For many, homelessness may evoke images of single, adult men living on the streets. But beneath the surface of these narrow portrayals lie the plight of over a million K-12 students whose lives have been uprooted by homelessness - like Jackie, Angel, Ben and Kayla - and so many others who remain unseen. These students’ lived experiences are diverse, and they spend their nights in many different settings. The intertwined stories told here foreground the realities of many students who experience homelessness in U.S. schools.
Written & Researched by
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is an Associate Professor in the Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University. Informed by her experiences as a N.Y.C. public school teacher, her research examines student and family homelessness, family-school-community relations, and educational leadership. In particular, Pavlakis has studied student homelessness for over 15 years and has had the privilege of conducting and analyzing numerous interviews with youth and parents experiencing homelessness, as well as the school, district, and community partners who serve them.
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is an Associate Professor of Education Policy in the Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University. Her research focuses on understanding how education policies perpetuate racial and socioeconomic inequality and segregation in public schools.
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is an Assistant Professor in the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University. A former school psychologist, her research focuses on the intersection of school leadership and policy, most often in rural or urban spaces, with an emphasis on connections between schools, families, and communities.
Written & Illustrated by
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is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Austin, Texas, who makes art and comics for both kids and adults. They're the creator of the young adult graphic novel The Hills of Estrella Roja (Clarion Books, 2023), as well as several other shorter form comics including Fruiting Bodies (Silver Sprocket, 2022) and That Full Moon Feeling (Silver Sprocket, 2021). This was their first time collaborating with scholars. They feel especially honored to have had the chance to give voice to the many ways young people experience homelessness.
Book Designed & Edited by
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is Scholar-Artist in Residence at the Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative at Portland State University. She's the creator of Changing the Narrative: Stories of Student Homelessness and Housing Instability (2022) and Changing the Narrative: Epilogue (2024). These community-based collaborative research projects use comics to build empathy to change how we talk, teach, and think about homelessness and poverty.
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Copyright © 2024 Alexandra E. Pavlakis, Meredith P. Richards, J. Kessa Roberts Ashley Robin Franklin, Kacy McKinney
This work is licensed for open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
ISBN: 979-8-218-46295-6
Thank you to our funders. The research reported in this comic was made possible in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (#10039293). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation. Research supporting this work was also funded by the COVID-19 and Equity in Education Project, supported by the American Institutes for Research’s Equity Initiative and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.