Teaching Resources
In addition to the materials below, we plan to showcase how educators are incorporating Poverty, by America into their courses at UMD. Please email fyb@umd.edu with your lesson plans. Once reviewed, we'll share those materials here.
Examples of classroom activities:
Multimedia project
In the epilogue to Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond asserts that “all of us can learn from, support, and join movements led by those who have intimate knowledge of poverty’s many slights and humiliations: attending meetings, signing petitions, donating time and money, amplifying social media messages, working the phone banks, adding our voice to public protests, and running supplies to the picket line” (p. 181). Ask students to select a local or national organization or movement targeting poverty and produce an in-depth multimedia product related to one of the solutions Desmond poses. The multimedia product should respond to the author’s driving question: “What can we do about it?”
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Book Trailer Analysis
As a class, watch Penguin Random House’s “Inside the Book” trailer for Poverty, by America , in which author Matthew Desmond poses his driving questions: Why is there so much poverty in America? What can we do about it? Ask students to look for and record any evocative words, phrases, or rhetorical choices while watching the video clip. For example, students might notice Desmond’s use of kennings such as “dream killer” or “capability destroyer” to describe poverty. They may be surprised by his statement that poverty “threatens any story we tell ourselves about being the greatest country on the planet” and that “some lives are made small so that others may grow.” Students should note the urgency of one-liners, such as “We don’t need to outsmart this problem—we need to out-hate it.” Afterwards, students can turn and talk to a classmate, sharing their observations and reactions before discussing as a class: “What does it mean to be a poverty abolitionist?”
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"Private opulence, public squalor: How the U.S. helps the rich and hurts the poor" (NPR)"37.9 million Americans are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census. But the problem could be far worse." (CNBC)"The War on Poverty Is Over. Rich People Won." The Atlantic"Why Poverty Persists in America" The New York Times
