A Bed to Sleep On? Not If You’re an Inner City Kid!

April 8, 2007 at 6:26 pm | In education, elementary, life, physical education, poverty, schools, teachers, third grade | 2 Comments

Here’s an interesting story.  My new next-door teacher loves yoga.  So, three months ago, she decided to teach her students yoga as part of Physical Education (coming along very well!).  She purchased yoga mats and brought them to school.  The kids were so excited!  One of them said, “It would be so cool to sleep on this!” You just gotta pause for a moment at a comment like that coming from a third grader.

Turned out a third of her students don’t have a bed to sleep on at home.  They sleep on the floor in the living room. The couch is probably reserved for the adults.

The teacher sent home the mats of course and purchased new ones for the classroom.

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  1. it’s not just inner city… here in Maine, I grew up the same way… there were 4 of us kids, in a house whose total square foot is under 700 feet, our entire house was the size of th average master bedroom. none of us had beds, we all slept on the floor.

    today 30 years later as an adult I find beds horridly uncomfortable and have never been able to sleep on them

    ~~EK

    Comment by EelKat — April 8, 2007 #

  2. Yeah, poverty is the same where ever you are, regardless of race, religion, and location. I was luckier. I didn’t sleep on the floor. For years, I slept on this fold-up mattress thing in the living room with my grandmother. We moved from living room to living room until our welcome is worn out and the paltry couple of hundreds that my grandmother could afford is no longer enough to buy us shelter.

    Comment by cityteacher — April 9, 2007 #


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