Alan Borsuk continues his recent series of education articles with a profile of five Milwaukee area teachers. One of them, Louise Guinn remarks:

“We push a lot for the kids to be successful.” And she is convinced all her students – all black, almost all from low-income homes – can learn “if given the right opportunities and the right environment.
She says she urges parents to limit television and to read more at home. Children are influenced by this.
But she also knows that many of her students lead challenging lives. During a class discussion of what fourth-graders can do that infants can’t, making your bed is mentioned by one student. Another says he doesn’t have to do that because he sleeps on the floor. Guinn understands that this means he doesn’t have a bed of his own.