Welcome to Social Problems - My Story of Self, Now and Us

Dear Students,

Welcome to SOCI.1150 Social Problems. This class will help you develop an introductory understanding of a range public social problems from a sociological point of view, gain skills to define and critically assess social problems and recommend alternative courses of action for policy makers, media, citizens and other stakeholders. In the process, student will build social responsibility for engaging in collective problem-solving practices.

My name is Thomas Piñeros Shields. My preferred pronouns are he, him and his. I am an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Sociology, UMASS Lowell.

Before I begin, I would like to read the following land acknowledgement that was developed by the UML Office of Multicultural Affairs:

We would like to acknowledge that the land we live, work, learn and commune on is the original homelands of the Pennacook communities with the Pawtucket Village and Wamesit Village. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory, and we honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land on which we gather. (See: https://www.uml.edu/student-services/Multicultural/About-Us/Land-Acknowledgement.aspx)

The incorporation of a land acknowledgment part of Social Problems is important because our analysis of the world builds upon historical forces that we need to reckon with.

My Story of Self

I grew up in a close extended family, with grandparents across the street and relatives around the block, in my working-class neighborhood on Long Island, NY. My father had entered the workforce directly from the Navy and my Mom was a registered nurse, so even though neither attended a four year-college, they drilled the idea of college into me from early age. They aspired to a better life, and when my father received a corporate promotion, we moved from our working-class neighborhood to a bigger lakeside house in Northern, NJ in an affluent, mostly white small town. Then, two years later, my father left his corporate job to become an independent real estate agent, working hard so that I could take yet another step on the ladder to success.

Upon graduating from high school, I became the first in my family to attend a four-year college, when I enrolled in Cornell University. This elite ivy league university felt magical in the way that Harry Potter felt at Hogwarts. Each day I crossed over waterfalls on my way to class or watched sunsets from a hilltop. I made friends, was active in my residence hall leadership and became varsity cheerleader. In and out of class, I was exposed to new ideas, especially something called self-directed experiential learning, inspired by the works of John Dewey, Paulo Freire and bell hooks, that put me in control of my own learning. I also engaged in my first community-based research projects, first with Southeast Asian Refugees in Ithaca, and then with substance abuse programs in Queens, NY.

Then, in the middle of my third year of college, my parents told me that they could no longer pay for my college. The real estate market had crashed and my father’s income took a hit. I felt shocked to think that I could not go back to school, and I began to understand some things about my position in the world. First, I came to understand how accumulated wealth, not just income, matters if you want to attain social mobility. And wealth takes time…generations even.

Second, I came to understand that for many first-generation students, there is a great deal that we don’t know about navigating the college system. My parents sought help, so they called one of my professors, who asked if what we had received in financial aid. My parents had never even applied for financial aid. We believed in the American middle-class myth that government help is only for the very poor, not middle-class families. So, during my second semester of my junior year I received a small grant, applied for my first of several college loans, and took several work study jobs. As a result, I was able to go back to college, but more importantly this experience (and others) shaped my understanding of myself in the world.

At that point, I made a choice. I could continue to believe that problems that I faced were the result of failures of me or my parents – or I could recognize that the costs of college were rising at historical rates, and that we faced structural condition that shaped my life and lives of millions of others. So I chose to fight. When I returned to campus that spring, I joined a classmate to co-found an organization to advocate for reduced college tuition rates. We called it “Cornell Undergraduate for a Better Education (CUBE).” We held a series of protest events, a petition and eventually a sit-in at my dean’s office..

So, what difference did it make? After all of our efforts, I don’t know if we made a difference and certainly, the costs of going to college have only gotten worse since I graduated in the early 1990’s. But I spent time with people who reminded me of what it meant to be alive, so that I can look back and know that I spent my life fighting for a better world. I participated in environmental movement, advancing this new initiative in our residence halls to “reduce, reuse and recycle.” My college activism also put in relationship with students of color who were advocating to address the disproportionate impact of rising tuition and reductions of financial aid on Black and Latino/a/x students. This led me to become an anti-racist diversity orientation counselor, and I made close friends and roommates from all around the world – including Jamaica, Ecuador, France, Greece, Guyana, India, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

These were my experiences of college, and after a very long journey, I eventually became a sociologist and experiential educator. In many ways, I have tried to support young people to find the power within them to change the worked, and to engage in both international and intercultural experiences to understand one another better. I have worked at an international service-learning program, led teams of New York City Black and Latinx young adults as part of community service project teams, helped build urban housing and create economic opportunities in East St. Louis, IL, and later conducted program evaluation for non-profits, foundations and government agencies at local, state, national and international levels. Along the way, I completed a Master’s degree at Tufts University and my joint-doctoral degree in Social Policy and Sociology at Brandeis University, while working full-time, and where I met my wife and our two sons. We now have a daughter and have built our life around the principles of social justice.

The Story of Us

So, you have now heard my story of how I came to be here in this classroom with you. While we all traveled here from different pathways, one thing that we all have in common is that we are together at a public university. You are all students at UMASS Lowell. And you have all enrolled in this class to discuss social problems.

My ultimate goal for this and every class that I teach is to build a community in the classroom. In this class, we are going to be discussing a lot of important social issues. You may not all agree on everything, but you have that in common. I’d like to ask you to recognize that everyone here, regardless of the road that you traveled to get here, has elected to share this classroom space, even if only as an online experience.

To create this community, we are entering into this shared space in good faith, and I ask you for two things. First, I ask you to be polite. The dictionary defines politeness as having or showing behavior that is respectful and considerate of other people. This can be a challenge in an online environment. We are being asked to respect others who we can’t always see and may not know beyond a name on the screen. Please see the syllabus for more about this, but for now, I just ask that you act in a way that accords everyone their due respect.

Second, I am asking you to take some risk and to be willing to be a little uncomfortable in the face of challenging content. By their nature, events that are public problems may be disturbing to some people. This is important to the learning process. If we were to only seek out content that we are 100% comfortable with, we would have to avoid the hard issues and would not learn. By being willing to be a little uncomfortable with new material or contrasting ideas, for a little while, you open the prospect of learning in what I intend to be a safe environment.

Can you help me to build a community in this classroom by being polite to one another while engaging at times in material that can be a little uncomfortable?

If not, then I think this might not be the class for you.

If yes, then let’s get started!

The Story of Now

Our first activity will be to complete this short survey that you can find on Blackboard. The survey asks five simple questions, including your name, where you hope to be in five years, why you enrolled in this course, what you consider to be the most important social problems today and if there are any other things that you think I should know about you. It should take only a couple of minutes to complete. I will be using the results to place you team project with your classmates for the team projects this semester. Please only share what you feel comfortable sharing that will help me to accommodate the course to you and your needs.

After you have completed this short survey, please read through the syllabus. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email me at Thomas_PinerosShields@uml.edu or through the Blackboard mail system. I will get back to you within a day.

Again, welcome to the course! I look forward to getting to know you and building this community together!

Best regards,

Thomas Piñeros Shields, Ph.D.

Associate Teaching Professor

Department of Sociology

UMASS Lowell