I was a CPS student from 2nd grade until graduating highschool. And due to the culture of Chicago, especially communities of color, a common question when someone says they’re from Chicago. Is “what highschool did you go to?”
I went from a school that is now closed (Goldblatt), to one (Leslie Lewis) that is 86% low income but that *now* has a school rating of 1. Not when I was there haha. To a hs (Lane Tech) that is selective enrollment.
So I’ve experienced a range of staff, resources, books, and funding.
I would be lying if I said Lane didn’t get more support (we’ll leave that broad) than those two other schools.
By the time Goldblatt was closed in the 50+ closures in 2013 I had started my bachelors degree. But it HURT.
The memories I had there, the families that lived in that neighborhood. The school was quite literally across the street from my home.
And no matter where my education takes me,,CPS will always have my attention.
Ending this short thread with some remembrances from @eveewing talk at DePaul this past year.
She talked about “institutional mourning”. And that mourning is what I’m seeing educators (that even I had that are still teaching!!) continue to face. This never ending cycle of grief and loss. And then hope.
She mentioned, we have to understand the histories of regular people who resisted... nothing we have ever come to gain or appreciate... has ever been won other than by the resistance and the collective.
And she quoted Sandra Cisneros which I find appropriate here as well “We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning."
I’m tired of students being placed last. Of the city adding fire extinguishers instead of getting our house up to code (literally and figuratively).
But hope is a discipline and some may even say a thing with feathers.
@threadreaderapp unroll
