I can't tell you where the concept for this project originated. All I know is that several semesters ago, Nickel & Dimed was chosen as a supplemental text in our RED courses and I needed a way to make the book relevant and meaningful to my students. At around the same time, our Developmental Math instructors had had great success with a budget-based math project. Several years later, the project has gone through several iterations and has developed into what you see on this website. I cannot take sole credit for its creation; I have brilliant colleagues who do amazing things in their classes, and I "borrow" from them immensely. Thanks to the numerous conversations I've had with people who are passionate about teaching and who are socially aware enough to value the ethics involved in issues of poverty, I've had considerable help in thinking this project through and making it into what it has become: a truly valuable experience-based, solution-centered project that students (and I) can be proud to be a part of. This page contains some of my notes that I hope will help others think through similar projects.
In developing a "job" for the students completing the project, I looked at countless job advertisements for the Raleigh-Durham area on online classified sites. I created a job containing various attributes of various postings. It is not as much a "real" job as it is a "smash-up," but the attributes listed in the description and job responsibilities are very real, and, more importantly, the pay scale is very real. The students' gross pay was calculated doing very simple math (39 hours X $7.50 X 4 weeks), and the NET was based on a 20% deduction (an estimate for NC & federal taxes) from that gross with a rounding to the nearest whole number. Since students needed a physical location for the purpose of the project, I gave them the location of a Target store in Durham. The job, however, is not necessarily a Target job posting.
When creating the situations each group was to represent, I did not get creative. These situations are based on people (mostly students) that I have known. The situations do not represent "real" people, rather "smash-ups" of typical situations I've heard from countless students in my time as an educator at a community college. Though the situations are not "real," they are real enough.
Students were to assume they had no one to count on for help, no friends, no family, no one. They were new to the area and had to make it on their own with no assistance from anyone except from state, government, and community-based programs.
Some things in a project such as this are outside of our control. I deliberately instructed students to ignore some of the bureaucratic red tape that they would have normally encountered while trying to establish assistance from the various government, state, and community-based programs designed to help the working poor (like long waiting lists, unrealistic office hours, countless pieces of verification paperwork, etc.). In a hypothetical, 4-week-long project like this, it is impossible (and unrealistic) to ask students to overcome these obstacles. I suggested that they work under the assumption that they had filed the appropriate paperwork, waited the appropriate length of time to receive assistance, and jumped all appropriate hurdles. I thought it valuable, however, for students to see such hurdles in their research and field work. Knowing that it is not simple to just go out and get the help and services they need only reinforces the experiences Ehrenreich describes in her book (the 75-minute process of calling, waiting, and driving to the local food bank in Maine to pick up less than $8 worth of food, for example). There were also countless questions about their situations that students asked that I could never have predicted. I accepted that I could not think of everything beforehand and answered questions the best I could as they were asked. Some things I even made up on the spot in response to a question and adjusted what needed adjusting accordingly.
I provided students with a list of resources that would help get them started in finding an apartment, locating childcare, getting appropriate attire for work, etc., but the list was inadequate to say the least. Students also found their own resources as they worked through the project. It wasn't until during a conversation with a colleague that I learned of the very comprehensive lists of resources available for the poor that are posted on the Need-Based Resources page of this website. Again, it is in this spirit of collaboration that this project adapts and grows and provides students with relevant, usable information.
I kicked the project off by having students play the spent game hosted by The Urban Ministries of Durham (http://playspent.org). Each group had to play the game together and see if they could survive the month on the $1,000 allotted to them. This was a great way to begin the conversations about the sacrifices and problems they could expect to face during the project.
A project like this allows for some really organic teaching moments. Some of the conversations that took place during this project I could not have artificially begun or facilitated, yet they happened regularly with the work of the project in the backdrop. In one such conversation that occurred while students were playing the spent game, for example, a student told a fellow group member that buying milk at $4 a gallon and apples at $1 each was stupid when they could get 10 packs of ramen noodles for the same price (affordability versus health). Another such valuable conversation happened early on in the project when a group was trying to find an apartment. Two young women got into a rather heated argument about a 1-bedroom apartment versus a 2-bedroom apartment for their hypothetical single woman living with her ailing father. The 2-bedroom apartment would cost an extra $60 a month (affordability versus comfort/privacy).
Students reported their findings to me by predetermined deadlines, and I posted them here. The information provided on this website is the result of the combined effort of the entire class. The students did all the hard legwork; I merely offered them guidance and support and then posted everything here to showcase their hard work. This website offers them something tangible to show off the fruits of their labor.
In developing a "job" for the students completing the project, I looked at countless job advertisements for the Raleigh-Durham area on online classified sites. I created a job containing various attributes of various postings. It is not as much a "real" job as it is a "smash-up," but the attributes listed in the description and job responsibilities are very real, and, more importantly, the pay scale is very real. The students' gross pay was calculated doing very simple math (39 hours X $7.50 X 4 weeks), and the NET was based on a 20% deduction (an estimate for NC & federal taxes) from that gross with a rounding to the nearest whole number. Since students needed a physical location for the purpose of the project, I gave them the location of a Target store in Durham. The job, however, is not necessarily a Target job posting.
When creating the situations each group was to represent, I did not get creative. These situations are based on people (mostly students) that I have known. The situations do not represent "real" people, rather "smash-ups" of typical situations I've heard from countless students in my time as an educator at a community college. Though the situations are not "real," they are real enough.
Students were to assume they had no one to count on for help, no friends, no family, no one. They were new to the area and had to make it on their own with no assistance from anyone except from state, government, and community-based programs.
Some things in a project such as this are outside of our control. I deliberately instructed students to ignore some of the bureaucratic red tape that they would have normally encountered while trying to establish assistance from the various government, state, and community-based programs designed to help the working poor (like long waiting lists, unrealistic office hours, countless pieces of verification paperwork, etc.). In a hypothetical, 4-week-long project like this, it is impossible (and unrealistic) to ask students to overcome these obstacles. I suggested that they work under the assumption that they had filed the appropriate paperwork, waited the appropriate length of time to receive assistance, and jumped all appropriate hurdles. I thought it valuable, however, for students to see such hurdles in their research and field work. Knowing that it is not simple to just go out and get the help and services they need only reinforces the experiences Ehrenreich describes in her book (the 75-minute process of calling, waiting, and driving to the local food bank in Maine to pick up less than $8 worth of food, for example). There were also countless questions about their situations that students asked that I could never have predicted. I accepted that I could not think of everything beforehand and answered questions the best I could as they were asked. Some things I even made up on the spot in response to a question and adjusted what needed adjusting accordingly.
I provided students with a list of resources that would help get them started in finding an apartment, locating childcare, getting appropriate attire for work, etc., but the list was inadequate to say the least. Students also found their own resources as they worked through the project. It wasn't until during a conversation with a colleague that I learned of the very comprehensive lists of resources available for the poor that are posted on the Need-Based Resources page of this website. Again, it is in this spirit of collaboration that this project adapts and grows and provides students with relevant, usable information.
I kicked the project off by having students play the spent game hosted by The Urban Ministries of Durham (http://playspent.org). Each group had to play the game together and see if they could survive the month on the $1,000 allotted to them. This was a great way to begin the conversations about the sacrifices and problems they could expect to face during the project.
A project like this allows for some really organic teaching moments. Some of the conversations that took place during this project I could not have artificially begun or facilitated, yet they happened regularly with the work of the project in the backdrop. In one such conversation that occurred while students were playing the spent game, for example, a student told a fellow group member that buying milk at $4 a gallon and apples at $1 each was stupid when they could get 10 packs of ramen noodles for the same price (affordability versus health). Another such valuable conversation happened early on in the project when a group was trying to find an apartment. Two young women got into a rather heated argument about a 1-bedroom apartment versus a 2-bedroom apartment for their hypothetical single woman living with her ailing father. The 2-bedroom apartment would cost an extra $60 a month (affordability versus comfort/privacy).
Students reported their findings to me by predetermined deadlines, and I posted them here. The information provided on this website is the result of the combined effort of the entire class. The students did all the hard legwork; I merely offered them guidance and support and then posted everything here to showcase their hard work. This website offers them something tangible to show off the fruits of their labor.
