“Breaking Them Up, Taking Them away”, Kelleen Toohey
After reading this article, I can’t agree with more about “In school districts that provide school supplies for students”, “When children have to bring their own supplies, however, the issue of haves and have notes is brought into the classroom.” “When parents could not afford to buy supplies or students were looked at disapprovingly by their classmates for not having their own stuff.”
These quotes form the book reminds me of the time when I was just graduated form university and become a practice teacher in a public junior high school in Taiwan. In our country, students usually have to wear uniform. They had two kinds of uniforms for them to wear. Students wore sport uniform while they have physical classes, the other one they wore for normal days. Because of that, students all looked the same and no one can tell who came from rich family and who’s not. However, the school has a new policy which is called “casual Friday”, which means at the last Friday of the month, students can wear their favorite clothes to school. At the first time, I didn’t feel anything wrong until one time a student told me that a girl who always wore uniform to school on “casual Friday”. This girl attracted my attention immediately because I was also aware that she’s always fall asleep in the first class. One day after class, I asked her to stay and help me about deal with class chores. I finally got a chance to talk to her about the “casual Friday”. She told me that both of her parents worked in a factory. They often come home at the early morning with a extremely tired face and then they have to go back to work at night. Her parents usually leaved fifty new Taiwan dollars (1.6 USD) on the desk and that’s the only money she can use in one day. She had to use this fifty to buy the lunch so that’s the reason why she always sleep in the first class with an empty stomach. Furthermore, she felt embarrassed cause she had no extra clothes to wear and she even wore uniform on the weekend. Needless to say that her supplies were all very ragged and the classmate who sits next to her was laughing at her all the time. She even had no courage to take out her pencil box during the class. I feel severely misery of her and also blame myself didn’t help her at the beginning.
