rebuilding dreams...

The title of my blog may seem overly sentimental, without the proper context. And while sometimes I am sentimental, mostly I like to be humorous, so let me explain. I work at an urban high school, where my job is to, in so many words, get kids to go to college. A noble aim, and one that I enjoy most of the time. But... no one told me that out of a class of 160 or more, only about 30 would have over a 3.0 and about 50% failed their freshman year the first go around. Oh yeah, and the average ACT score is a 17. Which means that many of our students score below a 17 on the ACT. Which means I get kids with a 1.3 GPA and a 14 on the ACT who want to go to nursing school. Or be a pediatrician. Or an optometrist. I've even gotten a pediatric surgeon or two. I used to joke at the beginning that my job was crushing kid's dreams (because of there being no way you're being accepted to nursing school with a 1.3 GPA, and by the way you've never taken chemistry and got a D in Algebra 1...) but then I very counselorly reframed that into a more positive light. Now I say that my job is to help them realize that that wasn't really their dream, and help them build a new one. Hence rebuilding dreams.