poor children

Explores the relationship between academic achievement and low socioeconomic status, arguing that chronic exposure to poverty causes negative physical changes to the brain, and identifying key factors that can help students achieve emotionally, socially, and academically.

In nineteenth-century England, a young orphan boy lives in the squalid surroundings of a workhouse until he becomes involved with a gang of thieves.

The author, Public Guardian of Cook County, Illinois, an area which includes metropolitan Chicago, uses case studies to expose the failure of the child welfare system, arguing that state agencies and courts are not adequately meeting the needs of abused and neglected children, and discusses ways to make the system work.

Discusses how to prevent the misidentification of students of low socioeconomic status as learning disabled and improve their performance by supporting school readiness skills, enhancing teaching techniques, fostering relationships between home and school, and more.

Discusses how newsboys, and a few newsgirls, stood on street corners in the 1800s trying to sell newspapers, and decades later, "Newsies," as they were called, became famous.

Presents a stage adaptation of Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," the story of Saleem Sinal, a man born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, the moment India became independent, whose life parallels the history of his nation.

A boy describes what it is like living in a hotel in New York City with his brother and his mother while she waits to find a job and an apartment.

Laura Schroff was a successful sales executive living and working in Manhattan. Maurice was a homeless eleven-year-old panhandler. When he asked for change so he could eat something, Laura kept walking but then something made her turn around and go back. And she continued to go back, nearly every week for years and their unexpected friendship has today spanned nearly thirty years. Because of Laura's interest in him Maurice has grown up, married, gotten a college degree, and holds a job.

Shares the stories of teachers who have overcome the challenges of teaching in high-poverty urban communities and explains how other teachers can adapt their methods and strategies for their own classrooms.