illness. The school had a protocol for stepping in poop or pee, the protocol was to remove your shoe leave it there, wearing just one shoe go to the office and get a zip lock bag and cleaning supplies, clean up the poop or pee and put your shoe in the zip lock bag, take it to the janitors closet and clean. You had to carry your shoe in the ziplock bag so that you didn’t drop poop further down the hallway.
One day she stepped in poop, followed the procedure, cleaned up the floor mess and was carrying her shoe in the zip lock bag to go clean it when she passed by a young student, he looked at her and matter of factually said , “Stepped in poop, huh?” She kept walking and just replied, “yup.” The point of this story is, unless you teach in a public school you really cannot conceive of what that life is like to be a teacher and the difference between teaching in a poor school and teaching in a rich school and teaching children who have challenges and those who don’t. I found this podcast really enlightening, I bet you will too.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/550/three-miles
Years ago (when I was young and broke), I taught at an elementary school within view of the White House. I discovered I didn’t know what “broke” really meant. We had three kids sharing a book. No art supplies. Two toilets for 600 kids. Rats. A ridiculous “free lunch” program–in which most kids didn’t get lunch (after they’d had no breakfast), kids who didn’t come to school because they had no shoes, and more. It turned out my job was to keep kids alive. FYI, I accompanied some of the kids home and met their parents–who were paying more to live in vile tenements than I was to be living in a clean, well-appointed apartment in the suburbs.
I believe you Karen, I believe you.
And I bet the toilets didn’t have toilet paper. This is a chronic problem in poor schools not enough money for toilet paper, even for the staff. You bring a roll with you. But you know Karen, those kids, they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, right? Amirite? My daughter had the same thing, moms who were coke addicts, dads in jail, mainly it was grandma keeping it together for the kids, and grandma was old. This is what we call inequality. And children should not suffer because of inequality, because when they do, it just continues a viscous cycle. We gotta care about poor kids, not a race issue, not a native born vs. immigrant issue but a child issue. We gotta care about each child and maybe care a little more for the poor kids, and by care I mean put the money in the budgets to proved a BETTER education. Did you listen to the podcast in my comment above? I hope ppl listen to the podcast.
“tis better to give…
Gary, how much did you donate?
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Well, it couldn’t have been that bad as they were passengers on Southwest Airlines.