Making Visible

One of the biggest issues with the district that I work in is that there is a huge divide between the wealthy and those who live in poverty. Within the district we have neighborhoods whose income are above six digits and neighborhoods that are below 4 digits. We have students who get picked up in McClaren's and porsche's while other students live inside of vans. The group of students who live in poverty is very small in comparison to those that live in comfort. The greatest example of this is our lost and found rack that stays out all of the time in the cafeteria. While it begins empty it gets filled at least 3 or 4 times over each school year. The sweatshirts, water bottles, shoes, hats, and scarves that get left behind and simply forgotten about. This of course is usual for students in 5th and 6th grade, but I find it incredibly surprising since most of the clothing and accessories left behind are made by under armour or vineyard vines. These sweatshirts can rage anywhere between $70-$30 each. When the rack is full there has to be at least 50 sweatshirts left behind. As a teacher who grew up in a lower income household, I can remember going back to school shopping with my mother. My budget for my entire wardrobe was $100. If I had to buy something like a sweatshirt or coat, I knew that it would be an investment that I would have for years. If I lost it, I knew that my parents would be incredibly upset and most likely send me looking for it until it was found. I now think of my homeless students looking at that clothing rack while they sit and eat lunch. Some of these students have no idea where they are going to be sleeping that night and they are eating the only meal of their day. Meanwhile, the other students are so carefree that they forget where their jackets are and don't worry about losing it because they know that their parents will just buy them a new one.

My suggestion for my making visible project is centered around the idea that everything has a price. Imagine walking through a school, or walking into a classroom where everything had a price sticker or tag attached to it. What was the price of the windows or the floors? What was the price of our tables and our stools? In my sketch I simply took a photograph of everything that was in front of me at that time. I began by pricing the things that I knew would be larges sums of money: the technology. Then, I began to pick apart the photograph and consider the smaller things: the plates we ate one, the mugs we drank from and the chair we sat on. The big thing that made me stop and really think was when I realized that I would need to price my partners' frames. I suddenly realized what it would be like to be a student who couldn't see, had a passion to learn but whose family couldn't afford frames.

I know that school have charity funds, donation centers and programs that are helping our students. However, I feel like these students are not the viewers I would be targeting. Those that live in poverty already walk around and evaluate the price of everything, it's those that don't need to worry about it that need to be reminded that it's there. Would my students suddenly have a new appreciation for their lost sweatshirts? Would administration realize the divide between funds spent on building the school vs. the fund put into our supplies? Would everyone suddenly see that our capitalist society has made so many of us look at people like walking dollar signs? It would be my hope that it would open up a discussion so that we could not only answer these questions but truly begin to change them.