While the students were doing a unit in economics on poverty in class, history teacher Dr. Steven Drouin had them brainstorm ways on how they could fight poverty in the real world.

“I wanted students to do something beyond the classroom,” Drouin said. “I just provided my classroom as a space for them to come up with ideas to fight poverty.”

Drouin’s first period class wrote to three different homeless shelters and HOPE (Helping Other People Excel) Ministries in Manteca where someone came into the classroom and gave presentations to his classes to inform the students on what they do to help the homeless.

“It was really moving,” Drouin said. “There were a lot of things they said students could do, like come and show movies or have parties for the kids that are there.”

The representatives also mentioned that they needed newer or slightly used shoes. This gave the idea to a class to start a shoe drive as well as asking businesses like Toms, Reebok, and Converse to send shoes to HOPE Ministries in Manteca.

A shoe drive was started at Tracy High and ran from Jan. 27 to Feb. 7. Around 20 students donated and most of them donated bags filled with many shoes. Roughly 50 to 70 pairs of shoes were collected.

“I also made a ‘Fight Poverty Wall Of Awesome’ outside my classroom,” Drouin said. “People who donated shoes would have their names posted under the wall.”

Akam Mann, a senior at Tracy High, was one of the many students involved in the shoe drive.

“I thought it was really cool because we got to help other people,” Mann said. “I also learned that not everyone has what they need, so people need to value what they have.”

Another class of Drouin’s had a movie night to raise canned goods for Interfaith Ministries.

One class wrote to the mayor of Tracy asking him to come to class and talk about what the city of Tracy was doing to fight poverty. The mayor called and said he would email Drouin back, but has not responded since.

Basically, each class was trying to do something above and beyond since it went with the topic they were dealing with in class.

“Reading a paragraph about poverty is much different than teaching about what is it and finding ways to do something about it,” Drouin said. “This is how my classes sought to understand and deal with poverty.”