4
PRIME TIME
Michele Aikens
THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL...
I remember the first day of school growing up in Woodlawn in the 1960s. Two weeks before school we started shopping. First there were the clothes – skirts and blouses and sweaters, new white gym shoes, and a pair of ‘school shoes’, penny loafers if Mom felt generous”. Robert Hall, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Three Sisters, Mom took us from store to store until we found the collection of clothes that showcased her girls as serious students with parents who cared how they looked. Dad sat in the car, wallet open, listening to the radio. After buying the clothes we started the school supply shopping. We got notebooks, new folders, rulers, scissors, crayons and paper and of course a “book satchel”. I didn’t usually get the satchel I wanted, but it was always a nice one. On the first day of school there was always a picture snapped of us with our new school clothes, freshly done hair and book satchel, right before the one block walk to James Madison Elementary School.
The first day of school in Chicago has a new kind of vocabulary today. Words like, safe passage and school on probation/school closures and performance rating, now need to be part of a parent’s vocabulary when they consider where their children will go on the first day of school.
Just out of curiosity I put my zip code in to the CPS System to find out what school I would attend if I was growing up in Woodlawn today. My elementary school, James Madison, is still there. It has been on probation for seven years. This is the same school where Mrs. McCants smacked everyone’s hand with a ruler except mine because they didn’t look up a word that was part of our homework. The word wasn’t even on the list to be looked up. That day I learned there is a price to be paid for ignorance. I remember my second grade teacher’s racist request to put the white student’s name at the top of the list because it would make her feel better, even though I had the best grades in class. I remember learning to play the clarinet and going to Hirsch for practice. Nobody got shot. I wasn’t abducted.
Yet I lived “in the hood.” All but two of my teachers were Black, and my education was such that when I moved to another school, I was double promoted. What happened? And how does anything stay on probation for seven years?
When I think of the first day of school as a child living in the “inner-city,” I smile. It is part of a collection of happy memories. I lived among people who looked mostly like me. I saw business owners (Mr. Jackson’s restaurant made the best fries ever), The Rodriguez’s had a corner store across the street, and there was a larger grocery store around the corner along with a beauty and barber shop, and a liquor/drug store. I saw people who owned businesses and my neighbors supported them. I lived in a community where education mattered. We need to stop acting like single motherhood is a new phenomenon. I know of young people who came out of that era and neighborhood who are doctors and teachers – sans a dad. Our schools ALWAYS had fewer resources than those in ‘better neighborhoods’, but we had teachers that made up for what we lacked in supplies, and parents who expected us to exceed even if they didn’t use the word. What happened?
Have we lowered our expectations for our children, our teachers and ourselves? As you prepare for the first day of school, are you consumed with thoughts of safety, lack and politics? Turn your face slightly and behold the student in front of you. The most important lessons they learn won’t come from teachers or school; those lessons are yours to teach.
You are loved.