New Blog on Poverty and Education

For our readers who would like to continue their understanding of issues on poverty and education that was the focus of our Winter 2009 issue of the journal, "The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education," I came across a new blog this morning that might be very helpful. It is called, "Living and Learning in Poverty." According to the blog, the blogger, Paul Thomas, is an associate Professor of Education at Furman University, who has taught high school ELA in North Carolina for eighteen years at a rural school with "significant poverty issues."

This is his description of the blog's purpose and goal.

"This site is dedicated to storing and exploring all available research and resources related to poverty as it impacts the lives of children and the learning of children....Our society and our schools are failing our children, but not in ways often popularized in our wider discourse about schools. Our free society is still plagued by social inequities related to gender, race, and affluence—all of which are accidents of birth placed upon children. Our schools remain reflections of our social inequities, but in order for those schools to help children attain the empowerment that is also their birthright, society must lay a more solid and level foundation for children before school and during their education.This site is dedicated to housing the best possible data available for all stakeholders in the lives of children—including the children themselves—in order to overcome the plague of poverty in the lives and learning of children."