American Creed

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Narrator

Students around the country are discussing the PBS film American Creed with ciricular support from Facing History and Ourselves, and the National Writing Project. Each of you has been taking notes on a specific speaker from American Creed. What, according to them, does it mean to be American? Rural students often feel far away from the conversation in a flyover state, often overlooked and this American Creed film has given them a conversation that they can join. I had Condoleezza Rice, and what she says about her dreams, aspirations, and success is it doesn't matter where you come from, just where you're going, access to education... I think that spoke to a lot of people who are going to graduate high school and going off into the world because we all wanna be successful. Everyone has that fear of failure and hearing that is kinda like a little speck of hope that it's gonna be okay, as long as you work hard, you can be what you wanna be. Do you guys believe that? That there's endless opportunity here? Kinda goes hand in hand with education, like if you have higher education, you have a better opportunity. People in our community actually do struggle, if you look at our population a large part of us work at the mine, so it kinda makes me think of what might happen if our community's main source of jobs was lost. Columbus is, it's really homey I guess. It's small and you know pretty much everyone here. Which is really nice. But if you're not interested in farming or mechanics there's not a lot of opportunity. And this one's your receipt, thank you. My mom is literally my everything. She grew up in very humble circumstances. I want to be really successful for her. Thank you have a great day. I'm not rich, I'm not wealthy, I can write well, and I want to take that somewhere. Today in my leadership class, we watched American Creed. It was very nice for a change to have it not be like oh you have your token black character, oh you have your token sort of Hispanic character and what have you, but actually see people that weren't like minded at all, having a discussion about how they can come together. Can I get 3 folks to quickly share out what are your own ideals? I just try to kinda come into a situation and not really try to be prejudice and see how we can kinda work together rather than get in each other's way. You got that I live on like the corner where every sort of person from the community comes to play ball. I think we all need a medium to kind of escape once in a while. Paying rent, it can be tough for the sort of people around me, I mean even my family like struggles paying rent. My reaction to American Creed was to ask how can I help my neighbor get where he wants to go so that he can help me get where I want to go. I live on the southwest side of Chicago and my neighborhood's predominately Latinx, Hispanic people. You get a good sense of where people are from. So this picture, is actually my grandmother being taken to the airport, so she was coming here. And that was in Guanajuato? Mexico, mh-hmm. Something that's talked about in American Creed is, this aspect of luck. I was raised by my single mom and I think she's a great example of the American Dream, of working really hard and sometimes getting the outcome and other times not. There's a lot that someone would need to reach that American Dream, having supportive teachers or mentors, having a government system that supports you. My school is a great example, students from our community have been able to prosper. That's what the American Creed is all about, equality and freedom and opportunity, right? These big American ideals that have always drawn everyone's family here to America, right? Those are the things that drew my family to America. I go out on my lunch break and people are out there with signs and horns and... When we talk about the idea of the American Creed we're talking about describing the heart and soul of a country. What is this experiment about, you know, and who are we as people? Being American means loving this country so much that you accept that it's not in the place that it needs to be and doing whatever you can to see that it reaches its fullest potential. I would love to become a civil rights attorney or constitutional lawyer. When I graduate college I wanna go out and teach English, I wanna teach writing or be a journalist, anyone can do it. Anyone can pick up a pencil and write, but if you have a purpose to write, you can change the world. I would love to be a psychiatrist or mental health advocate in my community. That would be one of the ways that I would love to give back. Many colleges have reached out to me, but I would like to go where there's the least amount of money to be paid 'cause I live with four other brothers who I would like, and my parents would like and they would like to go to college. Being American is looking at your situation and being able to go look, it might not be good now, it might not be good for a while, but I'm going to work my butt off so that it can be good for me and hopefully the next generation.