How many days til summer?

It is interesting that I am spending my Memorial Day weekend grading sociology papers while nannying in BH. Interesting because I had my working-middle class students reflect on our social class unit, and interesting because I am grading these 15-page reflections in the home of one of the most elite upper class families I've ever encountered. As I read my kids' thoughts about how our values and attitudes are shaped by those held by our parents and our parents' social class, I am seriously witnessing this reality before my very eyes.

Last night, the girls were told by their dad that they had to attend the Piston's playoff game in the owner's suite because there were other important people that would be there, and this in turn was very important to dad. The older daughter kind of threw a fit, saying that she didn't know these people, what was the point in her going, and she didn't want to make small talk with people she barely knew, but she ended up going, like I assume she always does. I wondered how my students would react in this situation; how many of them experience this often and how many would find this completely unrealistic in their lives.

Throughout the unit, I tried to illustrate to my kids the different viewpoints and understandings that go along with different social classes, using Ruby Payne's framework for understanding poverty and her ideas of the hidden rules of social class. Now, I don't necessarily agree 100% with her blunt generalizations, but I thought that the ideas had probably never been presented to my students before, and that they would take away at least a now way of thinking about the world. Many were very resistant to these ideas, particularly about the idea that not all poor people are lazy. (One of my students actually said this, which makes me realize how much parents/media/peers really do have an impact on what kids think and believe.) It is amazing to me how one negative experience with a welfare family abusing the system can cause a student to make such an assumption about 35 million people in the US. What was even MORE amazing is how many other kids agreed and/or took his experience to be fact. If middle class kids are thinking this, what are the upper classes thinking?

As I read about their reflections on social class, their assumptions about where they lie on the social class ladder, and their suggestions for effecting change in our socially stratified society, I'm pleased to read that a majority of students ended up really making some important realizations about themselves and about society as a result of this unit. But I look around at my surroundings this weekend and have to remember that we are all a product of our environment. I am constantly reminded that these girls have a very limited understanding of the "real world" outside their own upper-class universe. Realistically though, my kids at CHS don't either.

Major lesson learned for Ms. Steer: keep trying to open your kids' eyes to how the rest of the world lives, and promote understanding, empathy, and tolerance. They might fight it now, but hopefully it will come back to them eventually.

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30 more papers to grade... almost there!