Underprivileged children, adopted puppies, and self-satisfied do-gooders

Okay, I love The Onion which is satire at its best and “not intended for readers under the age of 18,” but of course I don’t even know how to rate my own blog posts  and sometimes cringe at some of my own content when I receive comments that seem to be from younger adolescents who are searching for answers to their school problems and find my blog helpful. So who am I to judge such slippery notions as age-appropriateness or – even worse in schools – “levels” of reading?

Enough of that, I don’t know how I missed this satirical reporting of young privileged college-educated people sacrificing themselves in service of “underprivileged” children as their volunteer (or, even paid) teachers: My Year of Volunteering as a Teacher

welfare brat by mary childers

I’ll be adding this book to my list of terrific reads that explore the complexities of social mobility through education. Childers’ memoir is beautifully written even when she’s writing about her teenage rage directed at her mother and painful realizations caught up in the tricky web woven between gratitude and desire, loyalty and resentment, love and fear, school and home. Some of the most insightful moments for educators might be in her writing about language use, clothing, and eye contact as she crosses the threshold into middle-class Manhattan to work as a teen and downplays desires to attend college to maintain peer relationships. Interchanges between Childers and her guidance counselor would also make for interesting dialogue, as well as the variety of ways her siblings experience mobility – and how sexuality, lies/truths, language, and relationships buttress such mobility.

Brava Childers!