Overcoming Poverty with Education

Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)

February 2, 2004

THE MONDAY PROFILE OVERCOMING POVERTY WITH EDUCATION

Author: CLIFTON R. CHESTNUT - The Oregonian

Edition: SUNRISE

Section: LOCAL STORIES

Page: A01

Former welfare mother Donna Beegle tells a standing-room crowd of school board members how her family scraped by on $408 a month.

Food stamps kept meals coming, and government aid covered $395 in rent. That wasn't enough. The single mom of two, a ninth-grade dropout, was evicted.

Eighteen years later, Beegle sees education as her ticket out of poverty. Armed with a doctorate in education, she starts this week as an academic coach at Portland's Roosevelt High School. Roosevelt, where more than half the students are from low-income families, is the only regular high school in Oregon to be rated as "unacceptable" by state educators for chronic low achievement.

Beegle's new job is a natural progression from her work training educators, public health workers and others how to work with families that come from backgrounds like hers. She has been hired with federal money from the No Child Left Behind law, which has targeted Roosevelt and two other low-achieving Portland high schools that receive federal aid for serving poor children.

Beegle sees her upbringing -- struggling to make ends meet, constant moving, teachers with middle-class values that didn't match hers -- as requisite training for the job.

Because many educators haven't lived in poverty, Beegle says, they don't grasp its root causes, effect on children and sometimes crippling effect on academic performance. The 42-year-old insists, however, that poverty is not an excuse for low achievement.

Poverty focuses on present

"In poverty, you are focused on the present: 'What are you going to eat tonight? Who got arrested? Whose lights got shut out? Who has food?' " she told school board members recently gathered for a statewide meeting.

"We give the children homework. We're not taking into consideration the context in which they're living," says Beegle, blond hair touching her shoulders. "Think about it. What do you call homework if you don't have a home?"

State school officials told Portland educators to make big changes and improve Roosevelt or risk consequences, including takeover by the state. Principal Andy Kelly knew Beegle's record as a speaker and trainer. He also knew her history as a ninth-grade dropout from Marshall High School, a Southeast Portland school also under federal watch for low performance.

Roosevelt's clock tower rises above the working-class St. Johns neighborhood in North Portland. According to the Oregon Department of Education, its students are among the most disadvantaged in Oregon when looking at family income, parent education and other factors.

Student achievement has been a nagging problem, too. Last spring, 25 percent of sophomores met or exceeded state reading benchmarks.

Roosevelt's staff praised

Beegle applauds Roosevelt's staff for their efforts in the classroom and to support students with chaotic lives at home. She says raising achievement among kids in poverty is so tough because many think they can't succeed.

"That's part of the programming of poverty," Beegle says. "Changing that to hope and possibility rather than defeat is huge.

Born in Phoenix, Beegle moved to Oregon at age 12. Her family, led by an alcoholic father and a mother with an eighth-grade education, followed fruit crops throughout the Willamette Valley before settling in Portland.

She'd met her first husband, Jerry Beegle, at 12. She watched girls not much older than her drop out of school, take a husband and have kids, which seemed enticing. At 15, she dropped out of Marshall High and got married.

By 17, Donna Beegle had a daughter, Jennifer. Two years later, she gave birth to a son, Danny. The marriage lasted 10 years, more years than Jerry Beegle had attended school. At 25, she was divorced.

Beegle says she wishes she had a teacher who could have cultivated a better relationship with her and helped her graduate.

Nell O'Malley, a Corvallis School Board member, heard Beegle's story in Portland. O'Malley trains futu re teachers as an education instructor at Oregon State University. O'Malley said the talk touched on issues she sees in her own students, many from far more entitled backgrounds than the students they'll one day teach.

"I have a lot of middle-class young people, and they really can't relate," O'Malley says. "I think that she's raising the level of consciousness about how we exclude people."

At Beegle's North Portland home, 4-year-old Juliette kisses the white living room wall after sucking a green and black lollipop. Beegle wipes the candy stain from the wall. Juliette is autistic, does not speak, and on this Friday evening, vaults from one sofa cushion to the next, operating on virtually no sleep from the night before.

Beegle is exhausted.

Her 5-year-old, Austin, lays in front of the TV and watches a cartoon. Danny, now 20, studies at Portland Community College but is away this evening. Beegle's husband, engineer Chuck Forbes, is off at a scientific lecture.

Revisiting sad memories

Beegle slides a video into the VCR. An old reel of a toddler at play leads to birthday parties then to scenes of a teenage girl on a trip to Europe. The girl is Jennifer, Beegle's late daughter. The 17-year-old was a senior at Portland's elite Catlin Gabel School, looking at admission to private colleges in New York when she was killed in a car wreck.

Eleven days before Christmas 1996, Jennifer died after a head-on crash on the Broadway Bridge.

A sobbing Beegle is on the tape, mourning the loss yet celebrating what her eldest child had accomplished. Jennifer was inspired by her mother's courage to overcome generational poverty.

Desperate to provide a stable life for her children, Beegle sought help through programs for women on welfare. She borrowed cash for gasoline money when she could. She relied on help from family to baby-sit. Her resourcefulness earned her admission and scholarships to the University of Portland.

A fateful meeting

Beegle met University of Portland communications professor Bob Fulford as an undergraduate at the Catholic school. Used to slang words like "ain't," she asked the professor to coach her to become a better speaker.

"Teach me how to talk like you," Beegle recalls asking Fulford. "That's what he did."

Beegle resisted the urge to use financial aid to help her struggling family pay bills. It was a revelation, she says, to think about long-term goals and sacrifice some short-term needs.

"If we all stay here, no one can help anyone," she remembers. "I didn't give my financial aid when I could have. Now I have my education."

Beegle went on to earn a master's degree in communication and started doctoral studies at Portland State University. She focused on students from generational poverty who'd earned bachelor's degrees.

Fulford became Beegle's mentor and launched her consulting company with her. He ate dinner with the Beegles several times a week. He also mentored Jennifer. Beegle expected him to be there the day of her doctoral hooding in August 2000.

Fulford died of a heart attack that day. Beegle's husband spared the news until the next morning, not wanting to ruin her joy.