Criterion A Podcasts

Adolescence is the most difficult time of life where you have to start leading your life on your own without your parents' help. It is also a time where mental and physical changes that happen can be unforgettable and can change your future. There are so many countries and so many different teens with different backgrounds, which makes every teen different from each other. And teens also have similarities since they are the same age. Most teens worry about their looks, fashion, make-up and relationships. But there was this one kid named Boris Lemeshev who doesn't care about all these stuff, piano is his only passion. While there was another girl named Maria D'Onofrio who is a typical teen: likes shopping, clothes and all that girl stuff. One person who really inspired me was this kid named Jason Monegro. He has a really difficult life, and he strives to survive and feed his family by working. Here is his speech:

"I Had to Work, Because if I Didn’t, There Wouldn’t Be Food on the Plate"



RIGHT now, life is confusing and a little stressful. This is the age that a lot of people consider you a young adult. That means a lot of responsibilities, a lot of depending on yourself and not on your parents.

Since my mom is divorced and unemployed, she has her hands full with my younger sister, who is 15, and my baby sister, who was born in 2004. I helped her out with the rent. It was around $900 a month. I would make $400 and change. I paid $300 for rent and $100 for groceries.

The job that I had was with my grandfather working after school and on weekends in a bike rental shop in Central Park. My grandfather needed help and he doesn’t trust people, so he’d rather have his family with him. Basically, I would repair bikes, make sure that they are returned, and give bike tours. For a time I liked it, but I wanted bigger and better things, so I stopped. I worked from when I was 15 until January of this year.

My mom had a lot of bills back then. I have two older brothers; they already grew up, and my three older sisters moved out and have their own families. At that time, it was just me, my mother and my two little sisters. All of my paycheck would be for food and rent.

I really didn’t care. I wasn’t very materialistic. I was the man of the house. I was raised in a Christian house and my mom has Christian rules and Christian morals. Material things, clothes and things like that, are the least we should worry about, because when we go to heaven, we’re not going to have any of those things, and we’re not going to worry about them.

Right now, my dad is in prison. I really don’t know why, but what they told me is that they found him with a big amount of drugs.

I looked up to him. Half of my morals I got from him. He was a hard-working man, sweet and kind, and he had a good heart. If anybody on the block needed food or money or anything, it didn’t matter if he had to pay bills the next week, he gave it to them.

He’s been locked up for the past four years in upstate New York. I don’t know where exactly. I visited him two years ago. That’s when I got the courage to be the man of the house, because no one else was present at the time.

I was an honor student until I got to high school. Unfortunately, I started hanging out with the wrong crew, and education-wise I started going downhill. I started cutting class. I was having all of these personal issues, family issues. School at the time wasn’t the last thing in my head, but it wasn’t as important as wrestling and work. Work at the time was a duty. I had to work, because if I didn’t, there wouldn’t be food on the plate. Wrestling is just my passion.

I’m into freestyle wrestling. It’s been my passion since I was little. I started when I was 8. I like the adrenaline. I love the attention and I love seeing the smiles. The sport at first seems brutal and the people violent and unprofessional, but when you train for it, you learn that it’s all about finesse and precision and that it’s a very serious sport. There’s also acting involved. They call me Vargas. I’m part of a tag-team called SPIC. It’s an acronym for Spanish Political International Cartel.

I want to be a professional wrestler. I make $40 an hour with SPIC, but it’s only one show a month and I still need another job. I have that dream to take my wrestling to an arena in Manhattan or somewhere big. My other goal is to get enough money to buy a center where anyone who’s interested could train for free, to give back to the community.

Recently, my aunt bought a house down in Kissimmee, Fla. My mom decided to move there because everything is cheaper down there and it’s more economical. I decided to go in April because it was better for me educationally and to help her out, because she needed a man of the house. I came back after a month. It’s a nice place, but it’s not my home.

I’m staying with my sister right now. She’s helping me out, but in a way I’m helping her out too. She’s 23 and she’s a single mother; she has a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. She works nights at the front desk of a hotel in Manhattan, so I baby-sit and she gives me like 20 or 40 bucks. Tomorrow she has to go work, so she’ll leave at 5 or 6 p.m. and I’ll pick up the kids from day care, take them home, feed them, bathe them, whatever.

I’m looking for a job. I’m really good with my hands, so I’m looking for a job in maintenance or something like that. I’m trying to go back to high school, but since I already left this year, I didn’t finish the year because I was officially discharged, so going back now would be a total waste of time. Either I take the G.E.D., which I really don’t want to do, or I go back to Florida and try and get my own place and finish school there.

I could make a novel out of my life. I don’t even know what I would call it, but my life has been crazy, let’s put it that way.

Brady, Emily. "I Had to Work, Because if I Didn’t, There Wouldn’t Be Food on the Plate." The New York Times. The New York Times, Web. 3 Nov 2009. .


This kid inspires me because i wonder how hard it must be to be the man of the house and working hard to feed his family.

In this unit, our final project is to make our own podcast. This unit is important to us because all teens have different views and opinions so it is a