ABSTRACT
A suburban childhood and privileged schooling experiences had not prepared me for this summer teaching experience. The grinding poverty was obvious, even to a teenager dropped off in the morning and picked up at the end of the day. Getting to know the kids only reinforced this impression, with the predictable stories of family disruption, not enough food (a hot meal at breakfast and lunch was a big draw for having kids spend their summer in school), and a persistent fear about safety on the streets (a big draw for the parents to have their kids at school during the summer). Privilege and poverty seemed like a pretty good explanation for why my fellow high-school students were there as teachers while the kids we worked with were lacking basic literacy skills. Predictably, most of the kids were really struggling with basic reading and math. But not all of them-some stood out, not only grasping the basics but asking some penetrating questions along the way. Big differences among the kids in a uniformly
high-stress setting suggested that something more was going on, but I didn’t really understand it.
