Editor’s note: We’re publishing a series of op-ed articles from students in The Writing Program at USC. Every student in the class taught by Dr. John Murray and Stephanie Bower was required to make a short documentary about education by profiling a local school and/or program. Following the film project, the students wrote op-ed articles in response to their experiences and tackled some of the issues they discovered while making the shorts. We will be posting a new op-ed daily for the next two weeks.

by Kristina Lee

Apparently, we have been called upon by President Obama to serve our nation. According to the volunteer initiative “Renew America Together”, we citizens - the elderly, adults, and college students like me - have been encouraged to jointly serve our communities to help America become a better place. I personally cannot think of a better way to serve my neighborhood than by putting my University of Southern California education to good use and becoming a teacher for those who need me the most in the nearby Los Angeles Unified School District. But I’m facing some heavy roadblocks and apparently, serving my nation isn’t as easy as President Obama made it seem.

LAUSD is currently facing massive layoffs, and the worst part of these cutbacks is that they not only decrease the quality of students’ learning environments and eliminate current teachers’ careers; they also discourage aspiring educators like myself from entering the field. With the recent distribution of 9,000 dreaded pink slips to teachers, it has become apparent that education is not at the forefront of Los Angeles’s priorities, and though the $1 billion that LAUSD could receive from the federal stimulus package could be used to create jobs, they are instead eliminating them. What message is this sending to aspiring educators?

Those currently at risk of being laid off are some of LAUSD’s brightest and youngest teachers. Lacking tenure rights with only two years of work experience, the threat to their current jobs warns recent college graduates that there is no incentive to pursue a career in education. By laying off these young teachers, LAUSD is setting itself up for long-term failure by eliminating the opportunity for our new teachers–the futures of education–to make an impact on our youth–the future of our nation.

I speak on behalf of the “do-good” generation that truly wants to improve America in these most desperate of times. Some of us have found our calling to make a difference by teaching in the communities that need us the most, the LAUSD’s of our nation that boast dismal graduation rates hovering around 44 percent. However, we are finding that our dreams to enter professions that value educational progression over personal paychecks are dishearteningly difficult.

Even those who do not consider teaching as a full-time profession still look into post-graduate, short-term programs that allow us to make differences in peoples’ lives. I considered applying to Teach for America, a program that allows recent college graduates a two-year opportunity to teach in inner-city schools with the overarching goal to close America’s achievement gap. However, with cutbacks in education, it hardly seemed fair to me to take the position of people who depend on teaching as full-time careers when I would be more of a temporary band-aid to a greater educational problem. In fact, the Boston Teacher’s Union is currently involved in a bitter battle against Teach for America 2009 participants for job positions. Sadly, because education has become a scarce resource, teachers who are at risk of being laid off have come to see such programs as threats rather than assets to America.

I have often been told not worry about my limited post-graduate career prospects, for in the midst of this economic chaos comes the opportunity for me to step up to the plate and lead America out of the mess that we are in. While this optimism is indeed inspiring, the reality is that my classmates and I literally cannot enter careers that would afford us the opportunity to put our idealism into action, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Sure, President Obama wants us to begin the next chapter of America’s story. But if LAUSD does not do something locally to restore the jobs of its educators soon, hopes for a brighter America will be written off completely. If teachers continue to lose their jobs, the knowledge and energetic flame that aspiring, young educators crave to share with America’s youth may burn out indefinitely–and the moral consequence will be far more detrimental than any financial crisis our country has ever seen.