What Would You Do?

 

Introduction

 

Teaching students who have never experienced homelessness requires scenarios that will provide them with different situations that contribute to homelessness in the United States.  Rather than sending students into potentially dangerous situations, providing scenarios offers students an opportunity to experience authentic problem based learning situations that help to develop affective values (and emotional) as well as cognitive skills.

 

"Problem-based learning online is defined here as students working in teams together online of four to six on a series of problem scenarios that combine to make up a module or unit (a 12 week teaching block) that may then form a programme" (Savin-Baden, Tombs, Poulton, Conradi, Kavia, Burden, & Beaumont, 2011, para. 10).

 

"Practicing skills within a virtual environment online offers advantages over learning through real-life practice, in particular the exposure of learners to a wide range of scenarios (more than they are likely to meet in a standard face-to-face programme) at a time and pace convenient to the learner, together with consistent feedback" (Savin-Baden, Tombs, Poulton, Conradi, Kavia, Burden, & Beaumont, 2011, para. 11).

 

You are One Paycheck Away From Becoming Homeless...

 

• You have become injured on the job, your employer gives you an ultimatium:  relocate or lose your job...

• Your employer must terminate several employees due to the economy...

• Someone in your family has become ill and the hospital/doctor bills are piling up.  Your health/medical insurance is insufficient to cover the costs.  You have been told the only way you will receive help is to sell everything you own...

• You are a veteran who has returned from war; you have PTS (post traumatic syndrome)and cannot hold down a job; the government does not have enough resources to help you....

• Your are an abused teenage, who must leave to keep from being killed...

• You are a infant or a small child and you parents are addicted to drugs or alcohol...

• Your parents have been killed in an accident and they did not have any family or their familes do not want to take you in...

• You are a small child and your parents abandoned you...

• You are elderly and none of your children want you...

• You are elderly with severe medical issues with no place to go...

• You are elderly with no existing family or close friends....

• You are new to an area, without work and no place to live....

• Your spouse has died and left you with no money and a debt load that you cannot afford...

• You are going through a divorce that you did not see coming...

 

A Special Thank You to Elizabeth M. from the Issaquah Sammamish Interfaith Coalition for providing these

scenarios:

 

• You were a highly successful single professional.  At the height of your career you stepped down for several years to care for an ailing parent.  The parent has died, but it is hard to break back into the executive job market.   Your savings are exhausted.

• You were disabled in a car wreck that killed your spouse.

• You graduated college with a heavy student loan debt and spent everything you had to move across country for a job that was promised, but when you got there the company went bankrupt.  You don’t have money to go back home and have a social safety net there.

• You are a refugee.  Your government support did not last long enough for you to learn English and find a living wage job.

• You bought a house when prices were high and you had a well paid job.  Now you are out of work, can’t pay the mortgage on your spouse’s income, and can’t sell the house for enough to cover the mortgage debt.  The bank is foreclosing.

• You moved for an internship but the financial support promised you has not materialized.  You have worked for two months on a project and the person who “hired” you, has paid you with a forged money order.  All your checks are bouncing and your landlord is ready to evict you.

 

Please take a moment to think about what other scenerios may cause homelessness...