Connecting Unequal Childhoods to Essex County

2. It is very expensive to live in Essex County, New Jersey. Life for the working class/poor families (Taylor’s, Brindle’s, and McAllister’s) would be very difficult. The key here is to examine the self sufficiency wage. This will give us an idea of just how tough a time that these families are going to have. First let’s look at the Taylor family. Celeste is the sole provider for this family. She works as a secretary and makes $20,000 a year. If you take a look at table 2 you can see how scary this is. For one adult, one preschooler and one school aged child the annually salary for the self-sufficiency wage is $46,686. So this is about three times what Celeste makes and she has three children. The fact is that she would not make even close to enough money to live comfortably in Essex County. A similar case will be the Brindle’s because once again there is one adult that is the sole provider for the family. She has three children also and is currently unemployed. So there is no way that she would be near the $46,686 annual salary. This will lead to a day to day struggle just to put food on the table. The sad part is that besides not having enough money for necessities, they certainly do not have money for unexpected things such as car repairs, or maintenance for the house. They mention in the book that their toilet is constantly running. This would be a problem in a middle class home and be fixed immediately. But for this family it is very low ion the priority list each and every day. Lastly we can look at the effect it will have on the McAllister’s. It is hard to gauge what money this family has coming in because Jane is on public assistance, Hank is a mechanic and only chips in somewhat, and Keith is a truck-driver. So all in all they have some money coming in but no way can this be near the self-sufficiency wage. On top of this they can have up to 11 people in the house at a time. It will be a struggle everyday to take care of this many people on such a limited income.

3. According the LSNJ the Brindle’s would qualify for public assistance in Essex County. The McAllisters would most likely qualify. The scary thing is that the Taylor’s would not. Celeste Taylor makes $20,000 annually, which is the median salary for people in New Jersey that do not fall below the poverty line and fall below the standard. This is going to make things very difficult in a very expensive county to live in. The situations that these families are in can be very stressful. Besides the major problems such as putting food on the table or having heat in the winter, little things to a middle class family become huge things for these families. An example of this would be laundry. In a middle class family this is just a chore that needs to be done and can be done right inside the home. But for these families it costs a lot of money to go to a Laundromat each week with a full families worth of clothes. Also sometimes it may be a bus ride to the Laundromat. This is just one of the many things that can cause stress to a family living below the standard in Essex County.

4. This information is going to greatly affect who I am as an educator. It is very important to understand the community in which you teach in. Understanding where the students come from and where they go outside of school can be very useful in the classroom. I plan to teach in a high school and this information tells me that I may have many students that are working in order to help their family put food on the table. If a student does not do their homework I should find out why they did not do it rather than just giving them a zero and moving on. They cannot just quit their job if their grades slip. I think just getting to know the students on a more personal level would help. Showing them that I care about what they do outside of school will could also help. I think that knowing what they may be going through will help me to have thicker skin. What I mean by this is that if students are tired or they do not care about my class then I should not take this personally. Maybe they are just hungry, tired from a long night of work, possibly they did not get a good night sleep because their heat was shut off, or they just have more important things to worry about than Algebra. These are certainly things that I did not realize would be issues but now that I do it is my job to use this knowledge to make me a better educator.