Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How does poverty become a cyclical problem that affects families for generations?

Teaching Suggestion: The main characters experience poverty that spans generations. Students might start with a journal exploring what they know about poverty. Then, the class could study these resources. Reading them in the order listed here would start with a focus on rural America and expand the focus to how this topic applies to the larger world. Analyzing the visuals in the Institute for Research on Poverty’s site can be an entry point. After reading, students might add to their journals or discuss key ideas. If time allows, this topic could expand to a research project.

• This resource from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty includes graphs and other images as well as written analysis of poverty in rural America.
• “Report: Rural Poverty In America Is ‘An Emergency’” from NPR explains how the United States compares to other countries based on child poverty and focuses on an analysis of rural poverty.