Flashback 2009: A retiring CPS teacher speaks her mind.

     Today is the first day of school for the Chicago Public Schools. A realm I don't write about much, because it is so broad and complicated, and the Sun-Times always has excellent education reporters who cover the topic like a damp shirt. But occasionally I do, such as this 2009 story about a CPS school for children with special needs. It actually was a significant visit, for me, because I wrote it up for what became "Driving with Ed McElroy" in Granta and led to the University of Chicago Press publishing my memoir, "You Were Never in Chicago."

    The second part — this was back when the column filled a page — is a reminder of the time when a certain British poster, now a visual cliche, was newly re-discovered.

     The Blair Early Childhood Center is one of those Chicago schools you've never heard about. Nobody was ever shot there. It has no football team. This marks the first time its name has appeared in this newspaper.
     Which is a shame, because Blair — which serves 103 public school students with severe medical and mental conditions such as Down syndrome and autism — is bright and clean, with small groups of students, aged 3 to 7, some in padded wheelchairs, gathered around teachers, who sing songs, read stories and present lessons.
     The school is at 6751 W. 63rd Place, far afield from my normal wanderings. But I was taken there by Ed McElroy, that grand gentleman of Chicago. While I'm reluctant to say that I go anywhere Ed asks me to go, the truth is I never turn him down and never feel sorry that I accompanied him somewhere. He knows the city block by block, almost inch by inch.
     Among the many teachers we met at Blair was Deanna Dalrymple, painting in Room 107 with a semicircle of first-graders decked out in smocks.
     It turned out that Dalrymple, 65, is retiring today. The graduate of Chicago Teachers College knew she wanted to be a teacher since age 4, but ended up in special ed the way so many of us end up places — by happenstance.
     "I started out 45 years ago at Christopher School," she said, of another CPS school for children with exceptional needs. "They were in desperate need of special-ed teachers. I had two months to wait for my assignment, and had taught blind children, so thought I would go to Christopher and teach for two months."
     That was in 1965. Two months became almost half a century. When Blair school opened, 25 years ago next October, she shifted there.
      The Chicago Public Schools are not without controversy. Most teachers, like any profession, are muted by self-interest. To speak their true views is to risk unemployment. But a person poised on the cusp of retirement has no such constraints. So? I asked, licking my chops. Any frank thoughts from 45 years of teaching she'd like to share?
     "I get so upset when someone talks about all the bad in the Chicago Public School system," she said. "But there's so much good. So much good being done for every child. What our children get is phenomenal. You see the care here. A child comes in, sometimes can't walk, can't talk, can't do anything, and they come out and these children walk and talk and feel good about themselves."
     OK then, in the spirit that I'd have reported it if she delivered a stinging indictment, and in honor of Deanna Dalrymple's 45 years of hard work with kids that you or I might have difficulty teaching for 45 minutes, I believe she has earned her say. Congratulations and good luck.

See you soon, Bob

     I'm not normally a 10 o'clock TV news kind of guy — I get up early, absorb news all day long from all seven of the distinct sources from whence news comes (can you name them? There are seven, at least).
     Give up?

     Newspapers, of course, then TV, radio, Internet, telephone and — these last two are toughies, particularly for the young folk — conversation with others and news that you yourself observe happening.
     By 10 p.m. I'm usually done with news and reading — the boy and I are 800 pages into War and Peace, slowly slogging onward, like Napoleon in midwinter.
     But I was in front of the tube Wednesday at 10 p.m. to see Bob Sirott do his final broadcast — at least for the near future — on the WMAQ-Channel 5 News.
     He was — as always — cool professionalism itself, and did not take my suggestion, made earlier in the day, that he mark his departure by mooning the audience, nor delivering a Howard-Beale-like tirade against NBC management, which failed to offer Sirott a satisfactory deal.
     Instead, what he said at the end of the program was:
     "Keep calm and carry on — thanks for being there and see you again soon."
     Mmm, that's rather oblique, I thought. The next morning I caught up with Bob. Why the low-key hail and farewell?
     "I thought, you know what, this isn't exactly Chet Huntley saying good night to David Brinkley for the last time," he said. "I'm not that important, I'm also not going anywhere. I'm taking a vacation now; when I get back right away I'm on WGN radio at noon. It would have been a little self-important and pompous, so I opted to go with something a little more subtle."
     "Keep calm and carry on"?
     "I stole that," he said. "If you Google it, it has become popular again, because of the economic strife."
     The quote sounded to me like Churchill, but there's an even more interesting history — British authorities, preparing for German invasion in 1939, printed the advice on a poster designed to brace the besieged populace. But the Germans never invaded Britain, so the poster was never used. It was rediscovered in recent years and resonated with grim economic times — times that make Sirott reluctant to present his abrupt unemployment as hardship.
     "For a lot of people, it's 'Adios, don't let the door hit you in the ass,'" he said. "I'm a really lucky guy. I got zero to complain about. I'll be back on TV, doing something."

Today's chuckle:

     Television: A medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done.

           — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 12, 2009