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by Joeff Davis/Bad Habits
For four days last week, 11 students from Atlanta’s
Paideia private school forsook all the comforts of
Home, including a home itself. They lived in an
outdoor playground in Inman Park, and were permitted
to bring a blanket, a plastic sheet, $5, the clothes
they had on, and a pair of old shoes.
The students were participants in teacher Elizabeth
Hearn’s homeless-immersion class. The goal is to teach
about the challenges of being homeless, to humanize
homeless people and to show students how materialism inundates our culture. According to Atlanta
Children’s Shelter, there are 2,500 homeless children
in the city.
The 11 students who participated were chosen from a
pool of 17 applicants. During the day, they walked
around Atlanta, visiting with real homeless people on
the street and volunteering in homeless shelters.
Maddie Mitchell, 13, says the most difficult part of
the experience was getting [dirty] looks from other
people while she walked down the street.
Lying on a cardboard box and looking up at the sky,
10th-grader Aryelle Cormier described an encounter the
students had with a group of people in a homeless
encampment in southwest Atlanta in almost spiritual
terms.
'They didn_t have anything, she said, but they did.'
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