Which came first the school or the prison?

So here I am again on my soapbox but this time I will try not to be so negative. I think discouragement can seep into the depths of your soul and convince you that possibilities are not endless but quite limited. I haven't let go of the fact that I am quite frustrated with our systems that are in place, I will just try not to rant quite as much this time. That being said I do feel sometimes that taking your opinion to extremes can sometimes prove more effective. Make people upset and maybe someone will speak up. Let me add that for now I am really just touching on the subjects, there is so much more to say. If I stick with this whole soap box blog thing I got going here, I could maybe talk about it all, but hey that could take all of my life. I guess we will just have to see what happens, this blog is really my attempt at changing the world, one little post at a time. Moving on though, now that everyone in the world willing to read this knows a little about myself and my perspective, I am ready to put on my examiner of failing systems hat.   So which failing system to start with, there are just so many. 

Education and Prison I think go hand and hand and are a good place to start. So why do we have so many people in our prison systems in this country? Is is a matter of  improper upbringing, genetic traits or societal tendencies? Our country has a system or many systems working together that is or are failing our populations. I could go google a plethora of statistics that break down prison populations and the issues facing our prisons today. Maybe I will later but for now what I do know is this. We put way to many people in jail and prison for nonviolent crimes that could be helping rebuild communities instead of wasting away in a cell. What happened to punishments meeting the crime? There are so many things that inmates could be doing and want to do in their communities. The moment someone enters the prison system there is almost a guarantee that they will become more violent and/or get even more involved in crime. If when your enter the prison system, you are entering a world where survival depends on connections and who you are willing to team up with inside. We are sending so many people that made stupid mistakes into a place where they are being trained to commit more crime or they become so emotionally unstable from the experience that they can't figure out how to reintegrate into normal life.

Prisons are not meeting the needs of the people, they are perpetuating behaviors that are meant to be "rehabilitated." We need to change the way we treat people who make mistakes in our country. If someone was given a way to help fix the problem that they were a part of I do think it would be a more meaningful experience. We can be training people to go back into the workforce while they rehabilitate. If the idea is for inmates to receive hands-on training to reenter the workforce then why do we ask if people have committed a felony before they are hired? We need programs in place that help educate our inmates and train them to make the world better when they get out. We need to make the prison system a functioning system that is worth tax dollars. Who is making money off of keeping more and more inmates in prison? We need to examine who the people or organizations are that are working to keep the system the way it is? Who out there really thinks that what happens in our prisons actually is making inmates better citizens of our society? Why not give someone who has been convicted of a crime the opportunity to volunteer for a organization that works to make things better? We need volunteers, we need soldiers, we need workers, why not let lower level criminals have the opportunity to make a real change in the world, for others and themselves? These are the questions I have. There are obviously others ways to do things in our prison system that treats the inmates like actual human beings instead of animals. I had someone tell me once the he had attended the NH College for Men, he was referring for his time in the penitentiary, why not really make it like a college, why not let it be a shot at a second chance in life and not the end of your life?
I know that I spoke of the prison system before the education system but in reality I do believe that if our education system was sound we would not be having the same problems in our prisons... Watch out everyone where is my soapbox because an young passionate educator is about to talk about what is wrong with our education system....

If people really believe that everyone is given an equal opportunity when it comes to education they are terribly ignorant to what is really happening in the education world. Horace Mann was the founder of public school education and the idea of the entitlement to a free and equal education. He came up with this concept after the immigrants to the New World started to realize that not every population was receiving the same quality of education. There were certain groups of immigrants that were better off than others. At first most schools were religious, and depending on what religion or race you were determined the quality and future of your education. Many people throughout history fought for an education system that we still are not realizing today. We have been trying to make schools free and equal since the concept was come up with more than a century ago. Presently we are experience extreme differences in the quality of public school education throughout our country. There are students in low income areas that don't even have structurally sound and safe schools let alone the computer labs and arts programs that students in the higher income areas have. When schools cannot afford books and supplies, nor can they pay their teachers well, the quality of education provided can in no way measure up. When teachers are faced with less than adequate pay and less than adequate facilities and resources they are much less likely to stay in the schools. The students in our inner city and/or low income area schools do not have the same relationship to education. School might not be somewhere where the students feels safe enough and most likely if they go to that school, home is not much better either. This is just one little hair on the gorilla's back when it comes to digging deeper and really analyzing the state of our education system. Don't even get me started on curriculum and what we teach children theses days, that is a whole other post if not several. Right now I am just dabbling on the subject of, curriculum aside, the quality of the facility, the quality of the resources and the quality of the staff.  The research is out there, the test scores are there, the education budgets are public, it is right in front of our eyes and we wonder why our children are the way they are. We wonder why our country has more crime and violence than any other country. We have created a system where the poorer get poorer and the richer get richer, this system will someday come crashing down on itself.. We must come together as communities, as states, as something...and take back the systems... We are in great need of a RENAISSANCE, a rebirth in all senses, because I'm telling you that we are not too far from the DARK AGES.

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.