Dear Professor Weddington,

I hope this school year is treating you well. I apologize for interrupting your grading time, but I was hoping to seek your approval for a research question I want to do my assignment on. I would like to do my paper on poverty and how it effects children in public schools. My research question would be: How can teachers prepare and provide for the children in their schools that come from poverty.

Ten years ago, only 4 states had more than half of their public school population qualify for free or reduced meals and now it’s up to 21 states. We are now at 51% of the United States public school children qualifying for free food.  This has put strains on teachers and administrators because they now have to spend a huge amount of time making sure their children are fed, clothed, and bathed, instead of just making sure they are teaching the needed material.

This subject is near and dear to me because I am going to be an elementary school teacher in just a few short years and I want to know how this is going to change or what I can do as a teacher to help my kids. I want to be the type of teacher that my kids are excited to see every morning, and I want my classroom to be a safe environment where they can forget about all their outside worries.

The video that lead me to be so interested in this subject was a news report done by Hari Sreenivasan on PBS Newshour. There is also a report that he referred to by the Southern Education Foundation.

Please read this and let me know if you think this would be a good topic to elaborate on for my problem paper. I would appreciate it if you could also give me some constructive criticism and inform me of any changes I can make to better explain this problem.

Thank you in advance for your time and advice,

Rachel Traino