Years later, floundering in a top 10 doctorate program, the specter of going back to the bakery motivated me to work harder. Coworkers were a motley crew, from stable family men to hard-living lifelong boys who lived with their moms and drank or snorted their paychecks.
Imagine toting hundred-pound sacks of flour and unloading industrial ovens in a non-air-conditioned bakery in August, with sweat, flour and gritty cornmeal seeping into every crack of your body.
The bakery paid well enough, but the work was hard. I saved money, which helped during years of graduate school on a $4,000 salary, living in HUD housing. I spent my youth working at the bakery, alongside my dad once he retired from his government job. Eventually, dad earned a promotion, investments grew and by middle age, he was perhaps not part of the 1 percent, but certainly in the 10 percent. Uncle Sam got dad a second job and advised him on saving and investment. He got help from Uncle Sam, not the government but his father's brother. My dad had his own early struggles, falling into debt. From his teens to his 30s, my grandfather moved from poverty to prosperity, with a nice home for his eight kids, a boat, even a second home on the water. A century later, the Baltimore F&S Maranto bakery remains in the family. Reasoning that the restaurant business is cyclical but "even in bad times people eat bread," they traded the restaurant for a bakery in 1914. The packet includes complete lessons, Common Core standards, essential and key questions.My grandfather and his brother did some hard work on the railroad, pooled their money and eventually started a restaurant. There are sources for teaching the Socratic Seminar, as it acts as an explication for the argument. The material also supports Common Core extended response assessments, American Literature Course exams, the SAT, and ACT essay and critical thinking activities. These lessons enhance most high school level English Language Arts classes. Included is a lesson on crafting a thesis sentence. An original prompt on analyzing the rhetoric in Kristof’s essay is featured. There is an opportunity to write a rhetorical précis, as well as supporting material for teaching this strategy to your students.
Also, a link to a series of articles from The New York Times Room for Debate on a war on poverty is included. Students will view an inspiring TED Talk where a young man miraculously escaped the cycle of poverty.
There are samples and example videos on conducting this engaging strategy. The lesson links to 18 photographs related to poverty in America for a powerful gallery walk. Students will view supporting video clips on the argument. Is this a moral failing of our country? In an essay written just before the 2016 Presidential election, Nicolas Kristof, in a New York Times essay titled, “3 TVs and No Food: Growing Up Poor in America,” writes about our national tragedy. Some studies say 1 in 5, and others say 1 in 3 children in the United States live in poverty. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on their 2016 presidential campaigns did not speak much about the children who live in poverty in this country.