Dawn Linden set out to teach, but wound up learning a few things, too.

Linden told me she learned this: "It's not an equitable world and that although we think we are liberal and wonderful in Seattle, we are not addressing the needs of kids."

I met her this summer at a program for low-income students. A little later she sent me a note saying that teaching in Seattle's South End had opened her eyes. She kept thinking about South End kids while reading about poor people in New Orleans, and about the impact class has on people's lives. We met for coffee at a favorite spot of hers in Belltown and talked about her experiences.

Linden lives in Shoreline. She has three sons, one just starting college, another a high-school sophomore and the third a middle-school student. She's had plenty of experience with schools.

Her father, his wife and Linden's two sisters are all teachers, but she came to it late, after being a stay-at-home mom.

When their youngest was 2 years old, her husband suffered a mental-health crisis and moved away. For the past 10 years she's been working as a waitress, and three years ago she enrolled in Antioch University's teacher-training program, from which she graduated last year.

She'd moved from Seattle to Shoreline when her children were born, but as a beginning teacher she sought assignments in Seattle's South End schools because that's where she thought she could make the biggest difference. She hasn't landed a full-time job yet, but she has subbed in the city and did a long stint at Aki Kurose Middle School in Seattle's South End.

She was surprised by some all-black classrooms, by the number of recent immigrants from Africa and by the degree to which academic programs reflect race and class divisions. She had to adjust to different discipline standards and to students who didn't have the preparation her children have had for school.

This summer she volunteered to teach in the GEAR-UP program at Rainier Beach High School. GEAR-UP is a federally funded program to help students from high-poverty schools get ready for college.

"None of the kids in my class had library cards," she said. Instead of analyzing literature, she had to teach one student to write cursive.

She led a Socratic seminar for her students, the first one they had participated in. Her own kids had done that long before high school. Again and again she found gaps in their experiences and education.

Her father taught Asian studies and worked with the NAACP, she told me, but she really hadn't believed stories about the impact of race on people's lives. Not today. Not in Seattle.

She took a group to an art exhibit at a local museum. Her sons have been there many times, but these kids had never been to the museum. Linden said the guards complained about their behavior. They were a boisterous group, but so are the groups her sons go with. And she believes that while the guards addressed her respectfully, they didn't show the same respect when they spoke to the black teachers.

Her students this summer had had experiences that her children hadn't. Several of them took time off one day to go to the funeral of a friend who'd been murdered near their school.

They've learned to negotiate a different world.

She said people keep asking a question about the folk who were stuck in New Orleans: Why didn't they leave? Whenever she hears the question, she thinks of what she has learned in Seattle about the different lives we live.

When her husband left, she had no job and no money, but she had education and middle-class social skills. She went to apply for food stamps. They told her she'd have to wait three days.

"I'm, like, not OK, so I went home and immediately called [U.S. Senator] Patty Murray's office. I got food stamps delivered to my door the next day."

She also found a job quickly through friends.

"It's because I know. I know what to do. I know who to call. I know where to get help when I need it.

"I thought about that again with the victims of this disaster. I would have known what to do. I would have known where to go. ... "

A level of social understanding that seems second-nature to the person who has it can take generations to acquire. Educated, middle-class parents pass on expectations, skills and connections that help their children succeed.

For some of our children, school may be their only hope for learning how to negotiate the broader world. People who haven't spent time in the classrooms Linden saw may think like she did, that it couldn't be as bad as some people say.

Now she sees that this society has unmet obligations and missed opportunities. We can easily focus on a distant disaster while neglecting to rescue people who are drowning right here.

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com. His column runs Thursdays and Sundays and is found at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.