This spring semester 2012, I participated in the Honors 479 Cultivating Global Citizenship course.  This course had a service learning aspect, which involved working with children, or "dreamers", at the Asheville chapter of the I Have a Dream Foundation (IHAD).  The course also required weekly blogging, which served as a reflection for the service learning and for all of the reading material we covered in class.  The class structure allowed other students and me to make the best of it based on what work we were willing to put it.  Ultimately, we had a very good class that was very focused on the goals at hand and on having critical conversations surrounding the material.

            For me, personally, I didn't feel as connected to IHAD as I have previously with another tutoring group I was involved with in high school.  In high school, I tutored Hispanic children at El Centro Hispano in Durham, NC.  It was super fulfilling and really interesting to me since I was able to practice my Spanish speaking skills.  It was harder for me to get into IHAD and I think so for several reasons.  This semester was loaded with work for my Spanish senior thesis and packed with studying for microbiology.  I applied to nursing school and had to deal with the stress of organizing everything for that on my mind too.  It was difficult for me to focus on making connections with the participants of IHAD.  I'm also more interested in working with adults and senior citizens.  So, I conclude that a combination of all these things led me to feel distant to the service learning this semester.  However, just because I felt this way doesn't mean I didn't find any importance in programs like IHAD in children's lives or any relevance in our class's readings.  It sounds cliché, but children will eventually be the next adult generation and in order to ensure a positive future for our country and citizens we need to make certain that our children are educated, in the traditional sense, and in the importance of human dignity. 

            Both of my parents worked hard and, with the upper-middle class behind them, earned graduate degrees (M.D. and Ph.D.)  I was born into the privileged world.  We lived in a nice house and always had food on the table.  I knew I could entertain any interest I had and I never doubted that Santa would bring me tons of presents at Christmas.  Thankfully, I wasn't sheltered.  My parents could have sent me to private school, and almost did, but instead put me in public school because they felt I should be exposed to the real world where I would interact with people of every socioeconomic class.  I never realized how important my public school experience was until high school rolled around and I went to the "nice" public high school and my friends went to the "bad" one.  That was the first time I realized I was privileged and that my privilege was big enough to alienate me from my friends who lived in or near different, "sketchy" neighborhoods.  It was a harsh reality for me, but talking to my parents about it made me feel better.  They are the people that I admire the most.  My mom works for a state psychiatric hospital and my dad does drug research for a nonprofit.  They are the ones that told me to use my privilege to help others the best I can.  I'm not trying to sound like a super hero or sound self-important, but it's like what Kwame Anthony Appiah said in his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, "If you are the person in the best position to prevent something really awful, and it won’t cost you must to do so, do it” (161). 

            This Appiah quote is a modification of another philosopher's argument/principle.  Appiah’s principle doesn’t call for extremes and it doesn’t require that a person sit down and “reduce all values to their contributions to the badness in the world” (161).  His principle, I feel like, relies on and trusts people’s sense of morality.  I like to think that most people do choose to act responsibly and do good in the world.  However, and this has always been the case, I have a little bit of mistrust in other people's sense of morality because humans aren’t always rational and don’t always act the way our society would deem correct.  I guess this is why we have been exploring different theories and social injustices, so we can think critically about how we act toward other humans and help them live dignified lives.  Ultimately, I tried to connect each of our readings to IHAD and how they affected my beliefs.

            I Have a Dream is located in the Pisgah View Apartments in West Asheville.  When you arrive, you can instantly tell that it is lower income.  Paint is peeling off of the siding and unit numbers are either missing or barely hanging on. Unlike fancier neighborhoods, the Pisgah View neighborhood is located almost on the freeway and tucked away from downtown.  Because of economic struggle and perhaps other prejudices, it is easy to see that the dreamers need the program because their parents or guardians might be busy with more immediate issues (like putting food on the table and paying bills) other than worrying about the long-term benefits of a complete education.   The dreamers come from low-income families and marginalized groups (racial or economic minorities). 

The I Have A Dream (IHAD) program chooses motivated children from such backgrounds and follows them through middle and high school (sometimes elementary school, too) with the promise of financial support for college if they do well and graduate.  IHAD provides a daily structured environment for its “dreamers” (participants) where they can complete homework and have supervised recreational time.  I think this is phenomenal because all children crave structure and, often times, the dreamers come from unstructured homes where they don’t get the motivation and guidance they need.  The importance of programs like IHAD is magnified by Jonathan Kozol’s information in his book The Shame of the Nation and in David Guggenheim’s movie Waiting for “Superman.” 

Children from marginalized groups become disenfranchised as soon as they reach elementary school.  One of the primary reasons why is how school districts are drawn.  More often than not, children from poorer neighborhoods get funneled into one, less funded public school, while children from more wealthier areas get funneled into another, well equipped one.  David Guggenheim calls these poorer public schools “dropout factories” and the chances that a disenfranchised student will actually graduate from such a school greatly diminish with each grade.  Not only is district an issue, but also some public schools require an entrance exam to even be considered for enrollment.  These entrance exams can cost up to $200 and those parents unable to pay send their children to underfunded schools and the “dropout factory” process begins.  The dreamers of IHAD, many of who live in the Pisgah View Apartments, find themselves in this situation—the same situation that their parents were in.  Without IHAD and similar programs intervention, this social situation is perpetuated for generations to come. 

It is absolutely crucial to get students excited about learning at the earliest possible stage and to provide them with a positive learning experience.  Without motivation and people pushing them to do well, students fall behind and get pushed through the school system until they give up and settle for the idea of “going nowhere.” It has been proven time and time again that encouragement and long-term support almost guarantee a child’s completion of high school and acceptance into college.  This is something I think many adults (parents, teachers, school policy makers) need to know and understand in order to truly make a difference in a child’s quality of education.  This is about as far as I want to talk in depth about disenfranchised children and volunteer programs because the class mainly made me excited about pursuing my interests in becoming a nurse practioner and helping disenfranchised adults.  Ultimately, I want to work at a public clinic or in geriatric psychiatry.  In a public clinic, I could help people who normally don't have access to affordable health care and in geriatric psychiatry I could help people age in a dignified manner.  There were several works that we read and watched that related directly to my interests and past experiences and made me excited to really get out in the world and start doing stuff. 

One week we watched “Arts: A Film About Possibilities, Disabilities and the Arts.”  It featured various types of artists from different disciplines and different types of training.  Many of the featured artists had some type of disability (Geri Jewell has cerebral palsy and there are others on the autism spectrum), but they were very passionate about how their disability contributed to their work and to their sense of pride.

            Overall, I thought the film was a little cheesy and, at first, hard to take seriously because of the spotty camera work.  However, I think the positive message that the film portrayed shined through well enough.

            I think it was wonderful to hear from the various artists what art meant to them and its role in their lives.  To some of the artists, their work meant everything to them and was very personal (like the woman with autism who HAD to cut out a piece of every painting she made before selling it), while others just thought it was fun creativity.  No matter the meaning, I got the feeling that it was important for all of the artists to create something that made them happy and made them proud.  It really said something about the human soul, or human essence, that people generally have the urge to create and put a piece of themselves down for the world, or just themselves, to see.

            While I was touched by the documentary’s focus on people with disabilities loving the arts, I was more moved by the idea of art as a form of therapy.  Art therapy can work for anyone of any age, gender, race, social class, etc.  In my opinion, art therapy, or just art, is a form of meditation and reflection.  It's a way of soothing the mind and making sense of its inner workings.  In high school, when I volunteered at the state psychiatric hospital where my mother worked, I had the chance to shadow one of the art therapists and later help her set up an art show of patients’ creations.  During art therapy sessions, it was amazing to see how easily patients opened up about their lives and their experiences—making art was a way of calming down and being able to think rationally.  When it came to setting up the art show, I was very surprised at how many pieces each patient (artist) had and I was equally surprised at how impressive the art was.  The level of talent each patient had was astounding and varied from detailed sketch portraiture to colorful abstract watercolors.  I was only 17 years old, so you have to forgive me for thinking the art of psychiatric patients would be like toddler finger painting or creepy, ominous drawings like in the movies.  My volunteering experience taught me that just because someone has a mental illness doesn’t mean they are completely out of control or untalented or incompetent or infantile.  A mental illness doesn't define someone and it doesn't mean they aren't worthy of love and recognition.  My time volunteering at the psychiatric hospital opened my eyes to a different set of people who needed dignity and, until that time, I hadn't once critically thought about the people my mother worked to help.  Also, I'm aware that, although I was very excited about volunteering then, I only just now have the vocabulary to describe why it is so important to help others.

            I think out of everything we read and watched in class the film "Waging a Living" had the biggest effect on me because it was the most relevant to our present day socioeconomic situation in the United States.  Our economy is in the dump and the key players in the government (both at the national and state levels) can't seem to agree on a way to alleviate the stresses on the people most affected by the decisions made (or not made).

            “Waging a Living” proved that it’s impossible to live comfortably, without excessive worry, on minimum wage.  All of the interviewees worked full-time to support their children.  One woman was a divorcee, had two children, worked as a waitress (something like $2.75/hour plus tips), and was $15,000+ in debt.  She didn't have enough money to pay for her divorce and necessities and the only way she could pay for things was by continually maxing out credit cards.  Another woman had multiple children, worked in a girls' home, and attended community college part-time.  She lived on her wages, Medicaid, and food stamps—at least that was until she got a $3 raise and magically made too much to qualify.  Her state housing rent also went up in price.  She called it “hustling backwards” because the more she made, the more she stayed behind, stayed stagnant.  Making more money meant she would be spending more money (no health care meant she had to spend $175 on her son’s allergy medication and choose some other necessity not to pay).  Her situation was so dire that she couldn’t even buy her family a Christmas dinner. One man, Jerry, barely made enough to eat and pay rent and only after ten years was he able to afford a plane ticket to see his children. The financial situations of the other film participants were similar to each other: good people working hard, long hours, but staying socially stagnant. 

            This film created the class discussion that I remembered the most.  The question that challenged me was about the American dream and if we are owed or if we deserve everything it encompasses.  In class, we pretty much summed the American Dream up to be the ability (or the idea of the ability) to be able to work hard and move up and out of your social class and to have all the benefits that come with that class.  The fact that our country was more or less founded on this dream is the primary reason we deserve to have it and the reason we are owed to live comfortable lives with our hard work.  The answer is definitively, unequivocally “yes”.  We do deserve the American Dream.  We shouldn’t have to “rethink” the American Dream.  We need to find ways to make it possible.  As human beings, we deserve dignity and comfort.  We deserve to have enough money to take a vacation or to visit family.  We deserve to be able to buy food for the holidays.  We deserve to give our children a quality education.  We deserve to have easy transportation to and from work (having a car shouldn’t feel like a necessity).  We deserve to pamper ourselves and to indulge.  The question, “What are we really owed?” bothered me for this reason: if we don’t have these pleasures, abilities we are merely existing and if we’re just existing, we lose the beauty of being human.  All of this being said, I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want a more socialist, educated society (socialism doesn’t mean communism or less capitalism).  Why would anyone want to deny another human being the right to live a comfortable life? A life of dignity and value?  I will admit that possessing these ideas is a privilege because I obtained them through higher education and being economically comfortable.  I have access to these ideas and access to the discussion of these ideas.  More people need access to these ideas, so that upward social mobility is possible.

            If I take one thing away from this class, it would be that human life is precious and each one deserves to be cultivated and nurtured.  By this I mean that everyone deserves to have a happy life and the opportunity to make it as positive they can.  But now, reflecting, how will I contribute to the world?  I'm graduating in less than two weeks and I'm waiting to hear back from nursing school.  I know that I mentioned that I want to be a nurse practioner and either work in geriatric psychiatry or in a public clinic.  Up front, I know that this profession will directly help people.  But how will I use the things I've learned in class to positively affect the lives of people I encounter?

            I've learned that my privilege is unique and that it was no accident.  I'm a white, upper-middle class woman.  Paulo Freire stresses in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that in order to make a true difference in oppressed lives we have to be positive and active in reconstructing social order and acknowledging that no one comes from a neutral position.  Now that I know where I stand in that social order I have to analyze how my position affects others and how they interpret it.  I also have to think about other people's situations in life and their experiences.  As a future nurse, I can't walk into the doctor's office and assume that every patient thinks like me or has had the same medical experience.  I have to understand their needs because the doctor's office is often an intimidating place and the last thing patients need is to feel like their health care provider is looking down on them.  I know I'll encounter people, not just in the health care world, that are from lower socioeconomic classes than I am.  Sensitivity and tolerance is necessary to elevate people to a dignified level. 

            When (if) I have children, I'll have to keep in mind what I have learned in this class and in my personal experiences.  I want to make sure that my children are exposed to different kinds of people from all over the world.  I want them to know people of different races, cultures, sexualities, and socioeconomic levels and that certain kinds of people are unfairly favored over others (namely in the USA rich, white people rule over ethnic minorities).  It's important that they learn to respect people different from them and that they develop, like I have, the vocabulary to talk about prejudice and oppressive social constructs.  No one is a perfect, nonjudgmental human being.  However, with patience and an open mind, we can begin any dialogue and create peace (on the global level and in individual interactions).