Last week, I decided to talk to one of my English Language Learner students about his job prospects. He’s in ninth grade, and just arrived from Vietnam last December. He’s made great progress on his English, although he is still reticent about speaking in his general classes. But he’s a jokester at heart (he likes that word) and we always have lots of fun in our classes.
His mother, like many Vietnamese immigrants to the US, works in a nail salon. I have talked to my student about this many times, but I, being his “well-educated” teacher, wanted to officially broach the topic of his prospects after high school. Several teachers and I had discussed how we wanted him to have more lofty goals than working in a nail salon his whole life. I wanted to expand his horizons.
Turns out, he had some things to teach me.
First off, a peak inside my head: “successful,” according to me, means having my kids go to a four-year university. If it’s Ivy League, that would be amazing. Mr. ThreeYear and I plan to pay for the majority of our kids’ college, so we’re looking at the majority of $45,000+ a year (currently!) for four years, the average total cost (tuition, fees, and room & board) for a private college, times two.
Then, they’ll graduate, study medicine, law, architecture, or engineering, get a great job, and change the world!
I wanted my student to know that he could and should! expect more from life than working in a nail salon. “I don’t want to work in a nail salon,” he said. “But… you can make a lot of money there. My mom,” he told me, “can make $1800 a week in the nail salon.”
Wow. I was impressed. That was a pretty good salary. “But the owner of the nail salon,” he said, “makes $30,000 a month.” Continue reading “Does It Make More Sense to Go to College or Open a Nail Salon?”
