Vegas
04-14-2007, 04:54 PM
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-phomeless14apr14,0,2420562.story?track=rss
Miami -- Until Friday, 12-year-old Cristal Montenegro admits that she thought homeless people were "trash" and "stupid."
But Montenegro said she realized how wrong she was after spending her world geography class watching a video about homeless people in Miami and learning that many are children, with families like hers.
"I don't think that anymore. I think they are actually somebody ...and you shouldn't treat them like that," the sixth-grader said.
Montenegro's enlightenment came during the debut of a course designed to protect one of the state's most vulnerable populations. The goal is to teach teenagers -- the people who most often victimize them -- that the homeless have hopes and dreams just like they do.
Initiated by the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust and created by Miami-Dade Public Schools, the homeless sensitivity program couldn't come at a more opportune time for Florida, which leads the nation in attacks on the homeless, advocates say. "It could serve as a model for communities across the nation," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
Though developed as a response to the January 2006 beatings of three homeless men by baseball-bat wielding teens in neighboring Broward County, Miami-Dade's program rolls out just two weeks after a 17-year-old and two 10-year-old boys were charged in Daytona Beach with hitting a homeless man with a cinder block.
"Why are we here?" Ron Book, chairman of the homeless trust, asked Montenegro and 12 classmates at Jose De Diego Middle School. "We're here because children have decided it's OK to beat some of the most vulnerable people in our community. Only ...days ago in Daytona Beach, a 17-year-old encouraged two 10-year-olds to pick up a brick and beat a homeless man senseless ...We've got to stop that."
The cornerstone of the K-12 program is a 13-minute video, It Could Happen to You. It stars Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning, and a handful of children who, viewers eventually learn, are or were homeless.
The video also tells students that families with children are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, and that one of every three homeless people helped off the street and into shelters are children.
Montenegro and her classmates were told Friday that more than 600 of Miami-Dade's 353,000 students are homeless, many whose parents lost their homes or jobs after hurricanes, fires or other circumstances.
The curriculum also includes age-appropriate lessons on what it means to be poor, and how people become homeless. All students who participate will be given tests to gauge changes in their sensitivity, which Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew said is just as important as passing the FCAT.
"This is about civic literacy," Crew said.
Book, a veteran lobbyist from Miami, is also pushing a bill in the Legislature that would treat assaults on homeless people as hate crimes, stiffening penalties for such attacks. He said he hopes the Miami-Dade program will expand to other counties and, coupled with a new hate crime law, "send the message that Florida doesn't want to be the meanest state in the country to the homeless."
School officials in Broward said they are very interested in Miami-Dade's new curriculum.
"We would definitely look at what they have. We won't reinvent the wheel," said Dianne Sepielli, coordinator of Broward's homeless education program, which last year served 2,400 children.
For now, though, Florida remains the toughest state in the nation for the homeless. Of the 142 unprovoked attacks documented by the national coalition last year, the most, 48, were in Florida. The state also led the nation in such attacks in 2005.
Book said he is even more bothered by another statistic that 68 percent of the documented attacks against the homeless were committed by youths between 13 and 19. That point, he said, was driven home after the homeless beatings in Broward last year.
The first attack was captured on a surveillance camera. The second, which resulted in the death of the victim, Norris Gaynor, brought first-degree murder charges against his three accused assailants.
Miami -- Until Friday, 12-year-old Cristal Montenegro admits that she thought homeless people were "trash" and "stupid."
But Montenegro said she realized how wrong she was after spending her world geography class watching a video about homeless people in Miami and learning that many are children, with families like hers.
"I don't think that anymore. I think they are actually somebody ...and you shouldn't treat them like that," the sixth-grader said.
Montenegro's enlightenment came during the debut of a course designed to protect one of the state's most vulnerable populations. The goal is to teach teenagers -- the people who most often victimize them -- that the homeless have hopes and dreams just like they do.
Initiated by the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust and created by Miami-Dade Public Schools, the homeless sensitivity program couldn't come at a more opportune time for Florida, which leads the nation in attacks on the homeless, advocates say. "It could serve as a model for communities across the nation," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
Though developed as a response to the January 2006 beatings of three homeless men by baseball-bat wielding teens in neighboring Broward County, Miami-Dade's program rolls out just two weeks after a 17-year-old and two 10-year-old boys were charged in Daytona Beach with hitting a homeless man with a cinder block.
"Why are we here?" Ron Book, chairman of the homeless trust, asked Montenegro and 12 classmates at Jose De Diego Middle School. "We're here because children have decided it's OK to beat some of the most vulnerable people in our community. Only ...days ago in Daytona Beach, a 17-year-old encouraged two 10-year-olds to pick up a brick and beat a homeless man senseless ...We've got to stop that."
The cornerstone of the K-12 program is a 13-minute video, It Could Happen to You. It stars Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning, and a handful of children who, viewers eventually learn, are or were homeless.
The video also tells students that families with children are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, and that one of every three homeless people helped off the street and into shelters are children.
Montenegro and her classmates were told Friday that more than 600 of Miami-Dade's 353,000 students are homeless, many whose parents lost their homes or jobs after hurricanes, fires or other circumstances.
The curriculum also includes age-appropriate lessons on what it means to be poor, and how people become homeless. All students who participate will be given tests to gauge changes in their sensitivity, which Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew said is just as important as passing the FCAT.
"This is about civic literacy," Crew said.
Book, a veteran lobbyist from Miami, is also pushing a bill in the Legislature that would treat assaults on homeless people as hate crimes, stiffening penalties for such attacks. He said he hopes the Miami-Dade program will expand to other counties and, coupled with a new hate crime law, "send the message that Florida doesn't want to be the meanest state in the country to the homeless."
School officials in Broward said they are very interested in Miami-Dade's new curriculum.
"We would definitely look at what they have. We won't reinvent the wheel," said Dianne Sepielli, coordinator of Broward's homeless education program, which last year served 2,400 children.
For now, though, Florida remains the toughest state in the nation for the homeless. Of the 142 unprovoked attacks documented by the national coalition last year, the most, 48, were in Florida. The state also led the nation in such attacks in 2005.
Book said he is even more bothered by another statistic that 68 percent of the documented attacks against the homeless were committed by youths between 13 and 19. That point, he said, was driven home after the homeless beatings in Broward last year.
The first attack was captured on a surveillance camera. The second, which resulted in the death of the victim, Norris Gaynor, brought first-degree murder charges against his three accused assailants.