THREE months from now, I’ll be a student teacher helping out poor high school kids cope up in a low-income institution here in Oregon. As a math major in my third year in college and coming from a poor community myself, I’ve been craving to help high school kids. I empathize with them because I’ve been through what they’ve experienced – coping with drugs, struggling not to become violent and rob and vandalize properties that are not ours, etc. My peers who have fared better went on to become soldiers in Iraq because they can’t go to college. I don’t want to die early. That’s why I struggled hard to be in college some two years ago. I failed in university entrance exams because the education atmosphere in our public high school was not that okay because the No Child Left Behind policy was only implemented long after I’d graduated already. And so I tried to apply for student loans from Sallie Mae and it was good that I had passed.

Today, I have two reasons to rejoice. Number one, I am now eligible to teach at the high school here in Oregon where I came from while I’m continuing my math degree and I’ll be getting $4,000 a year from the government for that. Or so that’s what I’m planning. I have learned from the TV news only a few hours ago that the House has just passed a bill giving incentives to low income but deserving college students who will teach during their off-school hours to low income high schools. That’s good news number one. The other one is that the House of Representatives has passed another bill to lower down the interest of all federal college student loans. Too bad mine cannot be covered because I had my loan from Sallie Mae, the largest private college lending company in the country. However, my beloved brother who I assume is equally gifted in mathematics like me can certainly apply for federal student loans under the new law. I still consider that good news since we two brothers only depend on the pension that my father, who died in Iraq in 2003, left behind for my mom, who’s a mere homemaker.

If he stays good in high school this year, my brother is eligible to apply for the federal college loan. Even better news is that my younger brother Raul can be eligible for a Pell grant. The Pell grant is a federal college grant subsidized by the Department of Education to poor but really deserving college students. And since it is a grant, it is not to be repaid not unlike me where I need to pay back to Sallie Mae at higher interest rates. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight way back after graduating. Maybe I thought I could pay back the high interest rates that Sallie Mae is imposing. I’ll be trying to anyhow. My father’s meager pension can still cover it though I guess. That and my plan to go teaching next school year in my high school. I’m so excited already.