The saddest thing I see, and I see it constantly is a lack of hope. The kids are too poor and too uneducated to see that there is something better. The kids take failure for granted in their classwork, in their self-discipline, in their plans for the future. I want them to dream big and make things happen. Maybe they try and I do not see it.
Poverty affects people severely.
Poverty takes away hope and stifles ambitions more often that it flames them. I would have thought that the opposite was true. I assumed that all people worked hard to gain a better life, to fulfill the American Dream. By the time they get to high school, most of them have given up. My vision of the universal appeal of the American Dream is obviously wrong.