Editorial

Appreciating Teachers

This week is National Teacher Appreciation week, and Evanston will celebrate teachers on Friday with ceremonies at the Levy Senior Center.

Grown-ups will speak on the value of teaching and the importance of teachers, but the students who read their own essays about their most inspiring teachers will steal the show.

Even very young children are savvy about what makes a good teacher. The candy, the pizza parties and the extra time to play are perks in some classrooms, but year after year students write that they appreciate the teachers who keep presenting a lesson until the whole class understands it, who encourage or push them to the next level, who do not yell at them when they make mistakes and who treat all members of the class fairly.

Teachers have a lot of competition for students’ attention: family problems, peer pressure, electronic playthings and extra-curricular activities, to name a few.

We entrust our most precious asset, our children, to them for six hours a day for at least 13 years.

You can thank a teacher with flowers or candy or a lunch from the PTA. But you can support a teacher by getting involved on the ground floor in your child’s education:

Provide a quiet place for your student to do homework and make sure assignments are completed and turned in on time;

Visit the school a few times a year;

Volunteer your time at a school function.

Education is a life-long process and we salute teachers, who have dedicated their lives to lighting up the minds of our children.

Valuing Public Servants

Although there are only 52 weeks in a year, there are a lot more Weeks, and this week is also National Public Service Week, the week to salute our public servants.

As the human infrastructure of our community, most of them put in long, careful hours to ensure that the City runs smoothly, school policies are reasonable, the mail is delivered on time, and laws are obeyed.

In many cases, they are the face of the city or the school district, and when we do not like what we hear or see, they are the ones we find easiest to vilify.

The relationship between citizens and public servants is a dynamic one, like the relationship among families, students and teachers.

The give-and-take is vital but it must be respectful. When the messenger gets in the way of the message – or becomes the message – it is easy to lose sight of the issue.

The Evanston community is known for its passionate activism, and we would not have it otherwise.

Public servants listen to our complaints, even when we are complaining about them; they protect our public demonstrations and offer us practical guidelines in public policy.

This week we can acknowledge the public servants who facilitate our exercise of free speech. Next week we can return to complaining about parking tickets.

Trust the Process

By Charles Wilkinson

The phrase has become a mantra for me. "Trust the process," I tell myself when life is not going my way.

"Trust the process," I have advised others when their pain is too intense to let them see or feel anything else.

"Trust the process," I say, even when I feel stuck, going nowhere, seeing nothing ahead but more of the same.

"Trust the process," I say, even and especially in the good times.

But what am I saying?

It all depends on what is going on both outside and inside my self.

Sometimes, admittedly, I am looking for an excuse to just let things be or, at the other end of the continuum, I am trying to inject meaning into some of life’s events that simply do not make sense – at least to my little mind.

For example, the war in Iraq and the current tensions about Iran. I dream of a world at peace within itself and with all its peoples, in which the only necessary wars are fought with words, not weapons. I dream of a world in which differences among all nations are recognized and respected; in which cultures are known by their histories, with their struggles for growth supported by the good will, words and resources of the community and family of nations; in which the eyes of everyone are color-blind to an other’s skin but wide open to the rainbows of opportunities in others’ souls.

The poet in me – for which I need not apologize – bemoans the abuses in our world’s family and the weaponed wars waged in the name of peace as others in the past have been waged in the name of God. But why does it seem to me that "peace" and "God" are cover words for agendas beyond my comprehension?

Yet I hear myself saying, praying, "Trust the process," believing with Teilhard de Chardin that all of creation is evolving toward what he calls the Omega point, which he defines as complete and ultimate oneness with the Creator. What little I know of the Big Bang helps in that the universe is still expanding at its edges.

More personally and far less dramatically I struggle to trust my own process and take comfort in believing that the journey is at least just as important as the destination. Being on the short end of time I think often and long about my own Omega point. But I find myself reminding me that I need the feeling of expansiveness in my being and becoming. It is precisely there where my mantra finds its meaning.

Whether personal or universal the process has a past and, prayerfully, a future. Trusting it belongs to the moment that gets us from here to there.

Love You, Regardless!

By Peggy Tarr

I stood waiting to be picked up at the airport when an older woman and a young woman pulled up to the curb. The older woman reached into the trunk, pulled out a piece of luggage and placed it on the curb. She then stepped up to the younger woman and tried to give her a hug.

The younger woman arched back, whining, "Maaaom! Don’t! You’ll mess up my makeup." The mother let go of her daughter, who walked toward the terminal entrance. The mother looked at me with a somewhat embarrassed expression on her face.

I pursed my lips, rolled my eyes up and around and shook my head from side to side in one of those compassionate girl-don’t-mind-her-gestures. The woman smiled and waved to me, closed the trunk of her car, got in and drove away. We both knew she loved her daughter regardless.

I may have told this story before, but if I did, maybe it’ll have a different spin this time. When one of my daughters was about 5 years old, one of her visiting uncles said something to her that irritated her. I learned later, after her uncle had returned home, that she had called him an "old ugly!" She was told to write her uncle a letter of apology.

When she said she had finished writing it, I asked to look at it. The expression on her face told me she had not done the right thing. Her letter said, "My mom said I have to tell you I’m sorry for calling you an old ugly. I’m sorry, you old ugly!" It was all I could do to keep a straight face while I reprimanded her and told her she had to rewrite the letter. As soon as I got out of the room, I laughed softly. I knew I loved her, regardless.

Most of us have our little (or not so little) ways of rebelling. One of my daughters, as a teenager, rebelled by staying out beyond her curfew. The curfew violation could be as little as five minutes, but it made me stew. So, let the punishment (pardon me, I mean behavior modification) begin. "You’re grounded!" I’ve never figured out who suffers more when an offspring is grounded – the offspring or the parent. But even during my stewing (and fearing), I knew I loved her, regardless.

Mother’s Day is May 14, and even though it’s a day set aside to show one’s love (respect) for one’s mother, it’s also a day for mothers to appreciate those people who gave them the privilege of being mothers – children.

"Your children are not your children. they are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself."- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1921; Lebanese mystic, poet, and artist; in the U.S. after 1910)

"Treat the world well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was willed to you by your children." (Kenyan Proverb)

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL OF US!!

Guest Essay

A Diversity of Choices for Schools

I have been reflecting on our recent debates about the African-Centered Curriculum (ACC) and the Two-Way Immersion program (TWI), and trying to learn some lessons from them. The most important one I have learned is that, despite what I may have imagined, there really is no consensus - or even majority view - in our community about what we want our schools to look like.

Of course we all want our schools to be high in academic quality, but from there our paths diverge. Some people want neighborhood schools, some people want language academies, some people want African-centered schools, some want schools that are diverse or integrated, and so on. Realizing this has caused me to wonder if we shouldn’t make trying to accommodate these various preferences the focus of the district-wide long-range planning process that I hope we will begin very shortly.
Perhaps, in this new vision for our school system, we could combine a reduced number of attendance-area schools – with larger attendance areas, of course – with
1) one or more language academies;
2) one or more African-centered schools;
3) one or more schools with a "diversity" or "integration" theme, for those of us who still value this;
4) one or more arts schools;
5) one or more K-8 schools;
And so on.
This would, of course, be a massive undertaking, requiring (1) redistricting, and (2) a significant amount of new expenditures, especially for transportation. In redistricting, I would hope that we would learn from recent national research and draw the lines so as to minimize the concentration of low-income students in particular schools. As for the increased expenditures, a referendum might well be required to raise adequate revenues, but I think a referendum would be appropriate anyway, before making such a massive change.
I offer this simply as a starting point for discussion. The key thing, for me at least, is that each of us has to give up the notion that we can have an entire school system that perfectly reflects our values and preferences. It is apparent that we cannot. But maybe we can each have at least one school within the system that does.

Guest Essay

Race, Curriculum, and Academic Performance

I have followed very closely the much- debated proposal for an African- American/African curriculum for students in School District 65. Like many urban school systems, Evanston has long faced the challenge of a fairly wide gap in the performance of black (particularly some poor black students), increasingly some poor Latino students, and the rest of the white, non-immigrant population.

A few qualifications are in order here. Some poor black and poor Latino students do just fine in school. Indeed, I have written three books about the academic performance of poor black and poor Latino students, all based upon data collected in Evanston, that confirm this. Those students always get lost in the discussion about all of those who are not doing well in the classroom. This must change.

Last year I was asked to discuss this research with the District 65 Board and later to submit a proposal based upon my work to attempt to help some poor black and poor Latino parents in Evanston to help their children to perform better in school. I was happy to do so. However, the Board elected not to move forward.

That is fine. What is not so fine is that the current school-based effort, while well intended, has little chance of being successful. Sure, it may help some whites in Evanston to feel like something is finally being done, but this "something" is the wrong thing. There is almost no research that suggests that this effort can make any significant difference for poor black students. Indeed, the literature indicates that school-based efforts to improve education make a difference (assuming that teachers and administrators are motivated, trained and doing their jobs) only when class sizes are reduced to 15-17 and in providing quality pre-school education is provided.

While I applaud Dr. Murphy for trying to be pro-active, this is the wrong way to do it. Of course self-esteem is critical in the classroom, and things that might raise self-esteem may make some difference. However, parents having high expectations, teaching discipline and responsibility, maintaining a quiet, orderly home environment, and helping with homework are also critical; and the proposal has nothing to do with any of this.

What’s more, given that the students involved will be self-selected – that is, chosen by parents who think that the current curriculum does not help their children and are prepared to do that which will bring about a difference in performance, (and they are, by definition different from others), if there is a difference in performance it may well be due to this difference and not to the curriculum. It is very hard to deal with this in evaluation research.

Evanstonians care a great deal about their image as racial liberals. I suspect that this proposal allows some blacks to feel that something that they want is being done and some whites to feel that they are confronting a problem (without their children being affected, I might add). Most can feel good. There is just very little to suggest that the children will benefit.

Vouchers have not made much difference (and when they have, self-selection is generally at work); charter schools (where self-selection is always an issue) have made little difference. I attended a historically black university and came out feeling like I could conquer the world. But I attended an overwhelmingly white high school and came out feeling the same way. My mother made sure of this.

I understand that the District has approved an effort to increase the involvement of black parents in something just what they are to be involved in is not quite clear to me). Parental involvement in educational activities is nice, but it is not the same as having parents learn and commit to doing very specific things in the home that have been shown to improve the academic performance of poor non-white youngsters.

Finally, the April 19 issue by Lloyd and Terry Shepard refers several times to "The Black Community." There is no such thing as "The Black Community." There are in Evanston, as there are in most places in which black people live, a number of black communities. There are in Evanston poor black folks, wealthy black folks, black folks who send their children to private or parochial schools, black folks who care a great deal about the education of their children, and black folks who seem to care very little. Lumping them all together is not only inaccurate but downplays their diversity.

Perhaps more important, however, is that this tendency to lump all blacks together makes solutions to problems faced by some blacks very difficult to come by, because that which works for some may well not work for all. Not only is the population of Evanston diverse, but so is the black population of Evanston, and this diversity needs to be considered when policy solutions that involve that population are considered.

That same guest essay indicates that a curriculum has "failed" black children. Not true. Both society and parents have failed and continue to fail some black children. For the most part blacks socialized in America have been exposed to very similar curricula. Yet, some have done very well educationally and in life, while many others have not. If the curriculum is the problem, then all blacks would do poorly, since for the most part we have been exposed to much the same in terms of curriculum.

Doing something to deal with the failure of some poor black students in school is very important. It is, however, critical to do that which makes the most sense. Doing something for show or for political/ideological gain makes little sense.

Dr. Sampson is a former Distrcit 65 School Board member.

Letters

Favors African-Centered Curriculum at D65
Editor:

By way of background, I have some familiarity with the education of black children, and with "integrated" education. My kids attended Oakton School, with the highest percentage of black children among the District’s schools, and the highest percentage of children from low-income families (the two circumstances more than coincidence).

I’ve done a little homework over the years, and "integration" as practiced by suburbs such as Evanston is not really integration; it’s desegregation, "by the numbers." Real integration in the District would have kids of multiple races and cultures achieving at similar levels.

And this is not just the Evanston experience. Take a look at the Minority Student Achievement Network, founded by Dr. Allan Alson, and of which ETHS and the Evanston elementary/middle school district (District 65) are members, as are a number of otherwise wealthy, "integrated" suburban school districts across the country. Assuredly, none of them has figured out yet how to successfully and consistently promote high levels of academic achievement among their black students.

All of these districts have been desegregated for many years. All of them spend lots of money to educate the children in their districts. District 65 spends over $10,000 per child per year; ETHS spends over $17,000 per child per year. And while District 65 has shown some success in improving black students’ achievement in math, reading achievement remains dishearteningly low.

Its detractors claim that an Afro-centric curriculum would cause separation of the races (self-selected, with which I agree), and that separation would reinstate a "crippling failure." The argument cleverly, and sadly, ignores the point. The crippling failure is our failure to educate minority students from low-income families.

The fact of the matter is, what we’ve been doing, and are doing, in public education has egregiously failed minority students from low- income families, and the families themselves. To continue with curriculum and instruction that isn’t working is folly and condemns further generations of minority students to second-class citizenship.

District 65 decided to tackle the underachievement of native Spanish-speaking students several years ago with a two-way immersion (TWI) curriculum. It was a risky leap at the time. But the School Board, administration and community knew that, without the Boards taking significant risks, native Spanish-speaking students would continue down the path of academic underachievement.

Five years later, the signs of success appear hopeful - all because the community was willing to take a big risk to promote academic achievement. Yet the majority of the current District 65 Board has demonstrated, individually and collectively, a complete lack of leadership and abdication of their responsibility. The Board commissioned a committee, which did its research and made its recommendations in good faith.

The committee represented fairly the interest groups in the District and the community. Yet the Board leadership had the audacity and arrogance to endeavor to completely discard the committee’s recommendations, and put up for discussion and vote a model which had not been vetted by either the superintendent or the committee.

What we need, in addition to courageous leadership, is a systemic solution to the underachievement of black children. Even if it is not extensive enough, the best solution at this time is the committee’s Plan A – starting with three grades each of Afrocentric curriculum at two schools.

Tinkering at the margins, which is what we as a society have done with the education of minority students from low income families for too many years, is unacceptable. We need to build capacity among these students.

There will be time for integrated education – true integration, not desegregation – in the Evanston middle schools and ETHS. Until then, the risk of separation caused by self-selection to an Afrocentric curriculum, with the potential reward of significantly improved academic achievement for Black children, is well worth the risk.

--Bob Eder,
former District 65 Board member

Kudos to NU for Buying Renewable Energy Certificates
Editor:

The local environmental movement got a tremendous boost from the announcement a week ago that Northwestern University has purchased Renewable Energy Certificates covering 20 percent of its electricity needs for the next four years. This purchase covers 40,000 megawatt hours per year, which is the biggest such commitment we know of in Evanston by far.

Smaller institutions are already on board. One, the Unitarian Church of Evanston, has purchased similar certificates covering its annual electricity consumption of 83,000 kilowatt hours, from Illinois Interfaith Power and Light, the energy stewardship program of Faith in Place. Illinois Interfaith’s program is also available to individual households and is being advocated among religious institutions in the Chicago area.

We hope that Northwestern’s enlightened step in support of renewable energy will inspire others to follow suit. Global warming is truly a global problem, but local individuals and institutions can play a constructive part in reducing the greenhouse gases responsible. We hope in fact that Evanston will join over 200 other U.S. cities by adopting the Kyoto protocols, which require its signatories to reduce greenhouse gases to reach specific targets in a specific time frame.
-- Alex Sproul, Energy Group, Unitarian Church of Evanston, Network for Evanston’s Future

Prisoner Donates to Soup Kitchen
Editor:

Please accept this $5 donation for the Soup at Six program. I read an article concerning the program, that it was falling short of funds. I am a prisoner in the Illinois Department of Corrections and think the Soup at Six program in Evanston is a great program and ministry by Hemenway United Methodist Church.

I wish more churches were involved in services like this one, and more importantly, I wish the United Methodist Church had programs to help prisoners re-enter society on a positive note, with support services to reduce the 60 percent recidivism rate.
--Name withheld

Quid pro Quo
Editor

One must give a little to get a little. Allow the illegals to become legal when they respect us enough to prove that they are proficient in the English language and they fill out the application for legal status in English. Then we can stop this expensive nonsense of printing legal documents, including drivers licenses and ballots, in foreign languages.
--Rick Steinberg

Oakton School Murals to Be Repaired
Editor:

I thought you might like to know that after almost three years of waiting, the check has finally been delivered to Superintendent Murphy to fix the decaying murals in the Oakton School auditorium.

I don’t know if you have seen the Oakton murals lately, but a huge chunk of them fell off the wall which now has a 6 ft. by 6 ft. piece of wallboard where canvas once was. This money will help restore these works of art and make the auditorium safe (and beautiful) for the children again.
--Nancy Flannery

Change in School Calendar
Dear Editor:

With little warning, the District 65Board has adopted a school calendar that will increase the number of early dismissal days, new this year, from 3 to 5.

Shame on our Board and our District administration, caught up in a myriad of other controversies of their own making, for overlooking the basics. More days in school, and more hours in the school day should make for better students, and even better test scores if you measure success that way. But rather than appreciate that fact, our Board hastaken advantage of the state laws that set the minimum requirements for days and hours in school.Just because we can legally have early dismissal days, does not mean that we should.

The school year in ourstate is among theshortest in the country (according to a May 25, 2000 Evanston Review editorial, "only 11 of the 44 states that have daily requirements schedule fewer days than Illinois' 176. Most require 180 or more."), and the hours American children spend in school looks even worse when compared to many European and Asian countries. This year, District 65 had 3 early dismissal days, and another "in-service" day, for a total of 4 school improvement days; 4 institute days (apparently receiving permission to count one as a parent teacher conference day); additional half day in-service and parent teacher conference days; and we even count the one hour last day of school as a full day (as allowed by state law). This fiddling with the calendar does not serve our students.

Others have raised equally significant concerns about the burden these ill-timed early dismissal days poses for working parents, especially those who rely on day care outside the home. Our Board and administration did nothing to address this very practical problem posed by their decision.

I appreciate the need for teacher training and the fact thatteacher contracts drive some of these calendar issues, but no one has offered an explanation for why this training cannot take place outside the school daywithout eroding the time my children spend in the classroom and burdening working parents.

The early dismissal days decision reflects the arrogence of an administration and sadly, a school board, unwilling to include parents in decision-making affecting their children. I know of only one parent on the "calendar committee", a committee that is not identified anywhere on the District website, and she was shocked to learn that the Board adopted this flawed calendar.
- Gretchen Livingston

District 65 Turning Back The Clock
Editor:

After not more than a fifteen-minute conversation at its April
24th meeting, the District 65 Board of Education voted
unanimously to chop more time off the school calendar next year
by increasing the number of early dismissal days. So now our
students, many of whom are failing academically, are going to
get even less instructional time.

District 65 parents should be outraged. Not only are our
children getting the short end of the stick but we are the ones
who have to pick up the tab. While the school board had
considered providing free childcare on these days, they decided
the cost was prohibitive based on an assumption by school
administrators that ?everyone would use it.? As far as I know,
no one even bothered to do a survey to find out.

To add further fuel to the fire, one school board member
suggested that we should help each other out by taking care of
each other?s kids on these days. When I heard this, I couldn?t
help but wonder if we are in some kind of time warp?

The majority of parents ? yes, even here in Evanston ? work
outside the home and some hold down two or three jobs to make
ends meet. Certainly, there are those like myself who are
fortunate to be available during the day and, of course, we are
always happy to help out a fellow parent who doesn?t have this
flexibility.

But, that?s not the point. We should be creating a school
calendar that recognizes the realities that today?s families
face. The more half days and early dismissals we have, the
more stress it places on parents who have to figure out how to
get time off from work or how to stretch the family budget to
pay for child care.

If we want parents to be true partners in making sure our
children succeed in school, then it is our responsibility to
take their needs and concerns into account when making calendar
and scheduling decisions.
- Rhonda Present
Founder & Director
ParentsWork

Open letter to the board of education

The new Oakton Language Literacy and Culture Center is an experiment in many ways. To my knowledge, putting three programs under one roof has not been done before in Evanston. This experiment extends beyond the three ACC classrooms to the fabric of the entire school.

As an experiment, it is impossible to predict the results. This creates a risk that not all families will want to take. It is wrong for district to force families to accept this risk or leave the district entirely.

Toward the end of the board meeting at which ACC was voted on, the board and administration realized that they had created a school that some families might not want to attend and suggested a ban on transfers out of Oakton, either to the magnet schools or other neighborhood schools.

I strongly suggest that the board and administration reconsider the ban on transfers for Oakton students. I am not alone in this -- I have spoken with seven families, all of first and second grade general education students, who want to transfer out. If they are not allowed to go to other schools, many of them will go to private schools. These are the type of families, with high achieving students, that I would think the district would want to keep.

The "new” Oakton is essentially a laboratory school. However, unlike Evanston’s school with "lab” its name, attendance there is not a choice for everyone. At Oakton, choice exists only for TWI and ACC, not for gen ed. Yet gen ed has been deeply affected by TWI and will be further affected by the introduction of a third program.

Do the right thing and let families who do not want to their children to be subjects in an educational experiment attend other district schools. I am sure there are families elsewhere in the district who are eager to be part of this experimental program – allow them in to Oakton’s gen ed classrooms to take the spaces of students who leave.
- Rachel Sobel

"BLAST" at NU can teach D65

School officials could learn a lot from Northwestern’s "BLAST.” It is a yearly music show featuring young people from mixed ethnic backgrounds and countries, who come together to choreograph and perform dances --ball-room, swing, and such. They are a truly diverse family of dancers, as they call themselves, and the love of dancing is the magnet that brings them all together even long after they are gone from the group.

In their own words, "Our dancers hail from 5 continents and speak 19 languages. Among us are musicians, bioengineers, actors, lawyers, figure skaters, economists, and a contortionist to name a few. We are undergraduates, graduates, and professionals long out of college. We have almost nothing in common with each other and would likely never have crossed paths if not for this organization. Yet we are one of the most tightly-knit families in the Northwestern University campus.”

Our districts would LOVE to be able to boast such achievement after 4-decades of the multi-million-dollar "desegregation boondoggle!!” What do we see instead? We see students who after 40 years of being forced together through 60/40 formulas and the pain of being bused to the other end of town, they reach ETHS and instantly re-segregate by ethnic group at classrooms and cafeteria tables. Quite the opposite of BLAST!

School officials refuse to learn from life’s wisdom. This is why they should go to BLAST next year. Life shows that people who have "almost nothing in common” --as in BLAST-- will come together if there is something that they share, a magnet that attracts them to each other. For the BLAST group it is dancing. For our kids in school are academic interests and similar levels of education. When we see kids of different colors eating at different tables at the cafeterias, it is not because they see their physical differences and shy away from each other. It is because they see their academic differences and know that they have nothing to say to each other. Board members and other officials should sit at these tables and listen to the chatter. It is revealing.

Because, the most fundamental differences in people are manifested by our body language, and what comes out of our mouths. What we say shows what we are and what we like. And what we are and like is regulated by what we learn. Which is completely regulated by our ability to read. Even more so than our ability to do math. And yes, our body language is in part regulated by what we know, which is fed by what we read. Yet kids go from grade to grade in our schools not being able to read, let alone proficiently, therefore unable to learn. And instead of hammering reading and nothing else until the proper level is reached, kids are allowed to go off on "enrichment” pursuits, so they may become "productive members of our diverse society” albeit not being able to read, or learn, therefore minimizing their "production.”

Which is why they sit on separate tables at lunch, because they go to separate classrooms to study separate curricula, because they could never begin to understand the books used in the "other” classrooms. And this is why many become so humiliated with the state of their abilities very early in life that they'll resent society for ever. Or do school officials believe that kids who attend worthless, "easy” classes are dull by the same level? Don't school officials know that these children are smart, and very early compare themselves to others who already know so much more than they do, and that there is no catching up, forever nursing feelings of unfairness and resentment, and violence? Tip: check how the Chicago Public Schools use BLAST to help their students!
-Margarita Matlis

Wants Postal Clerk Reinstated

I was shocked, and I must say, outraged by the firing of Michael Gibson, the Central Street Post Office postal clerk. I have been a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 32 years, but it is my part-time rare book business that brings me to the Evanston Post Office, sometimes 3 or 4 times per week. Since I moved to my current house in Northeast Evanston, I have been going to the Central Street branch of the Post Office regularly.

I have always found Michael to be pleasant and professional, with a tremendous and infectious sense of humor and joy. He obviously loves what he does, and he loves the people he serves. He brings a welcome relief from the pressures of everyday life, the life that brings us in daily contact with many people who are rude, who don’t care about anybody or anything but themselves, and who just make life unpleasant. Michael is the epitome of the ?friendly face? that we all need to see in our lives. He even makes the inevitable long lines at the post office tolerable.

I hope that he will be reinstated immediately.
-David Sanders

In Praise of YJC
Dear Editor,

I am writing to tell you about how much the Youth Job Center of Evanston helped me. The first permanent job I got was at Trio restaurant in Evanston. I was on payroll and was happy I had something steady. This restaurant gave me a whole new outlook on life and I liked what I did (seasonal coat check). The feeling of working for a restaurant was like no other job I have ever done. This job made me feel like I belonged and the people there were absolutely amazing. I looked forward to going to work and I was truly happy spending my Friday and Saturday nights at Trio restaurant. I felt professional and important; I learned how to make friends and how to treat our clients with the best manners.

The YJC gave me this experience and I'm so grateful that Evanston Township High School has the YJC Outpost, which provides students like me with such a great place to go when they need some help finding a job. I found myself visiting the YJC office just to talk to the people there because they're friendly and easy to talk to. The center gave me self confidence and responsibility. I have become more independent and I like that feeling. Without this center I wouldn't have spent five amazing months working in a four-star restaurant. I was proud of myself and I'm very thankful that I got a chance to work in such an amazing atmosphere. This all happened because of the YJC. The staff there provided me with the right attitude and information I needed to get started. I firmly believe than the YJC should get more recognition. I will continue to recommend the YJC to my friends and classmates.
- My Linh

Bush-Hating Is a Full-Time Job
Editor:

I came out of the McGaw YMCA recently and found someone had
attached a note to my car. The note said, "Do you do anything besides hate Bush? You must be obsessed. I feel sorry for you."

I'm assuming the writer was referring to my bumper stickers, which
say: "Bush/Cheney for Prison," "Bush Voters: Sorry Yet?," "Operation Iraqi Liberation," and "Bring 'Em Home." Yes, they are indeed anti-Bush; I believe I am justified in feeling that way.

Let's review just a few of the things Bush has done while in office:
Led us into a war based on misinformation and lies. So far, at least 2,300 Americans and an estimated 100,000 Iraqis have died in that conflict. For what?

Ballooned the federal deficit to $230 billion by starting a war and, at the same time, doling out tax cuts to the very wealthy. Is that sound fiscal policy?

Established a system of torture and abuse in prisons around the world. Often prisoners have never been charged with any crime, nor have they spoken to an attorney. No wonder people all over the world hate us.

Personally approved a system of illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens' phone calls and email messages overseas, in clear violation of the law.

I could continue, but this paper imposes space limitations. I try to do something every day to show my opposition to George Bush. I write letters to the editor, take part in demonstrations, sign petitions, make contributions or write to my representatives in Congress.

Unfortunately, I'm not always able to meet my goal of doing at least one thing every day. That's why I keep stickers on my car; I want to spread the word against Bush.
By the way, whoever put the note on my car should not feel sorry for me.
Instead, extend your sympathy to those who have died in Iraq and their loved ones. They have made the ultimate sacrifice, in a war based on Bush's lies.
-- Nancy Traver