During the 2018-19 school year, more than 22,000 Oregon students, grades K-12, were homeless. They slept on couches with extended family or friends, they lived in motels, tents, trailers and emergency shelters.
Some lived in cars, like 16-year-old Mattie, the protagonist of Connie King Leonard’s young adult novel, “Sleeping in My Jeans.” Last fall, the Oregon Council of Teachers of English Spirit Book Award selected it for best debut novel, and it is now a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for YA literature.
“Sleeping in My Jeans” tells the story of a mother and two daughters, Mattie and her 6-year-old sister, Meg, who are suddenly unhoused and living in their car because of domestic violence. Being young, female and homeless can be dangerous, as this novel clearly shows.
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They sleep parked on dark residential streets and in ominously deserted industrial parks. Mom moves the car every few days to avoid notice. Mattie is sole support to a frightened little sister while mom works two jobs, goes to school and looks for housing all day. The girls spend hours in the public library with nowhere else to go, end up sleeping alone in a dumpster one night and finally narrowly escape a sex trafficking operation.
Throughout it all, Mattie’s central goal is to keep up her grades and get to college. She refuses to get sidetracked.
It’s not easy when you’re not housed. There’s the logistics of doing homework when it requires watching video clips or creating Power Points and you don’t own a computer. Keeping track of school books and school work, showering in truck stops, brushing your teeth in library restrooms, even keeping a phone charged because it’s your only contact with mom — are all part of a kid’s life when they don’t have a stable residence.
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And it’s getting easier and easier for kids to fall by the wayside, said Leonard. A middle school and elementary school teacher for 16 years, she watched class sizes grow and extracurricular activities devolve into “pay to play” over the 1990s and 2000s.
She recalls a student in her sixth grade science class who wasn’t bringing his textbook to class. After this went on for several days, she gently suggested he go home and look everywhere in his room for it. He finally shot back: “There are five of us living in a camper on the back of a pickup truck. My science book is not there.”
“I felt horrible because I’m pressuring him about a science book when obviously the family is in a crisis,” she said. “But kids in middle school and high school don’t share stuff like that. They don’t want people to know the bad stuff that’s going on.”
Writing for the young adult audience, Leonard was particularly interested in raising empathy and awareness of teenagers that might have classmates who are homeless.
“I saw a lot of kids in my classes, and their story wasn’t being told. You do not know what they’re going through at home or the issues they’re dealing with,” she said.
Students sitting right next to each other are living very different lives, she said. A student who is affluent and comfortable would have no way of knowing the everyday challenges of a student who is houseless and struggling.
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Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, school districts keep track of students who meet the federal definition of inadequate housing. Qualified families have access to weekly food pantries at their schools (in Portland, sponsored through the Oregon Food Bank), transportation to school and clothes closets where families can get donated clothing. Counselors can help with referrals to social service agencies.
It’s important to find an advocate, Leonard said, because the system can be difficult to navigate. In the book, a police officer that encountered the family many nights sleeping in their car befriends them and offers help.
Leonard shopped the book for years before finding a reception at Portland State University’s Ooligan Press. Unique among U.S. teaching presses, Ooligan is totally run by graduate students in book publishing — from acceptance of the manuscript through development, copy editing, design and marketing. Founded in 2001, it focuses on “books honoring the cultural and natural diversity of the Pacific Northwest.”
Writing the book, meeting people in her research and reflecting on her years of teaching, Leonard said that if she were teaching today, “I would be really aware of kids maybe not working up to potential.” She’d notice a kid that’s obviously sleep deprived or wearing ill-fitting clothing; the kid racking up lots of absences because they have to look after siblings. These can be signs kids are homeless.
Knowing their challenges, she could adjust their work to fit the situation. Or, in the case of her student who was living in a camper and didn’t bring his science book, “I might just give them the book.” Which, in fact, she did.