Friday, August 12, 2005
School is Cool
Yesterday, in the Chatham neighbourhood on the South Side of Chicago, for one hour the most important thing in the whole world was that the fish hadn't arrived.
When Mrs. Georgetta Wraggs, fifth grade teacher at the Burnside Scholastic Academy, was nominated by one of her students' parents for Jones New York's In The Classroom program, she said that she wanted an aquarium for her kids if she won the "Back to School... Back to Style" contest (prize: complete makeover of the winning teacher's classroom by Trading Spaces interior designer Laurie Smith and the Home Depot). Mrs. Wraggs won, and the unveiling of room 303 was scheduled for 3pm. At 2.04pm, an empty fish tank sat in its spot on the newly-built bookshelf.
Burnside is a school like any other on the South Side. When you pull up in the morning in a nice-looking bigger car, next to the playground across the street, the kids playing Double Dodge with a jump rope start and make as if to run, yelling that you're the police. There's a metal detector as you walk in and inspirational posters and murals of Dr. Martin Luther King and Michael Jordan. There's very little budget in the summertime, so the assistant principal's niece is answering the phones.
You walk down hallways of classrooms painted standard issue pale blue, metal racks of yellowing books and a globe which has a country called the USSR on it. Then you get to room 303 and Team Home Depot has painted it squash yellow, installed new blinds, put up cheery stripy drapery, built new bookshelves, hung up a new map (Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, etc.), varnished the wooden floor and amongst other things, filled a bowl full of apples for Mrs. Wraggs. Laurie Smith, home makeover reality TV star, flutters about, straightening cushions 5.6 degrees counter-clockwise and being interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Citizen-News, ABC and CBS as she waltzes around the room.
At 2.37pm, the fish arrived! Oh, how everyone broke into smiles again as bags of goldfish and neon tetras passed through several hands waiting to unravel the rubber band on top and pour them into the tank. The fishes blinked as they darted about in their new home. Because, you know, they were gonna be on TV.
At 3pm, Mrs. Wraggs was led into her new classroom and she stood speechless at the door, her hand grasping Laurie's, her mouth open and her eyes full of tears. The press snapped away, the reporters had their pens above notebooks waiting for Mrs. Wraggs to say something good. She said, "I'm speechless," and tried to swallow back her tears. Then she said, "Thank you... the kids are going to have a great year. I want to say more, but I can't... so thank you, thank you everyone." And she walked around the room, and fingered all the new, happy school furniture and supplies and her family and friends and school officials hugged her. One school official in a white straw hat and purple suit poked the photographer form the Sun-Times and made him promise to take a good picture for the paper.
So, Jones New York got its media coverage, Mrs. Wraggs got a brand new wardrobe and a new classroom, and I got free pizza, bagels and chocolate chip cookies for working this event. I was happy, but I guess pizza, bagels and chocolate chip cookies have got nothing on a bunch of fifth-graders who can't wait to come back to school.
When Mrs. Georgetta Wraggs, fifth grade teacher at the Burnside Scholastic Academy, was nominated by one of her students' parents for Jones New York's In The Classroom program, she said that she wanted an aquarium for her kids if she won the "Back to School... Back to Style" contest (prize: complete makeover of the winning teacher's classroom by Trading Spaces interior designer Laurie Smith and the Home Depot). Mrs. Wraggs won, and the unveiling of room 303 was scheduled for 3pm. At 2.04pm, an empty fish tank sat in its spot on the newly-built bookshelf.
Burnside is a school like any other on the South Side. When you pull up in the morning in a nice-looking bigger car, next to the playground across the street, the kids playing Double Dodge with a jump rope start and make as if to run, yelling that you're the police. There's a metal detector as you walk in and inspirational posters and murals of Dr. Martin Luther King and Michael Jordan. There's very little budget in the summertime, so the assistant principal's niece is answering the phones.
You walk down hallways of classrooms painted standard issue pale blue, metal racks of yellowing books and a globe which has a country called the USSR on it. Then you get to room 303 and Team Home Depot has painted it squash yellow, installed new blinds, put up cheery stripy drapery, built new bookshelves, hung up a new map (Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, etc.), varnished the wooden floor and amongst other things, filled a bowl full of apples for Mrs. Wraggs. Laurie Smith, home makeover reality TV star, flutters about, straightening cushions 5.6 degrees counter-clockwise and being interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Citizen-News, ABC and CBS as she waltzes around the room.
At 2.37pm, the fish arrived! Oh, how everyone broke into smiles again as bags of goldfish and neon tetras passed through several hands waiting to unravel the rubber band on top and pour them into the tank. The fishes blinked as they darted about in their new home. Because, you know, they were gonna be on TV.
At 3pm, Mrs. Wraggs was led into her new classroom and she stood speechless at the door, her hand grasping Laurie's, her mouth open and her eyes full of tears. The press snapped away, the reporters had their pens above notebooks waiting for Mrs. Wraggs to say something good. She said, "I'm speechless," and tried to swallow back her tears. Then she said, "Thank you... the kids are going to have a great year. I want to say more, but I can't... so thank you, thank you everyone." And she walked around the room, and fingered all the new, happy school furniture and supplies and her family and friends and school officials hugged her. One school official in a white straw hat and purple suit poked the photographer form the Sun-Times and made him promise to take a good picture for the paper.
So, Jones New York got its media coverage, Mrs. Wraggs got a brand new wardrobe and a new classroom, and I got free pizza, bagels and chocolate chip cookies for working this event. I was happy, but I guess pizza, bagels and chocolate chip cookies have got nothing on a bunch of fifth-graders who can't wait to come back to school.
Los Angeles to Chicago in a 1990 Red Volkswagen Jetta, Manual Transmission
My family loves road trips and ever since my brother and I were old enough to peer out the windows of a moving automobile, the four of us have done everything from the Pacific Coast Highway, the Andaman coast in Thailand and Singapore to Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. We've done trips where the air-conditioning broke down in the middle of hot humidity two hours into a week-long drive (Cherating, Malaysia), where we were attempted to rev up a steep slope and the gear gave up on us (Koh Samui, Thailand) and where we got a flat in the middle of winter with no other car or house in sight (near Marysville, Maryland). So when you think about it, no amount of family strife under the car roof can really match all the literal road blocks we found ourselves stumbling into.
Sometimes, it's just my mom and me, and on the few cross-country drives we've taken together (Route 66, the Great Mississippi River Road), it feels exactly like Thelma and Louise, except with a happy ending. In 1999, after spending a summer in Los Angeles, my mom flew out so we could drive the legendary Route 66 in the wrong direction back to Chicago. Our wheels were a 1990 red Volkswagen Jetta -- everything was manual with that car, my first car, from the transmission to the sun-roof to the doors and the CD player that sometimes had to be nudged to play. On the first two days, we fought about everything and anything a mother and daughter could -- how I was planning to prioritize my plans for the future entering the last year of college, me feeling too grown-up to listen to anything my mom said, my mom finding it harder and harder to let go of her children that she loved so much. It was Elvis's death anniversary and the oldies channel played his music all day, but he didn't have a chance between our raised voices and tears.
Towards the end of the second day, driving towards the Arizona/New Mexico border, all of a sudden the skies darkened. Because out west, there's nothing but you, the two-lane blacktop, the plains and the mountains in the fair horizon, every change in scenery seems a little more dramatic than usual -- similar to what we've been experiencing in the car. It began pouring and the wind pommelled through like a Hoover vacuum tunnel. We had to pull to the side -- there was no way we could have made it through without ending up as a tumbleweed drifting across the road. We sat in silence as the storm blew through -- awed by nature, realizing that there was a far bigger force than our hard-headedness.
As soon as the storm ended, the biggest rainbow we had ever seen stretched across the entire sky -- it was the Grand Canyon of rainbows. It was majestic, magical and I think that if it wanted to, it would have gone all the way to New York City. My mom broke the silence first when she told me to take a picture of it for my dad and brother.
We had other fights on the rest of the trip, of course, but none that I remember in any detail. The 10 minutes or so that I sat in the car, next to one of my oldest and best friends in the world, staring at the biggest rainbow I had ever seen in my life, I remember every minute of. We both still do.
Sometimes, it's just my mom and me, and on the few cross-country drives we've taken together (Route 66, the Great Mississippi River Road), it feels exactly like Thelma and Louise, except with a happy ending. In 1999, after spending a summer in Los Angeles, my mom flew out so we could drive the legendary Route 66 in the wrong direction back to Chicago. Our wheels were a 1990 red Volkswagen Jetta -- everything was manual with that car, my first car, from the transmission to the sun-roof to the doors and the CD player that sometimes had to be nudged to play. On the first two days, we fought about everything and anything a mother and daughter could -- how I was planning to prioritize my plans for the future entering the last year of college, me feeling too grown-up to listen to anything my mom said, my mom finding it harder and harder to let go of her children that she loved so much. It was Elvis's death anniversary and the oldies channel played his music all day, but he didn't have a chance between our raised voices and tears.
Towards the end of the second day, driving towards the Arizona/New Mexico border, all of a sudden the skies darkened. Because out west, there's nothing but you, the two-lane blacktop, the plains and the mountains in the fair horizon, every change in scenery seems a little more dramatic than usual -- similar to what we've been experiencing in the car. It began pouring and the wind pommelled through like a Hoover vacuum tunnel. We had to pull to the side -- there was no way we could have made it through without ending up as a tumbleweed drifting across the road. We sat in silence as the storm blew through -- awed by nature, realizing that there was a far bigger force than our hard-headedness.
As soon as the storm ended, the biggest rainbow we had ever seen stretched across the entire sky -- it was the Grand Canyon of rainbows. It was majestic, magical and I think that if it wanted to, it would have gone all the way to New York City. My mom broke the silence first when she told me to take a picture of it for my dad and brother.
We had other fights on the rest of the trip, of course, but none that I remember in any detail. The 10 minutes or so that I sat in the car, next to one of my oldest and best friends in the world, staring at the biggest rainbow I had ever seen in my life, I remember every minute of. We both still do.
