If you could solve any ONE social problem, what would it be? What type of career role (title, sector/position) might you want to pursue to accomplish this if not for teaching? How might solving that problem impact the field of Education?
If I could solve one social problem, I would solve poverty. In order to address this issue, I would pursue a career in social work and more specifically, direct social work. Direct social work would allow me to use my skills of empathy, compassion, and problem solving to make one on one contact with individuals at the micro level. Solving poverty would have many important direct impacts on education but, I think the main one would be the general improvement of student success by eliminating the poverty they are experiencing outside of the classroom. Many students experience living in poverty and when they go to school each day they are faced with continued disparity compared to their peers because they don’t have the resources or support outside of school that they need. Additionally, many students bring the stress and fear they face living in poverty to school with them, which makes focusing on learning difficult, by eliminating poverty students in these conditions would be provided with a better opportunity for success and growth in their academics. Poverty is so much more than just hunger, and there is only so much a teacher or school as a whole can provide to a student facing these conditions, especially if it is a widespread problem in the district’s community, and the resources are spread thin. If I could solve poverty it would result in schools not having to rely on those school resources to focus only on helping those students in poverty, but rather using those same school resources, time, and money in various other helpful ways throughout the district which would benefit different areas of the student body and improve school quality.
