Responsible Work?

At the beginning of this semester, I had to find a job for the second time in the two years that I have been going to school here. The first time I got a job, it was at the beginning of the first semester last year (my freshman year). I worked at the Coop, and ended up not liking working there but more importantly, I couldn’t keep working there because I could not handle it in addition to my workload and adjusting to my new life here. I made sure that this time around, I got a job that paid better and had fewer and more flexible hours. I was also hoping for something that would look good on my resume. That I could afford to consider all of these issues in searching for a job is interesting to me, when I consider my classmates and friends who have to work 20-30 hours per week to put themselves through school.

Anyways, I was interested in tutoring elementary to high school age people because I thought that it might be a good way to work with kids, and that tutoring would be a valuable skill to cultivate. I heard from my brother (a Pomona alum) about a tutoring service that two Pomona graduates started three or four years ago in Claremont. I also knew about Harvey Mudd’s Upward Bound program, which (according to their website) helps “low income, potential first-generation college students in the East San Gabriel Valley community ‘generate the skill and motivation necessary for success in college.’” Upward Bound pays a slightly lower per hour rate than the other tutoring program and has less flexibility for tutors in terms of hours. I pursued and now work for the first agency because they pay better, I get job offers that are based on my schedule and my tutoring abilities, and I’m more likely to get good references out of it, even though the mission of Upward Bound is more along the lines of my social justice interests.

Curious about the per hour rate charged by my tutoring agency, I looked it up on their website. Their “cheapest” service, “phone/video tutoring,” costs about $20/hour. It is easy to imagine that this impersonal kind of service would be far less effective for a student struggling to find motivation to do schoolwork. The cheapest in-person tutoring costs about $25/hour. Upward Bound, on the other hand, is free. Because I believe that I have a responsibility to be aware of the effects of the type of work I do, I have been thinking about the choice I made to not pursue working for Upward Bound.

Looking at the rates they charge, the agency I work for now does not serve low-income families or probably many families that consider themselves middle class. Obviously, it’s a business, not a program with a social justice purpose like Upward Bound, so in some ways it’s irrelevant to wonder why they can’t lower their rates and change other policies so that they serve a less socioeconomically privileged population. On the other hand, I care about this kind of responsibility and I am working for them, so I am thinking about it and my role in greater processes of education and mobility. Only serving middle and upper class students may reinforce the advantage in mobility that these students already have because of their socioeconomic status and the increased privileges they have. They probably live in neighborhoods with people of similar socioeconomic standing, so the schools they go to are already better than the schools serving low-income neighborhoods and would probably benefit more in the long-run from having a tutor. What is my role in reinforcing these typical patterns or finding ways to challenge them, while at the same time considering my own financial needs?