Student debt puts a teaching career on hold
Jorge Brito wanted to be a teacher. He went back to school, earned the master’s degree he needed for certification, and began looking for a job in the Philadelphia public schools. But he had so much student debt, he soon realized a teacher’s paycheck wouldn’t begin to cover it. He left the profession before he even got started.
Brito is one of 45 million Americans with crippling student debt. He and his wife have a combined student loan payment of $750 a month — “that’s a lot for a young family with a 6-month-old son,” he says. It keeps him from growing his family, from taking care of his ailing father, from planning for his baby’s education. And it’s kept him from the career he’d hoped for — teaching — in a profession that needs more male teachers of color like him.
Statistics show that student debt hits low-income people and people of color hardest. One reason: They are frequently the first in their families to attend college.
“When I decided to go to college, I didn’t have anyone to counsel me about what taking out student loans really meant,” says Brito. His father worked in a machinist shop — Brito still remembers the smell of burnt metal. He never wanted work like that, and his father always encouraged him to go to college: He and his sisters and cousins “were told loud and clear by our immigrant parents that going to college would help us get ahead in life.”
“I filled out my forms, signed the paperwork and trusted the system.”
But no one in the family had ever gone to college, he says, and no one at his undergraduate schools explained how student debt works. “I had a lot of faith in the federal loan program,” says Brito. “I filled out my forms, signed the paperwork and trusted the system. I felt sure that I would soon be earning enough to pay back my student loans.”
That’s not what happened. A few years after graduating from college, Brito decided to become a teacher. He moved to Philadelphia, got a job as a bike courier, and enrolled in a master’s degree program so he could become certified. “I’d work all day and go to class at night still wearing my bike jersey,” he says.
Brito’s student teaching was “brutal,” he says. He worked with middle school students who were traumatized by the violence in their neighborhoods, in a school that went on lockdown because of nearby shootings. He never sat down, and he had five hours of work once he got home. “There was such an emotional toll. … Being a courier was tough and dangerous, but at 5 o’clock I could turn my radio off and be home and have dinner. It wasn’t all-encompassing. I didn’t lose sleep being a courier.”
“I simply couldn’t afford to teach in the Philly public schools with the amount of student debt I incurred to get my teaching degree.”
And his teacher salary would have been no better than what he made as a bike courier — not enough to keep up with his student loans. “I simply couldn’t afford to teach in the Philly public schools with the amount of student debt I incurred to get my teaching degree,” he says.
Student loan servicers were no help. “The system really failed me when it came to managing my loans,” says Brito. “I would call my student loan servicer and ask for help in figuring out how I could make my monthly payments. They told me I could just defer the loans, which I did, for years. I was never told that deferring my loans meant that my loan balance would keep growing. They never told me about other repayment options that would have helped me better manage my debt.”
The end result is a tremendous amount of stress over student debt, says Brito. Determined to advocate for a better system, Brito told his story at a press conference in Washington, D.C., as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) rolled out their legislation to forgive student debt.
Brito admits he got emotional as he shared his story so publicly. “I thought about my son,” he says. “I don’t like being treated differently or badly because I’m financially strained and my father was working-class and I’m brown. That’s going to be his life.”
That’s why Brito will continue to work with other advocates and elected officials to change the system, provide student debt forgiveness and make a college education more accessible for everyone.
Jorge Brito works for a nonprofit organization and lives in Philadelphia with his son and his wife, a former member of United Academics of Philadelphia, an AFT affiliate. He is advocating for the Student Loan Debt Relief Act, which would reduce student loan debt for 95 percent of borrowers.
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