Stressors

I took a position at a local elementary school that was thirty miles from home as my first teaching position. Although I lived in a nearby city, the elementary school I was employed in was part of a farming community that had a low SES population. My very first day in the classroom proved to be quite challenging for me. I had one student that entered my classroom scared to death of his surrounding. Within the first week of school, I learned from indirect and direct sources that this child had never left his home (Even to go to a place like Walmart or a doctor) and had no direct interaction with anyone besides his mother, his uncle, and his grandparents. For the purpose of this assignment, there were many stressors from the provided list that would apply to this child. I would like to focus, however, on the stressors of isolation and hunger.

Within the first few weeks of school, I was required to go on a home visit and meet the family. I was in total disbelief when I arrived to the house to find that all the doors had been torn in half (the bottom of the door had eaten and clawed away by the dogs). In addition, animal feces covered the floor and there was a lack of food for the humans present but an abundance of food available for the dogs.

Their first week of school, it was very apparent that this child had been isolated from the outside world. He was basically nonverbal and would only bark and growl at her peers to communicate. When we placed food in front of him, he ate like an animal (not using utensils; using his hands or simply putting his face into the food). He would often come to school and say he was hungry because, “Dogs ate his food.” The food stamps that the family was provided was used to get meat for their dogs (since you cannot by dog food with food stamps). In addition, when he came to school, we fed him a nutritious breakfast, lunch, and snack and often sent food home with him from our back pack program.

I believe that this child was able to cope with his social isolation by interacting with the animals at his house and utilizing them for peers and social referencing. In addition, I believe that he was able to cope with hunger because I know that his previous First Step provider informed me that when this child was fed, he was given a poor diet with little nutrition (for example, ramen, bologna, etc). The school, instead, would provided him food to take home.

From this assignment, I decided to examined how other countries attempt to curtail the affects of hunger in children; the country I chose was India. According to Saxena (n.d.), India has the highest rate of malnutrition for children in all of south Asia. The population, in 2006, showed as high as 30% of infants born were underweight. They attributed early marriage, low weight in pregnancy, and a low level of education to this issue. In addition, the rate might be higher because men might be even higher than the 30% because men would not give appropriate information for fear of suffering a stigma. Some things that India is being recommended to do in aiding with this epidemic is to revamp their agricultural industry. It's essential to teach families how to grow their own food and to become self sufficient. In addition, they recommended launching a water shed program. In addition, it's recommended that the country should distribute additional resources to the community such as ration shops to provide healthcare centers and food. However, without funding without other countries, India does not have the means to set up these resources. Until this funding is provided, India is stuck in this endless cycle.

Saxena, N. C. Hunger, under-nutrition, and food security in India. (n.d). Chronic Poverty Research Center.