Hi! I’m Jen and I blog about life, love and faith over at The Arizona Russums!
I was first drawn to Ashley’s blog because her heart is similar to my own. We both have a love for high school students, especially those who come from broken families, poor neighborhoods, or who have been shaped by rough childhoods.
I am currently getting my PhD at Arizona State, but before my grad school life began I taught high school for five years. I loved teaching high school. I would probably still be doing it, except that it’s demanding and emotionally draining, and teaching college will give me more flexibility for when I pop out a few babies and want to spend lots of time with them!
My high school teaching experience has two distinct parts. The first half of my career was spent teaching at a Title 1 (low income) public school in Texas. I also coached volleyball and track at this school and I ADORED my job. From waking up at the crack of dawn to drive a 16 passenger van to volleyball tournaments to running with my track kids, every moment coaching was a blast, even when it meant sneezing my head off due to seasonal allergies at the first track meet of every year. Whatever tree pollenates in west Fort Worth in mid-March is a real killer…
Fast forward. For the next half of my career, I taught at a private, Christian school in the Seattle area. I got to teach literature to highly capable kids who came from good families. I loved this job too, although I often felt like I spent more time e-mailing overly concerned parents than actually teaching their kids, but overall it was a pleasant job and the kids were great.
There was one main difference between these two schools, though… and that difference was COLLEGE. 99% of my students at the private school in Washington will go on to college. Probably fewer than half of my Texas students did, and those who were able to attend at first often had to drop out before completing a degree.
Now, college is not the end-all of life. They don’t ask for a college degree to open an etsy shop, but that doesn’t mean that etsy shop owners aren’t incredibly creative professionals who run excellent, profitable businesses. {P.S. I need new headbands. Hop over to my blog if you make cute hair accessories and introduce yourself. I might be your next customer!} Bloggers don’t need a degree either. Sometimes I think to myself, what if I just stopped reading all these articles and writing these big papers and just started blogging full-time? But then I remember getting my PhD is my dream and I press on with my big, overweight bag of books, which is probably giving me permanent back damage. My husband and I sometimes laugh because although he has a pretty, shiny degree from a private college, he doesn’t really need it for the career he has now – a career that he loves I might add. {And after we laugh, we cry because of the loan that accompanied his pretty, shiny degree.}
My point is… college is not the single defining factor of one’s success in life. But it’s pretty darn important. Our country is obsessed with higher education. A bachelor’s degree has become the bare minimum, while many career paths require a graduate degree of some sort. In our tough economy, full of uncertainty and job loss, a college degree can be essential to finding a job and providing for one’s family in the future.
But despite the fact that a college degree is considered an essential by most employers, the truth is that many students in our country will never get the chance to experience college, even if they want to. Because college costs money. And for many students, money is not easy to come by.
Let me tell you a brief story and then I will finish this incredibly long post. I promise. When I taught in Texas, there was a girl who was dear to my heart. I’ll call her Dede. Dede played on my volleyball team. She was shy at first, but she always did what was asked of her. She was an incredibly dedicated athlete, a quiet leader on her team, and never caused a single problem in the classroom. She slowly began to open up to me, and I learned that her life was tough. Her mom worked six days a week in a restaurant to provide for her family. Her dad did construction but work was often hard to come by as the economy declined. She had three older siblings, only one of whom had stable employment. Sometimes the phones got turned off when her dad couldn’t pay the bill. Once the lights got turned off.
But besides learning about her family situation, I also learned that Dede was smart. She wasn’t even really aware of how smart she was. She just always went to school, did her work, received decent grades and played her sports. But I started to encourage her. I started giving her books to read – Number the Stars and The Diary of Anne Frank, all of the Harry Potters, even Jane Eyre - and she devoured every single one. I encouraged her to sign up for AP classes, where she discovered she loved chemistry and was quite good at it. I helped her register for the SATs. I even convinced her to start her own little college savings fund, where she would tuck extra cash in an envelope when she was able. Here was a girl who would excel in college. A girl who would be the first in her family to attend a university. A girl who would graduate and become a nurse just as she had always dreamed of.
And Dede went to college. She went to a state university. And I was so proud of her.
But then she came home.
After one semester.
Because things were hard at home.
And her dad couldn’t find work.
And her older sister kept having babies and needed a free babysitter.
And her mom was worn down trying to feed the family and pay the bills.
And Dede was loyal and she wanted to help her family.
And college cost too much money.
So she came home.
Do I think she was wrong to want to help her family? Not at all. Even I loved her family. They were great people and their lives were hard. But do I want to cry because she’s working at a custodial job now and pitching in part of her paycheck every month to help her parents when she should be a senior in college? Yes. And when she texted me a few months ago and told me she is going to try to start taking classes again at a community college to slowly work her way to a degree, did I want to cry tears of joy? Yes.
College is not for everyone. But there are so many students like Dede who would thrive in college and, yet, it is not an option. They have the brains and the work ethic and the charisma. But they don’t have the money.
And this is why I love Ashley and The Shine Project. Because she is trying to give students like Dede a chance. To help them break the cycle of low paying jobs and struggling to pay the bills each month. So if you can, GO to The Shine Event on October 20th. I will be there and I would love to meet you! If you live too far away, then please tell other people about the cause and try to give if you can. And if you can’t afford to give right now, will you do me one favor? Will you encourage the students you know, whether they are your own children or just other kids in your life, that college is possible? Will you encourage them to study and read and work hard and dream? And then will you tell them every day that dreams can come true? Because I believe they can. Even for Dede and others like her.
I truly believe that one day I will be writing a blog post about Dede’s graduation. I hope to be there bawling my eyes out. And I can’t wait.
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