"School's Out for Summer"

The title of the essay sounds like it would be greeted with cheers. But Anna Quindlen writes about how this results in a lot of growling stomachs. Learn this list to find out why.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 10 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Where I'm From, Funny in Farsi, Kaffir Boy, Pick One, If You Are What You Eat, Persepolis, poems about parents, Hunger of Memory, Thanksgiving: A Personal History, Time to Assert American Values, Rough Justice, On Civil Disobedience, On Surrender at Bear Paw Mountain, On Women's Right to Vote, Declaration of the Rights of the Child, School's Out for Summer, One Word of Truth, Hope, Despair, and Memory
15 words 235 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. notion
    a vague idea in which some confidence is placed
    But that sort of summer has given way to something more difficult, even darker, that makes you wonder whether year-round school is not a notion whose time has come.
  2. epidemic
    attacking or affecting many individuals simultaneously
    And hunger in the United States, particularly since the institution of so-called welfare reform, is epidemic.
  3. heartrending
    causing or marked by grief or anguish
    But while the Christmas holidays make for heartrending copy, summer is really ground zero in the battle to keep kids fed.
  4. bipartisan
    supported by both sides
    The school lunch program, begun in the 1970s as a result of bipartisan federal legislation, has been by most measures an enormous success.
  5. decent
    sufficient for the purpose
    For lots of poor families it's become a way to count on getting at least one decent meal into their children
  6. remedial
    tending or intended to rectify or improve
    Those who work at America's Second Harvest, the biggest nonprofit supply source for food banks, talk of parents who go hungry themselves so their kids can eat, who put off paying utility and phone bills, who insist their children attend remedial summer school programs simply so they can get a meal.
  7. loath
    strongly opposed
    The parents themselves are loath to talk
  8. humiliation
    an instance causing you to lose prestige or self-respect
    Of all the humiliations attached to being poor in a prosperous nation, not being able to feed your kids is at the top of the list.
  9. afford
    have the financial means to do something or buy something
    The people who run food banks report that most of their clients are minimum-wage workers who can't afford enough to eat on their salaries.
  10. stigma
    a symbol of disgrace or infamy
    Some don't want or seek government help because of the perceived stigma
  11. eligible
    qualified for or allowed or worthy of being chosen
    Others don't know they're eligible
  12. impenetrable
    impossible to understand
    The average length of a food stamp application is twelve often impenetrable pages; a permit to sell weapons is just two.
  13. bodega
    small shop selling groceries, especially in a Hispanic area
    I found myself in a bodega with a distraught woman after New York City had declared a snow day; she had three kids who ate breakfast and lunch at school
  14. snafu
    a chaotic or confused situation
    her food stamps had been held up because of some bureaucratic snafu
  15. proxy
    a person authorized to act for another
    Find a food bank and then go grocery shopping by proxy.
Created on Mon Oct 13 13:33:53 EDT 2014 (updated Mon Oct 13 15:12:01 EDT 2014)

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