Lots of schools do food drives this time of year, generally trading a canned food item for some sort of prize, like a dress down day or a homework pass or something like that.  My school is no exception.  The difference is that my school turns around and gives that donated food right back to our own families rather than donating it to a food bank.  We pulled together 54 boxes of donated items in all; I h ave no idea how many items in total but you can get a sense of how many from the picture.  A couple of our employees spent a couple of days sorting everything out and trying to make sure that what was in each of the boxes was roughly equivalent, and on Tuesday a few of us drove to a meat market in Buchanan, Michigan and bought 54 turkeys, one for each of the boxes.

I spent most of yesterday with our librarian, out distributing packages to our families.  We went out in pairs, most teams going to 10 or 12 houses.  The librarian and I had a double run and hit 21.

It was… sobering.  I’ve lived in this town for most of my life and taught in its public schools for the last eight years, and I’ve always known that there were pockets of severe poverty throughout the town– hell, I’ve talked about the effects poverty has on our kids any number of times in any number of venues.  But this was the first time where my job for a day was literally to drive around and find out where my kids live.  Our principal, at one of his houses, was greeted at the door by a man with a  gun in his hand.  The librarian and I didn’t have that, but we did have one house that we didn’t leave food at on account of the place looked like it had been abandoned for years, only to get back to school and discover that, yes, that was the right address and more than one of our students still live there.

I can’t properly describe how bad this place was.  Suffice it to say that my job today was to drive around and deliver donated food to families who are poor enough that they need such assistance.  These people, as you might expect, don’t exactly live in beautiful, well-maintained homes.  Nonetheless, the rest of the houses were mansions compared to this one. There is no way they have electricity or heat.  They didn’t have knobs on the doors, for God’s sake.  The front door was held shut by a padlock.  The librarian looked in a window and said that the place was full of trash.  I got back to school too late to do anything about it, but I’ll be calling DCFS on Monday.  I have to.

Across the street was what looked like a $300,000 house.  Literally exactly across the street.

We got back to school in time to discover that three of our kids were being removed from their father’s home, also by DCFS.  It is absolutely the best decision for everyone involved.

Be thankful for what you have, folks.