What can adult basic education teachers to do when students bring stories to school about their struggles to provide for themselves and their children? How do teachers cope with their feelings of anger at how unfair "the system" is?

By teaching students how "the system" works, by exploring the power of electoral politics, and by examining how students' struggles are connected to people like themselves throughout history and around the world, teachers can begin to address the complexities of students' issues and concerns and help them plan for social change.

Many of us who work with people who are not yet economically stable come to care deeply about them. So it's hard when they come to school and tell the class, "I went in for a review of food stamps, but when they found out that I pay $400/month in a car payment, they reduced the amount for my teenage daughter and me to $12/month! If I don't have a car, there's no way I'm going to be able to get my degree and really earn enough to support us." Or we have heard, " The good news is, I just got a raise! The bad news is, my rent's going up, and now I earn $10/month too much to qualify for Mass Health." These, and many other related situations, are all too familiar to our students and for our staff. We feel sad, scared, angry, and overwhelmed.

Women in Leadership
Wellspring House is a 22-year-old organization that began as a shelter for homeless families and has expanded to offer access to permanent affordable housing, education and training, and support for families. In the education program called Foundations (17 weeks of college transition classes), we give direction to all those feelings in a course called Women in Leadership.

Half the sessions focus on women's history, particularly the fight by women to earn the right to vote. In learning about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, students come to appreciate that voting is an opportunity not to miss. In the other half of the class, imagining our future, students learn how to use the power we have to influence the government and other bureaucracies to respond to people's real needs.

Starting Out
On the first day of class I show students a drawing of a woman standing in a kitchen holding an empty wallet. There is a toddler tugging at her shirt. Behind her are nearly empty cupboards and cracked plaster walls. I ask the women, "What do you see here? Why is the woman doing what she is doing? Does this happen in real life? Can you describe a real-life situation?" After linking it to their lives, I bring it out to a larger context. "What are causes of poverty? Why don't people earn enough money?"

Once I have stimulated students' thinking regarding the what and why of poverty, I ask them, "what do you know about poverty in America? What do you want to know?" Because I use the model of popular education, I use the answers to these questions to shape the course to each class's particular interests, providing information that the students tell me will be useful to them.

The course is approved for three credits at North Shore Community College, so we consistently cover some basic concepts: self-interest as a motivator to action; vision of the world as it could be including other groups whose visions have already led to action plans (such as the Massa-chusetts Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Project); the role of citizens in a democracy; the opportunity to register to vote including a discussion of the values of the four political parties listed on the voter registration form; the role and structure of American government. But we are also flexible. One class may ask for a session on taxes. Another group may want to know about the federal budget.

Meeting with Legislators
Often there are opportunities to meet with our legislators at the statehouse. For example, three students and I attended a Home and Harvest Rally in the fall of 2002. The rally was an education and advocacy event put on by a number of the Boston coalitions who are working to increase access to housing and jobs. One of the Found-ations students spontaneously agreed to take the podium and describe how she had become homeless and what it had been like to live in a motel for several months with her young son. She also told us that she is in school now and plans to earn a degree in criminal justice. Then the students and I visited our state senator. After hearing that another of the students had been forced by the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) to quit a full-time job before they would help her, our senator filed Senate 812, a bill to allow DTA to offer benefits on a sliding scale. In the fiscal climate of FY Ô03, the bill did not pass, but you can be sure that the student whose story generated the bill learned a huge lesson about influencing the legislature.

Wellspring complements social justice teaching with a community-based public policy committee. This group "invites Cape Ann community members to examine economic and social policies that make it difficult for many residents to attain economic stability.... The committee also encourages people who are directly affected by these policies to offer testimony at legislative hearings." The public policy committee is a safe place for students who have a high level of interest in social justice to learn to work with others to make it easier for families to thrive in Massachusetts.

On the final exam I asked: why do the Foundations program and Wellspring House want you to know about voting and how the government works? One student wrote, "to get involved ... to make a difference in our community and make informed decisions—to understand that each vote counts, we can be heard at all levels of our government and work together to improve our own life and the lives of many." Another woman wrote, "...We will know what is happening in our government and [decide] whether we agree or disagree with what is going on." And one more: "So we can advocate (vocabulary word!) for what is important to us, which in turn empowers us. We should not leave our future in the hands of others."

In the title to this article, I claim that teaching about social justice is beneficial both to the students and to us, the teachers. The students' words above have given you their reasons why it's beneficial to them. For teachers it helps relieve the anger and helplessness we feel in the face of our students' obstacles. It helps to know that we are sending them out into the community with tools to organize and advocate for change that will lead to greater justice for all.

Resources

Nancy Goodman is the director of community education at Wellspring House in Gloucester, MA. She can be reached at: ngoodman@wellspringhouse.org.