Because I enjoy approaching people in public and asking them questions, I decided to “quiz” fellow students around campus with questions pertaining to homelessness. Said questions are listed below (the correct answers to questions 1-6 are shown in bold):
1. Out of all the cities in San Bernardino County, Redlands had the ______ amount of homeless people in 2017.
Highest
Second highest
Third highest
Second least
Least
2. The two factors that are mostly responsible for the rise of homelessness are:
Drug addiction and decreasing levels of motivation
Mental illness and increases in poverty
A shortage of affordable housing and increases in poverty
The erosion of family ties and a shortage of affordable housing
Lack of health insurance and student debt
3. The average life expectancy among homeless people compared to that of non-homeless people is….
about the same
about 5 years longer
about 10 years shorter
about 30 years shorter
about 45 years shorter
4. About ________ youth are homeless on any given night, and about _______ of them are LGBTQ.
100,000; 20%
750,000,000; 30%
1 million; 35%
D. 1.3 million; 40%
E. 1.8 million; 50%
5. African-Americans make up about 12.5% of the general population. They comprise about ______ of the national homeless population.
12.5%
10%
18%
30%
40%
6. There are about 9,800,000 people living in LA County. How many of them are homeless? Give your best guess. (around 57,000 is the answer, that is, according to counts)
7. What do you think is the definition of “homeless?”
8. If you had $100,000,000 to help address homelessness, what would you do with it? (Questions 7 and 8 are obviously subjective and have no “correct” answers, however I would say that there are “more correct” responses to them.)
Upon approaching people, I would ask them politely, albeit confidently, if they wanted to participate in a quiz about homelessness, and that they would be placed in a raffle to win either some candy, a book about homelessness, or an exclusive discussion about homelessness facilitated by me should they choose to participate. If an individual agreed to participate, I would ask them one question at a time, wait for them to answer, and then tell them whether or not they were right or wrong immediately after their response.
I conducted the raffle process by assigning every participant a number, which was very easy because I wrote down every participant’s name and number after they took my quiz. I then used a random number generating app to select six “winning” participants: one to be awarded with candy, another with a book, and four others with a discussion.
I have so far contacted every “winner,” and have already facilitated the discussion. Thinking that people wouldn’t want to stay for long since we are in the heat of pre-finals week, I told those that “won” the discussion that they were only expected to stay for about 20 minutes or so. Boy, did I underestimate their generosity with time! We talked about the theories posed by Willse in The Value of Homelessness, the notion of attributing homelessness to situations vs. dispositions, structural changes in the job market, and the debate concerning whether change should come from the federal vs. the local level for about and hour and a half.
My teaching project has yet to conclude since I still need to give the candy and the book on homelessness to their respective recipients. But does the process of teaching and learning ever conclude?