Teachers Want to Support Their Students, but They Aren’t Financially Able to Do So
By: Marlenne Perez
Growing up in the Inland Empire, my educational journey was driven by the lived experiences of my community and immigrant family. The Inland Empire is known for its large warehouses, constantly employing fresh high school graduates. Contributing to the school-to-warehouse pipeline in our community. Living with cousins who worked in harsh warehouse conditions after high school, if they graduated, I saw firsthand the injustices that my community faced, not being able to attend college due to the push-out rates of Chicanx students.
Coming from an immigrant family, I always knew to prioritize school, but I didn’t know how to do so. My family didn’t know anything about college, and I was just struggling to speak English in my classes. In high school, my habits were very similar, where I was just trying to pass every class to the best of my ability. My parents, who have worked in warehouses their whole lives, told me that it was optional to graduate from high school. “You’re going to work at the warehouse in Downtown LA with your father, why bother to finish high school?” I was extremely discouraged and did not plan on starting the University of California applications, and I did not plan on attending college.
In my freshman year of high school, I was admitted to the Puente program at my campus. Puente is a program within marginalized schools that trains their teachers and counselors to support students who come from different backgrounds. My Puente teacher was born in Mexico and came to the US with her family. She understood what it was like to not know English in school, and having strict parents who don’t understand going to college. Our relationship became personal, with everyone in the classroom. She was my English teacher for 3 out of 4 years in high school.
We shared many lived experiences in the classroom, and she created an environment that was safe enough for everyone to share their background. Some of us were similar, while others didn’t know what students had gone through in their lives, but we all did our best to support each other. My teacher stepped forward and became someone we needed; she was more than a teacher. She was the support that we were lacking at home. She was also the hub of knowledge that we all needed for higher education.
When we were sitting in her class during our senior year of high school, she prepped us all to apply for college at the start of the semester. I was very discouraged and told her early on that I wasn’t sure if I was going to get into college. She reassured me that any step forward into higher education would later on set me up for success, for myself and my family. She supported me throughout my college applications and helped me use my lived experiences in my application letters. Although I didn’t have a strong SAT score or didn’t have the highest GPA, I was accepted into every college I applied to. Without her support and her initiative, I wouldn’t be where I am today. A rising senior at UC Berkeley, majoring in Social Welfare, focusing on Education and Chicanx Studies.
Teachers are more than people who teach students their curriculum; they listen and support their students, they learn about the environment that their students live in, and they change lives. Every teacher comes into a classroom eager to meet their students and provide for them, but it is unjust to expect teachers to work to the best of their ability with severely underfunded pay. Imagine a world where teachers make enough money to provide for their own families, fill up their cups, and are able to live humanely. Keeping our teachers safe and properly funded will benefit the lives of students greatly. Our teachers deserve fair wages!