Wasteful Society

In this day and age I am feeling pretty discouraged about where we have taken our society. We are such wasteful and selfish human beings as a whole that we have created a dynamic we cannot escape. I am not only talking about wastefulness of resources, but of wasting talent, of wasting the time of our youth with the state of our education, health, and judicial system to name a few.  We have created a world that is hard to be successful in if you don't take on the same wasteful and selfish intentions. Good intentions and meaningful careers are unfortunately not always valued in our society, at least not on a monetary or success level. We have veered so far from the right path that we are beginning to lose it. We need to reevaluate our values as a society, because we are hurting the future generations. We need to recreate the systems that were set in place for the greater good by our ancestors and then slowly morphed into capitalistic moneymaking opportunities. We have created a place where doing the right thing or working for the greater good ensures you and your family a place in line for food stamps.

Take myself for example. I was born into poverty, a single artist mother and a sporadically there father is what I shared with my other two siblings. I value my artistic impoverished upbringing as an essential piece of my youth. I think it made me value and see things differently from the "rich kids" that apparently have all the "culture" and "education" they will need to ensure success in our world. Though I value the moral education that I received as a child, I recognized the disadvantage it put me in when I moved further in my educational career. I always thought I had been very well educated as a child. I was a mostly straight A student, mainly because I knew that if I wanted to go to college it was on my shoulders to get the full tuition scholarship or I was not going.

At the age of 15 I was a full-time cook and server at a local restaurant, played three sports a year for my high school, and managed to keep my grades up. My senior year of high school I was accepted to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY with a close to full-ride scholarship. SUCCESS!!! Or so I thought. When I arrived at Vassar I quickly realized that I was behind the masses when it came to education. I knew I was smart but coming from a town of 200 people ESOTERIC and AESTHETIC QUALITIES of things were not really in my vocabulary, (so that's why I could almost ace the math portion of the SAT but had to have the score make up for my weakness in the reading portion.) That being said I adapted and through my foreign language interests I was able to build my vocabulary pretty quickly. Once I learned the language of the campus I quickly realized that big words could not cover up stupid ideas and ignorant perspectives.

 I was still the poor kid that couldn't go to the city every weekend or had to have roommates front the concert tickets that everyone else was going to. Thank goodness for the generous and incredible friends I have made in my life that helped me not to feel like the odd ball out. My college years could have gone much differently if it weren't for the incredible people that are in the world who didn't let me miss out on opportunities just because of something as flammable as money....I was able to travel abroad my junior year on scholarship still. It was actually cheaper to live and study in Europe than it was to have stayed on campus my junior year. Ironic isn't it. In a nutshell I was given the opportunity of a lifetime for someone like me. To be poor enough that your family used to hunt frogs so we could eat dinner to be able to experience studying abroad. If only every impoverished child was given the opportunity to see the world, I think we would have a different world.

After college I tried to figure out what to do with my esteemed diploma from Vassar. I quickly realized that I had chosen my double major of French and Italian in order to live abroad and had not been thinking about what job I could do after college. I ended up moving back to my home town to work in restaurants and make money they way I always had. I could translate for the foreigners who came through town and communicate with the Spanish-speaking coworkers, but that is not why I had worked so hard to get myself to and through and Ivy-league college. After becoming pregnant with my first child and realizing that I was becoming a single mother at the same time I decided to move closer to my mother, who had transferred to the east coast when I had graduated from high school. It is there as a single mother, that I realized I needed to figure out a career and fast. A friend that I had made through my mother, had just finished a master's program and was a single mother as well. I thought hey if she can do it, then I can and I enrolled in the same program.

The School for International Training was my new campus and ESL teacher was my new calling. It made sense because I had always wanted to be a teacher and my language background would serve me well. Plus the program had a real emphasis on social justice which was something a poor single mother could relate to. The program was amazing and I loved it, just like I had loved college. What I didn't realize is that I had borrowed and paid way to much money to become a teacher that would never be able to pay off the school loans necessary for the training. I left the school passionate and had a teaching job fall right in my lap. It would pay well, or so I thought. I realized I should have paid more attention in  class when my professor had said that teaching was the only profession you had to pay to do and keep paying to do throughout your whole career. Well I guess I did pay attention because I was all amped up to go straight into school reform. If all the research is out there that our system if faulty then why don't we do anything about it. School reform aside my teaching job was incredible. I loved it and I felt good about what I was doing. The only problem was how misunderstood and underfunded schools, teachers, students, parents and curriculum are. Education is a social justice job, their is injustice happening in every school across the country especially the schools that might not have high property taxes to buy them computer labs, not to mention make sure the schools are structurally sound.

After teaching for a few years in Massachusetts I decided to head back to my home state with my daughter, my new partner and my new baby. I knew that growing up my best friend was an ESL student and that there were plenty of non-English speaking immigrants in California. I was very confident that in time I would be able to find a job like the one I had in Massachusetts. I learned quickly that my credential did not exist in California and that the teacher test I had taken in Mass was not recognized here. I couldn't even substitute teach and I had a masters in teaching. How could I have put myself into so much debt to move to a state where my old position does not exist? In order to teach in California I have to start over from scratch. Decide what kind of teacher I want to be and just start paying the fees, taking the tests, sending in the applications and all the time trying not to put myself into a teacher box that will prevent me from finding work in the future. All in all it has been door after door slammed in my face.

To make a long story short I have tried to do everything right. I was the poor kid who sent herself to college through hard work and then survived college by adapting to the educational level of her peers. After college became a single mother who decided to get a masters degree on her own. The ESL teacher who had to fight and advocate for her students not to be discriminated against and misunderstood. Now I am in California trying to figure out how not to waste the education and passion that I have borrowed so much money to have.

 So in a nutshell I am wasting my talent. I am wasting everything I have worked so hard for and sacrificed to be. I am so upset with the systems in place that I just want to reinvent them. I want to reform the systems that are perpetuating poverty, crime, injustice, discrimination, and socioeconomic stagnancy. In my experience we still live in a feudal society. Once a poor kid always a poor kid unless you are willing to sacrifice morals and try to make your million dollar idea succeed. If changing social status was easy we wouldn't have to use celebrities as examples, every person would be an example, if it really was as easy as working hard. Working hard is invaluable to your soul and well-being but unfortunately it doesn't always fill your pocketbook. Especially if you are a poor kid like me that had to borrow all the money to be successful, to find there is no money in the success of a teacher, just the wonderful feeling that you are waking up everyday to try to make a difference in your students life. That maybe someday the work you do in the classroom each day will permeate into the world around you and this world will be a better place. But that's only if the education system allows you to teach in a way that is powerful for students and not just powerful for test scores.

The education system is not the only system that is failing. We as a society have created many systems that are not working. This blog is intended to examine those systems and eventually be a place where those systems can be modified, fixed, and improved. We live in a world where buying your first home for many is only a pipe dream yet empty house sit around us disintegrating before our eyes. WASTEFULNESS is where we are, RESOURCEFULNESS is where we need to be.