CHICAGO - With the Chicago Teachers Strike heading into its second week, an under-represented yet extremely vital group of people in the educational machine whose livelihood is also adversely affected by the work stoppage has begun to speak out.
Lost in the uproar over higher pay and benefits the teachers are seeking are the individuals who help give Chicago area students an education via “less traditional” means: the term paper salesmen.
“I have a habit to feed-er… kids to feed,” said a man who would only call himself James, a self-described Academic Advisory Expert. “First we had to contend with the internet with kids buying inferior products to ours with no vetting or customization. We still fight that battle, but with no teachers assigning homework and essays and term papers, we have absolutely no market. And we’re dying out here.”
Experts say that purchasing term papers and other homework is a $7 million-a-year industry, and that’s just in Chicago alone. Even in a bad economy, students still find ways to pay for a paper from a reliable source they can trust.
“I mean, I don’t want to abandon these kids. Some of these kids I’ve known since they started high school seven, eight years ago,” James said. “I have friends in Milwaukee say the market’s good down there, but I don’t really want to go down south. I like the Midwest, Milwaukee really ain’t for me.”
James said even if substitute teachers could be shipped in, that would help. “Just get the ball moving, get something going. I’m sitting on a bunch of Grapes of Wrath essays that are primo, but with nobody reading it and needing a paper on it, they just sit on my floor in my living room.”
James is monitoring the strike situation closely and said he really hopes it ends soon. “I’m running out of options to make money, man. I may eventually have to go back to doing medical transcription work. That’s the last thing I want to do.”
Photo: Flickr/Sterlic
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