so what do i say when i see my world from this “upper track” perspective and i see them totally different from my mind, thinking, ‘they could be better if they lived/went to college/got support like me.’ and i remind myself–who am i to think they should be ‘better’? it’s the guiltiest feeling ever. and though i believe they have more to say, more they can do, GIRL, the process is long, and difficult. mentorship–real mentorship–is not a 12-week program, it’s a lifetime of presenting challenges and asking critical questions to the learner. however, can we do that if their playing field is not leveled to begin with and working from this point means a revisitation and deconstruction of what they knew to begin with and now they have to re-work where they’ve ‘fallen behind’ in their lives?

i think the activity of mentoring youth who are 15-18 who’ve fallen behind since 5th grade is a question of choices and what they will follow when you say: there’s college, junior college, oh yea, umm… trade college and the military are OK too–just as long as you know what you’re doing. we can’t say everyone will, but my question is, how can we ‘save’ everyone into going into school–higher ed’s already limited anyway. i get discouraged when i work with them sometimes, knowing that if i invested hard enough into believing in them i would get attached. i just read my professor’s blog (www.activeeducation.blogspot.com), where he wrote about professors not getting tenured because they work in the community or not getting support from their advisors. and reading it told me that as we get deeper into the system of higher ed and academia, we get sucked in, re-oriented, still, in the view of the oppressor. so i question myself and the intention of my work–why do i believe in getting them to work harder in school? where is the alternative structure where they can learn under a critical consciousness pedagogy and the classroom is not behind institutionalized walls? otherwise, they’re going to get to further distanced from the community, just like me.

those are the running questions through my mind because i hear everything you’re saying and in my thought-process, i take it a little further. where are we learning towards? because im getting deeper in this academia process and i know this place is only going to make me feel as though i’m “smarter”, more “sophisticated”, “better” and distanced from everyone else in my community. and that’s not the right feeling in working with the community.

anyhow, thank you for posting this. CLASS OF 2006, wat it do? congratulations on your BA, i just got mine too. yadammeen?

Having a left-leaning political perspective gives preference to broad programs that will help those who will not or cannot help themselves, I do struggle with the issue of parenting. I feel that this job is too important to delegate. The goal of broad programs would be to provide services so that a parent could worry about parenting and not other things (e.g. paying for health care).

Getting parents to stress education even when they are not educated themselves appears to be a bit of a lost art. My grandparents on my mother’s side gave my mother and her sister no choice but to go to college. Now my grandaddy finished the 10th grade and my grandmother finished the 5th. Why is it that they valued education for their children more than parents of more recent generations? Are the benefits of education less visible today than they were yesterday. Last I checked, drug dealers, basketball players, and pimps existed and made money in the 60s just like they do today.

Things like the DAPCEP‘s Parent Advisory Committee, their Little Engineer that Could Program (which has the dual purpose of exposing K-3 students to engineering AND MORE IMPORTANTLY training parents on how to set their kids up for academic success). Programs like these can be models for success going forward in increasing parental accountability in creating positive educational foundations for their kids.