To me, the American Dream means that you have the opportunity and the resources to live out the ideas that you have, to live how you want to live. Honestly, I think that my family and I would be living the American Dream. My mom—she’s going to get a job here one of these days, and I’m going to school and hopefully going to get into a college to get a decent job. Education is the key to a lot of things, and it is the key to ending the cycle of poverty. Poverty is a vicious cycle. Education is the key to getting into a good college, which is the key to getting a good job, which is the key to making money, to getting out of poverty. It is all about money, based on where you live and how much money is in that area, how much is going into that school, what family you’re born into, how much money they’re able to put into your education. I think that we might just break our family’s cycle of poverty. I think that we are living the American Dream.

Jadaci Henderson, 12th grade—Dumas, Arkansas (population: 4,706)

The term ‘the American Dream’ to me means me being able to feel safe on every corner of America. It means I am offered the same opportunities as anybody else —male, female, black, white, whatever. And, it means to me that I can do whatever I want as long as it’s lawful. I should be able to do whatever I feel like. Honestly, no. I don’t feel like I’m living the American Dream, especially not here, in Southeast Arkansas, being a black female with a big mouth. You’re looked at funny when you want to be something more than just a wife one day and you live in Dumas. Or you want to be something more than just a teacher. If you have dreams beyond what other people feel like you should, you can’t live the American Dream in a place like this.

Chris Mayes, 11th grade,—Swannanoa, North Carolina (population: 4,576)

This is how I used to think about the American Dream: graduate college after I graduate high school, move to L.A., get a job out there, have a nice house, have a wife and two kids. That’s what I thought was the American Dream for me. I’m gay. I used to just deny everything. Now, for me, I want to graduate college, it’s pretty much the same, but I want to go out to L.A. and become an actor, I want to get a house, get into a relationship, and then I want to travel. That would be my dream. Just to travel everywhere. Be like, “Oh, hey, I’m in Paris.” Two weeks later, “Oh, I’m in Japan.” Just never stop having fun and being me and that’s what I think my American Dream is. I’m about halfway there.

Perry Allen, 11th grade—Nicholasville, KY (population: 28,015)

I don’t know that the standard definition of the American Dream—of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself—[has] ever been entirely true, and I definitely don’t think it is now. The spirit of America as a democracy requires that a good citizen should be involved and be informed, but that also requires a certain level of security and success. The American Dream is to get to a place where you can be an active member of civil discourse and an active member of governance. I think there’s a variety of cultural and institutional obstacles to that kind of participation.