When Going Back to the Land Isn’t an Option

I’ve mentioned a few times on ye olde blogge that a while back, I was very interested in a “natural” lifestyle. Heck, even over in my profile bio on the right, I mention that in my daydreams, I live on a ranch. Well, a few years ago, from around 2006 to 2008, wanting to live a “back to the land” lifestyle was a very strong desire of mine.

Recently an online friend blogged about something similar – seeing the positive qualities in a simpler life, a more natural life, a slower lifestyle. She admitted that she probably romanticized it but that it still looked appealing. I noticed many commenters agreeing, saying they felt the same way. I jokingly commented that she sounded like I did, a few years ago. She responded and asked what I did about it, and here’s what I told her:

I made certain small changes to our lifestyle, and honestly, I kind of grew out of it because it wasn't a dream that was to become a reality for me anytime soon. :/

My husband wasn't interested (especially in the back-to-the-land stuff - he's a city/suburbs guy) so without buy-in from him, it wasn't going to happen, you know? And because of that I just kind of let it go and began focusing on other things. I get my "fix" in other ways - spending more time outside, eating better, doing creative things with the kids, watching Frontier House on PBS, ha!

Something I've noticed about myself is that I will get really gung ho about something that interests me, and I'll think that I need to change my whole life to look like whatever that interest is. What I'm still learning is that maybe "tweaks" are what I really need. Maybe I don't need to homeschool and make all my food from scratch and raise chickens and live on a farm sustained with electricity from our windmill and become a midwife . . . maybe what I'm feeling is really a pull to spend more time with my kids on what they're learning from this world . . . make better food choices and start a container garden . . . cut costs and make eco friendly choices in my suburban townhouse . . . tell my friends about great pregnancy and birth resources and let them know I'm available with a non-judgmental ear if they need to vent or need advice. Maybe I can use my interest to advocate on behalf of people who need a lot more of these things in their lives but have even less access than I do - people who live in food deserts, people who have only ever been told that birth is a terrifying, painful thing to leave up to a hospital staff, people who have so little chance to visit a zoo or forest or farm, or even just a park.

I'm still interested in all those things and love to see, read, hear, talk about them . . . but in their full-blown form they don't work for me. Doesn't mean I can't incorporate some of their important principles and aspects into my life!

Do you do this? Do you get really excited about something, learn a lot about it, and think you must change your whole lifestyle to be happy? Have you actually done it? If so, how did it work out? Are you like me – it takes a while but eventually you understand that perhaps a radical change isn’t in order, but smaller changes are?

What are things you thought you needed, and it turned out maybe you just needed to make some tweaks?

The American Dream and Education: My Plans as a Parent

I don’t believe that bigger, or better is truly better. I think it’s deceptive and doesn’t really fulfill us. So I’m not pushing my kids to live a “better” life than I have, at least not in terms of material accomplishments. Instead, I’m pushing my kids to learn about themselves, to learn about the world, to learn about service to others and to learn about hard work.

And – I have a plan!

My kids (ages 12, 10 and 4) are already learning to work hard. They have homework and chores. They are learning to cook and to do their own laundry. They are learning to manage their money. I take them with me to volunteer because I want to instill that value in them, and I want them to be comfortable with people in need. I want them to get to know what causes people to be in need and I want them to understand that it is a normal experience. EVERYONE needs something or someone and I don’t want my kids to look down on someone else for being in need. I also don’t want my kids to feel bad about themselves when they are in need.

As they get older, they will have to get jobs. They might start out with something like babysitting, but before they leave high school they need to have worked someplace where they have taxes deducted from their paycheck. I will encourage them to work in food service. I will send them to temp agencies so they get a variety of work experiences and so they can receive job training. I will take them to work with me and have them help me with filing and other office tasks. I can’t tell you how valuable office experience was to me in finding better-paying jobs than my peers during college! I want my kids to have manual labor jobs, too. Landscaping, construction, hospitality, cleaning, etc. I want my kids to learn how to WORK. They need to experience crappy bosses and crappy pay and crappy work conditions. They need to learn how to not give up just because their work sucks. Because guess what – all those things exist even when you work in prestigious, high-paying jobs. Those things exist whether you work in a traditional industry or when your work is on the cutting edge.

We will push them to get very good grades and to be involved in a variety of activities, not so they can get into the best school – so they can get money for school! They will apply for as many scholarships and grants as possible. I hope that we can finance their entire college education that way, but if those things don’t happen, then my kids will work to pay for their schooling. If they need to go to school part-time so they can work more hours or to accommodate a better-paying job, then that’s what they’ll do. If they need to work for a year or two after high school before starting college, fine. They will hopefully enter college more mature and with a better idea of what they want out of college. We will consider letting them live at home to offset their expense, but they will work and they will contribute at home. Sure – 4 years away at a great school would be a fun and enriching experience for them. But that is NOT the only way to “do” college, and it’s not the only way to have fun or to be enriched.

The things I’ve described aren’t outlandish. You know what they are? They’re what working class and poor people do to survive and to attain success. More and more, these are the things middle-class people are going to have to do. And I think there is a lot of value in those experiences. I want my kids to learn how to live on less, to value experience over things and to be able to handle difficult circumstances without crumbling. So I don’t buy the American Dream anymore (at least I’m trying very hard not to) and I’m trying not to teach it to my kids. Our culture will teach it to them plenty, but my kids will at least have been armed with the ability to survive and thrive when the bottom falls out of the dream for most others. Here’s hoping, anyway.

Read the first two posts in this series:

The American Dream and Education: Wanting Better For Our Children

The American Dream and Education: College Without Debt

The American Dream and Education: College Without Debt

I work at a private, VERY expensive graduate school, and most of the students have come to our school straight from undergrad. Many of them haven’t worked full-time and the work they’ve had has been low-paying work – retail, babysitting – not something one can make a living off of – at least not a middle-class living. You know there are people supporting entire families off of retail, right?

TOO MANY of these students aren’t prepared for the rigors of graduate school, or life in the workforce after graduation. And it’s not that these aren’t good candidates – these students are great on paper. They have high grades, an interest in serving their communities. They want to make a difference in the world and they have brains. But so many of them have had a very nice lifestyle given to them by their parents, and their parents have held their hands through much of life (you know, helicopter parents). They were raised by parents who didn’t ask them to get jobs in high school and college because they believed that their child should be allowed to focus on school and personal fulfillment/development. I don’t think that these parents were lazy or didn’t care about their kids – in fact, I think they care very much and worked very hard to provide a happy life for their family. But I think their parents bought into the American Dream, just like most of us have (including myself). Unfortunately, many of these children became adults who struggle mightily with the pressures and hard work it takes to survive in this world.

Me? I went to a junior college on scholarships and grants, so I got two years of college for FREE. I then transferred to a state university. Much less prestigious than the schools many of my friends went to, but a solid education nonetheless and at a fraction of the cost. This was funded via grants and small loans. I didn’t finish my bachelor’s degree. I got pregnant with our oldest child, dropped out and joined the work force. I wish I had finished because that degree could have helped me at times, but I have earned a good living even without it.

How did I do such a thing? I developed good work experience during high school and college – it wasn’t that well paid but it taught me a lot. I developed skills, learned how to navigate the workforce, and built a resume. It was that experience that got me into my first full-time job and from there, each job added to my marketability. Now? I’ve been working full-time since 1999 and make a good living, in a good job – and I still don’t have my bachelor’s degree! I waited to go back to school until I had tuition reimbursement, and until I found a degree I was willing to invest in. I finance my education with a mixture of tuition reimbursement, grants (finally pays to be working class with kids, woo hoo!) and a very small amount in loans.

I know quite a few people who have master’s degrees and are unable to command the salary I can because they simply don’t yet have the experience and skill I’ve developed. I also know people with graduate degrees who can’t find work, not even crappy work. The economy right now is a tough and very competitive place, and that is really unfortunate for those who have invested so much in expensive educations – especially if they did it with loans that aren’t paid back yet. Now, I do want to finish my bachelor’s degree and I’m considering getting a master’s degree. But I won’t do it if my only option for paying is loans. I have seen over and over that loans are crippling the young adults who have been told that prestigious degrees are their ticket to success.

Read the first part of this series, The American Dream and Education: Wanting Better for Our Kids.

The American Dream and Education: Wanting Better for Our Kids

I have a friend on Twitter, @blackgirlinmain (you can read her blog at www.blackgirlinmaine.com) who I have some of the best conversations with. Recently she was talking about the part of the American Dream that tells us if we go to college, we’ll get a good job . . . and how that really isn’t true anymore.

One used to be able to earn a good living as a tradesman, and college was for those going into professional work. A bachelor’s degree was something to shoot for and now it’s often the bare minimum expected, even in jobs that didn’t require them in the past. A bachelor’s degree is almost the new high school diploma!

Part of American Dream is that you should/must go to college, and that you want to shoot for as prestigious a university as possible because of how it looks on a resume and the high caliber education you’ll get there. Of course, the “better” the school, the more expensive it is.

One of the ideas that has become part of our American culture is that as parents, we should want our children to have better or more than we had ourselves. We want them to do better in school, make more money, have better jobs, have a better/bigger house, live in a better neighborhood. There is the idea that wanting this for your children is what good parents do. It’s become so accepted that no one really questions the virtue of these values. They aren’t seen as optional perspectives to hold – OF COURSE everyone wants their children to have better than they had.

I was discussing this with someone once – someone who is undeniably upper middle class. He has a Ph.D. makes a VERY nice living (so does his wife) and lives in a posh area in a gorgeous, expensive home. We were discussing the economy and he made an offhand remark that he wants his lifestyle to stay the same. I told him I wanted to stay “working class”, and he was surprised to hear that. People are surprised every time I tell them that. Shouldn’t I want my children to have an easier life than I have had?

The truth is, I don’t. I think that just like the idea of being “colorblind”, the idea of wanting more/better for your kids was probably well-intended, but has had a negative impact on our society and culture. There are only so many steps up the proverbial ladder one can climb, and as more and more people try to crowd onto the ladder, the harder it becomes to move up to the next step . . . yet we’re still taught that we should fight to get up that ladder.

Additionally, I think the idea that we should always be trying for more, for better, leaks out into everything we do. We must have a better car/house/phone/wardrobe/etc – why? And if you can’t get better, what happens to you? How many people were raised in middle and upper-middle class families, who have struggled to attain that lifestyle as adults, and feel ASHAMED because of their struggle? Ashamed to live in an apartment instead of being able to buy a house? Ashamed that they could only finance an education at a state university? Ashamed because they had to buy a used car? How many are ashamed at the idea of living a more working-class lifestyle, so they go into incredible debt to finance a “better” education, home, car, lifestyle? And where did it get them? Do they feel “safe” that no one will figure out how broke they are? Or are they always worried that things will crumble and they won’t be able to set themselves up the way their parents did?

I know that not all people who came from middle and upper-middle class families go through these struggles, and I know that everyone who struggles doesn’t feel shame over it. I see it quite often in my peers, though – and I don’t want that for my children.

Creating My Destiny - Ashley Wants to Save the World

I have always been drawn to stories of injustice and people who take a stand for the things they believe and people who are in need. Besides a time in 4th grade when my best friend Jenny and I planned on being fashion designers together, I have always imagined spending my life helping people. I pictured myself feeding the starving, building homes for those without shelter, even helping people escape persecution. I was greatly impacted by stories of slavery, war, genocide, poverty . . . I loved movies and books that told an inspiring story of one person making a difference somehow.

I was never sure, though, exactly how I wanted to help people. I’ve always loved history and culture and for a while I thought I wanted to be an anthropologist. I pictured living with people groups very different from my own . . . I was a junior in college, an Anthropology major and just beginning to understand that I didn’t so much want to study culture as I wanted to do work to better people’s lives, when I found out I was pregnant. I was thrown for such a loop with the pregnancy that I dropped out and went to work full-time.

We got married, had a second child, and I spent several years working office jobs that I was good at and enjoyed. At this point in my life I didn’t feel a strong need to have a career – having a job I enjoyed that helped to support my family was enough. At work I participated in things like my company’s Diversity Team, United Way campaign and community-service projects. I remember thinking, “I wish this was my job” and being surprised when my company created a Community Relations position to manage all of these initiatives. I’d never known that jobs like this existed.

My supervisors saw my energy and abilities and encouraged me to go back to school, but I just wasn’t ready. The only programs that fit around my work schedule focused on Business and I wasn’t interested in investing my time that way. I put it off and put it off.

After 4 years of marriage, my husband and I decided to move to Chicago, where he’s from. I was able to transfer within my company to a different division, where I was supposed to do work similar to my previous position, but for a different “customer”. Unfortunately, I was very unhappy. The supportive, community-minded atmosphere of the division I’d left wasn’t present in my new division. I didn’t feel good about the product we were promoting and didn’t fit in with my workaholic co-workers. I spent most of my day dreaming of being at home with my kids or doing something – anything – that would give me a sense of having done GOOD for the world.

I eventually left and began looking for work in the non-profit field. I now work at a graduate school that places a heavy emphasis on community, service and diversity. Ding ding ding! I love our mission, my co-workers and my small part in helping to make the world a better place.

I think it was being around people who were furthering their education, having a third child (hello exponential cost of living increase!) and realizing that there were all kinds of degrees that I never knew existed, that finally prompted me to start looking at going back to school. I had heard of Social Justice programs and that seemed right up my alley, but the only ones I could find wouldn’t fit with my work schedule. Luckily, I stumbled upon a Social Justice certificate offered through the seminary of North Park University. North Park is a small, Christian liberal arts school which places a heavy emphasis on service. I found that they offered a Non-Profit Management degree AND it was available through their School of Adult Learning. Classes are offered nights, weekends and online – perfect for me!

I was intimidated at the thought of applying for admission, but right from the start, everyone at NPU welcomed me and helped me get past my fears. Before I knew it, I’d been admitted to the program, transferred my credits from my first college go-round, gotten a financial aid package, set up my tuition reimbursement agreement and registered for my first classes!

I’ve now been in school since the Fall of 2008 and I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. I still have a year or more of courses (I’m taking things slow, just one course at a time) but I know I’ll be graduating before I know it. The program I’m in is so perfect for what I want to do, because the thing is, I still don’t know exactly what I want to do. My program is exposing me to organizations and people that inspire me and I'm gaining skills and knowledge that I can apply to ANY non-profit I work for. I’m learning about fundraising, advocacy, boards, grants, foundations, volunteer management and more. My classmates and instructors have such great insight and experience to share and our classes are highly interactive. No boring 400-student lectures!

I expect that the work I’ll be doing in 20 years will probably be something I had no idea I’d end up with, but I believe this education will help me no matter where I go. I’m really excited for my future – I finally feel as though I’ve found my specific way to help people. I won’t be roaming the world looking for people to save, at least not until my kids are grown. But I can help people here in my community, and I can help others go out into the world and make a difference.

I have to select an area Non-Profit to do my final project on for my current class. I have to meet with their executive director (or someone in a similar position), interview them, tour their location, and then present my project to the class. Tomorrow we have to come to class with 3 possibilities. I chose:

~ Crossroads which is based in the South suburbs and does anti-racism training for organizations.

~ Wings which provides shelter, education, guidance & support to homeless/abused women & children (I knew of them because a thrift store near my house where I shop sometimes is a Wings thrift store – all money supports the org)

~ Roseland Community “Good News” Daycare which has an awesome story . . . it’s run by a lady who was a pregnant teen years ago . . . she began providing childcare for local teens who were likely to drop out of school. She provided free care, food & diapers if the mom couldn’t pay. The daycare has grown into a great organization. My friend Alicia told me about her a while ago.



In related news, last week I sent an email to Leonard Pitts from the Miami Herald (a columnist I’ve read for years), nominating the Roseland Daycare as an organization he should profile for his “What Works” column. What Works is a look at programs around the U.S. that are doing good things for children in need, specifically Black kids. Of course I didn’t bother to read the DATES of the articles that highlighted great organizations, so I didn’t realize that he ran this series of columns a couple years ago (doh!) & they’re just posted as archives.

Anyway – if you’re interested in reading about some great nation-wide organizations that are doing great things, google Leonard Pitts Miami Herald and start reading. You may eventually be asked to create an account to continue reading but it’s free and took me about 30 seconds to do it. You have to opt IN for any newsletters/emails so don’t worry about getting spammed by creating an account.

Here is the text from his final article on the series, dated July 7, 2008. (Also - the Harlem Children's Zone has connections in both curriculum & training to the people where I work who are running an elementary school here on Chicago's West Side, the Garfield Park Preparatory Academy).



We Know What Works – Now Let’s Do It by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

This will be the last What Works column.

I reserve the right to occasionally report on any program I run across that shows results in saving the lives and futures of African-American kids. But this is the last in the series I started 19 months ago to spotlight such programs.

Let me begin by thanking you for your overwhelming response to my request for nominations, and to thank everyone from every program who allowed me to peek behind the scenes. From the Harlem Children's Zone in New York to SEI (Self-Enhancement, Inc.) in Portland, Ore., I have been privileged and uplifted to see dedicated people doing amazing work.

I am often asked whether I've found common denominators in all these successful programs, anything we can use in helping kids at risk. The short answer is, yes. You want to know what works?

Longer school days and longer school years work. Giving principals the power to hire good teachers and fire bad ones works. High expectations work. Giving a teacher freedom to hug a child who needs hugging works. Parental involvement works. Counseling for troubled students and families works. Consistency of effort works. Incentives work. Field trips that expose kids to possibilities you can't see from their broken neighborhoods, work.

Indeed, the most important thing I've learned is that none of this is rocket science. We already know what works. What we lack is the will to do it. Instead, we have a hit-and-miss patchwork of programs achieving stellar results out on the fringes of the larger, failing, system. Why are they the exception and not the rule?

If we know what works, why don't we simply do it?

Nineteen months ago when I started, I asked Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone why anyone should pay to help him help poor kids in crumbling neighborhoods. He told me, "Someone's yelling at me because I'm spending $3,500 a year on 'Alfred.' Alfred is 8. OK, Alfred turns 18. No one thinks anything about locking him up for 10 years at $60,000 a year."

Amen. Forget the notion of a moral obligation to uplift failing children. Consider the math instead. If that investment of $3,500 per annum creates a functioning adult who pays taxes and otherwise contributes to the system, why would we pass that up in favor of creating, 10 years later, an adult who drains the system to the tune of $60,000 a year for his incarceration alone, to say nothing of the other costs he foists upon society?

How does that make sense? Nineteen months later, I have yet to find a good answer.

Instead, I find passivity. Save The Children, Marvin Gaye exhorted 27 years ago. But we are losing the children in obscene numbers. Losing them to jails, losing them to graves, losing them to illiteracy, teen parenthood, and other dead-ends and cul-de-sacs of life. But I have yet to hear America -- or even African America -- scream about it. Does no one else see a crisis here?

"I don't think that in America, especially in black America, we can arrest this problem unless we understand the urgency of it, " says Tony Hopson, Sr., founder of SEI. "When I say urgency, I'm talking 9/11 urgency, I'm talking Hurricane Katrina urgency, things that stop a nation. I don't think in black America this is urgent enough. Kids are dying every single day. I don't see where the NAACP, the Urban League, the Black Caucus, have decided that the fact that black boys are being locked up at alarming rates, [means] we need to stop the nation and have a discussion about how we're going to eradicate that as a problem. It has not become urgent enough. If black America don't see it as urgent enough, how dare us think white America is going to think it's urgent enough?"

In other words, stand up. Get angry. Stop accepting what is clearly unacceptable. I'll bet you that works, too.

i attend north park university which is a teensy christian college heavily focused on service . . . the campus looks straight out of a movie but it's plunked right down in the middle of chicago.

i'm in the non-profit managment bachelor's program (in a cohort of adults who work and are returning to finish their degrees).

i recently decided that when i'm done with my bachelor's degree, i'm likely going to try to get into their grad program for non-profit administration. so, there, i said it: i think i'm going to go to grad school.

The ol' Partisan Poison Dart

I read the Obama school speech transcript. I think it was good. My kid's school didn't show it it: “There are many reasons, including MAP testing, instructional blocks, and the inability to show this with our current technology resources.” It’s not a huge deal to me – there isn’t anything in there that we haven’t already talked to our kids about. However, they like Obama so it will be good to sit with them & watch the speech, it will be exciting for them. I remember as a kid hating to watch stuff with adults talking about adult stuff . . . I’d try to watch presidential addresses but would quickly lose interest. I think it would have been really cool to see him talking right to me on my level.

As a parent, I’m not concerned that he would be trying to indoctrinate my kids. I wasn’t a Bush fan but if there had been a presidential address like this I would have thought nothing of it – I would assume, as I have with Obama, that the speech would be kid & education focused, and I wouldn’t expect there to be any sort of partisan poison dart that would shoot out of the TV and infect my kids and make them become a big, bad (insert political party). If one speech from the president would override everything I’m teaching in my home, then I’m not doing much teaching in my home!

As for the kids who don’t get the teaching at home, I don’t think there was anything but encouragement to work their hardest in the speech. And Obama being able to share stories of how he identified with not having a perfect life growing up will be meaningful to those kids – this is one more reason that I do like Obama even though I disagree with some of his policies – he is a different face, a face that some kids will be able to identify with for the first time. Him mentioning difficult times in his childhood is another way of telling the kids who don’t have much support – try anyway, you can do it. The truth is many of them won’t do it, even with him as an example, because all our problems as a society don’t go away just because we have a Black president. But it’s one barrier broken down – having never seen a Black face in that office. I truly, truly didn’t think I’d see a Black president in my lifetime . . . and the unabashed racism that has come to the surface since he became a candidate is why I didn’t think it would happen. Just because it’s under the surface doesn’t mean it’s not there! We have a loooong way to go, and I guess because of my Christian worldview, I don’t believe we WILL ever get there, not until Christ returns.

Which leads me to something I hadn’t intended to write about, but I struggle so much with balancing the beliefs of the human sinful nature vs. the work the Holy Spirit can do in our lives . . . balancing knowing things will probably only get worse before Christ returns vs. continuing to work TODAY to make improvements. I guess sometimes I just look around and think, “What’s the use?”

Trying to balance a *worldly* viewpoint, which to me is that we actually believe that one day we will get “there” where things are just great for everyone. But as a Christian I don’t believe that’s possible here on earth. But then I have to think from the worldly viewpoint of the worth & value of the lives that are here right now, that can be improved . . . and that lines up with Christ’s mandates to his church.

Sometimes I get so tired of trying to figure out the answers and then hitting a wall & remembering I can’t know all the answers, it’s not possible. I get tired of caring so much and not being able to fix the things that ail people and hurt them. Sometimes I wish I could just be a robot because it’s overwhelming to see so much pain in the world and to have so little power to take away the pain. There are times when I’m physically overcome with the knowledge of the ways people suffer. I can either become a basketcase or I can turn off the TV in my head and do the little I can do. It just never seems to be enough.

So, was that depressing enough for you??