Amy's reading response

Reading Eienrich’s Nickel and Dimed was a definite eye opener and look into the sad state of our working middle to lower classes throughout the United States. Although you hear about certain hardships many Americans struggle through and are cycled into, it never seems real until a first hand account is experienced by yourself or someone close to you. As a result, one section hit extremely close to home for me, and I was able to relate closely to her chapter entitled “Scrubbing in Maine.”

Before transferring to Santa Clara University in the fall of 2004, I attend a small college in Lewiston Maine called Bates College. This school, although almost completely enrolled with socially upper class and prep school new England students was located in one of the most impoverished and blue collar cities in the state of Maine. Not only was the city known as Maine’s crack and child pornography capitol but it also had a recent influx of Islamic refugees infiltrating the city and looking for work after 9/11. We hardly ventured past the campus boundary, because it was considered unsafe for students, except for the occasional trip to Wal-Mart or a road trip to Portland or Freeport. However, I was enrolled in a class called “Gender Issues in Education” in which, much like our Arrupe program here at Santa Clara, we were assigned to student teach at public schools around the area. This experience gave me a first hand account to see how horrible many living and working conditions for the blue collar community in Maine really was. A handful of the 2nd grade students at Montello Elementary in my class were clearly beaten by their father if he had a bad day. One boy showed up to class with a black eye because his father had apparently just been fired from the gas station and got mad at him for playing video games. Another girl told me she had been living out of her car with her Aunt and brother for the past few months, which happened to fall in the middle of winter. Many of the students show up in negative ten degree weather without a coat or closed toed shoes. We took a field trip to a skating rink in which each student was asked to bring three dollars to rent ice skates and get a snack, but many couldn’t even afford to bring that seemingly small amount of money. These children were in the 2nd grade and about 85% of the class couldn’t read at the kindergarten level, write their name, or speak English.

The thing that struck me the most in my comparison of Eienrich’s experience versus mine was that the class I was teaching in only had 4 white kids out of the 25 enrolled. The others were African American and Islamic. Although Maine is the whitest state in the United States I believe that the sections Eienrich was actually looking into throughout the state wasn’t as diverse as some of the more impoverished and struggling cities such as Lewiston, Auburn and certain parts of Augusta.

Overall, this book made me look at my attitude regarding the state of our country, the importance of minimum wage and why we need to, as a country, look for a solution to help the lower to middle class population as working full time in a dead end, low wage job leaves no room for further education, and a possible rise in the ranks of pay in our society.