Why I do this
Why am I doing this?
It’s been almost four weeks of teaching. Five teachers. Five planned lessons. And things just haven’t been going our way as much as we expected. Lesson times are different than what we were told (leading to us almost doubling the time we spend each week at West – while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing of itself, for a busy college student, it can be tiring.) A teaching environment that just seems to work against us, with other students coming in and distracting our charges. Sometimes a total lack of communication between West and our organizers.
Why am I doing this?
I think back to high school, when I watched my sister do something similar. She taught urban elementary to middle school students financial literacy skills with a curriculum she developed. She told me a story of a conversation she had with one of her students.
Her: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Student: “Rich!”
Her: “So what job are you going to have when you grow up?”
Student: “I’m not gonna get a job!”
Her: “But then how are you going to get rich if you don’t have a job?”
Student: “I’ll find a rich man and marry him and get rich!”
Another student gave the response that he’ll live of government checks, while somehow managing to get several sports cars, servants, and massive houses all over the world, and who also said that any government that cut entitlements wasn’t doing its job.
While I am more disappointed than shocked at these responses, I always remember and recount these stories to remind myself of one of the reasons I advocate financial literacy so much. I want to enable youth to see how they can be self-sufficient, a lack of which I believe to be one of themain causes of economic distress. Yet, with our kids at West, they know that. Some want to go to college to be engineers. Others want to be nurses. Some mechanics. Our first lesson, one of them even gave us his analysis of why taxes and war was, in his opinion, the cause of the financial crisis, in a way I didn’t think of before. So it’s not a question of lack of knowledge of the issues facing them or around them.
Why am I doing this then?
To be sure these students could use help with certain topics, mostly math based. And while I’d like to sit with them and drill them in math and percentages until we can move on with my lesson, we can’t do that. It’s frustrating for sure, especially when planning lessons. But there are ways around it, and that’s just part of the challenge.
Why am I doing this then?
I guess the answer came to me when we got news that our teaching format would be changed from meeting twice a week at West to meeting longer once a week here on campus. While logistically I see how this is better given our problems traveling to West, an ache built in my heart. As much trouble thinking of how to explain percentages yet again in a way they may understand has given me, when presented with the reality that we’d only have four more lessons with them, an ache grew in my heart. An ache for missing half the days when I could just put aside all my other stresses that were bringing me down, and just walking to West to teach. An ache for seeing their faces only half as much as before. For not being able to put all my ideas for lessons into reality given our fewer teaching times.I realized, the answer is that I really do look forward to spending time with these kids. Laughing with them, trying to corral them, and sharing what I know with them.
That’s why I’m doing this.
It’s sort of what I felt like last summer at the end of the program I was a counselor for. While it’s not quite the same given the difference between seeing some people twice a week compared to living with them continuously, I still have realized that I bond with those I mentor and teach. Because no matter how big or small my impact is, I’ve affected their lives one way or another. Will it last? Maybe, maybe not. But I’ve tried and we’ve made that connection. And that’s something that happened, and I’m proud of it.
That’s why I will keep on doing this.
-Paulo
