A Commitment To Education.

A commitment to education.
By Candy De León
Looking back on the path of my education, there are certain issues and events that one has to examine in order to understand where I am now and where I am heading. The voluntary and not so voluntary choices I have made along the way, like the schools and career I chose and all of the things I have learned, are worth reviewing for me to improve my lifeand educational quality.
And these questions come rushing down at me. What am I doing now? What do I really want to do and where do I want to be? What can I do to make things better in the world around me? And with the questions comes the urge to give a proper response, because after all, it is my life we are talking about.
Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher, but I cannotremember why. I used to play with my dolls and teddy bears aligned as if they were in a classroom. With the help of a little blackboard and a ruler (for discipline, of course), I taught them exactly what I learned that day at school. My mom used to hide and enjoyed watching me play teacher.
Later in time my preferences changed. Since I was in ninth grade, I felt a passion for psychology. Everytime I went to my school’s small library, I picked up the only two psychology books they had and then just started this magical journey. Even though I didn’t understand some of the concepts, I just felt this excitement. My eyes and mind were suddenly wide open; a veil just lifted and the truth was finally revealed. And it eventually happened. Back in my hometown of Santiago in Dominican Republic, Iwent to college to study psychology.
My life experience in college can be defined as unforgettable. As Steven Richardson wrote in his article “College? What’s in it for me?”, college is about discovering who you are and what you can do. The challenge is to become creative by coming up with new solutions to problems that nobody before you has faced. But, of course, you must try to enjoy lifewhile you are at it. And it was exactly what happened to me. In the end I can say that there was a me before college and then after college.
I got my degree in Psychology and was blessed enough to get a job in the Counseling Department in the same university I graduated from, which name is Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM). This brings me where it all started, my originalfirst dream of being a teacher.
While I was studying psychology I rediscovered my appetite for teaching and I knew that I wanted to become one in the future. I just didn’t know it was going to happen that fast. By the age of twenty one there I was, thrown into the wild, teaching first years students of my university an introductory class called Orientation, that helps them getting through college andadapt. Little did I know that this was going to be a life changing experience for me.
I was tremendously scared. I was young and inexperienced but I couldn’t show it to anyone, so I put myself together and acted like a professional. I had different activities to accomplish among my responsibilities, but teaching was one of my all-time favorite activities, even if I have been in this businessfor only two short, yet substantial, years.

Now, having being played an active part of both sides of the learning process, my worries began to add up. I started being concerned of the educational system in my country and around the world, and asked myself where did we go wrong? What can we do to make it better?
It is frustrating for me and my fellow compatriots to watch how our government hasgiven education the cold shoulder. It is painful to know that our country has an illiteracy rate of 13%; above the average on Latin America that is 10%. This is a dramatic rate when you understand that over a million people, out of the almost 10 million that the country has, don’t know how to read and write. This is because the government just won’t give more than the 4% of the Gross Domestic...