Dear Chicago Public School students,
“This is a new start, a new beginning. Whatever happened last year is a thing of the past,” my father started out each school year with the same line. “You have the power to make of it what you will. It is your choice.”
After another hot summer filled with gun violence, Chicago Public School budget cuts, firing and re-hiring of teachers, a flood, unemployment and whatever other personal things that you may have endured, the school year has begun or will resume today.
The media, clergy and elected officials have focused enough on the negative hurdles that you face at the dawn of a new year.
This is not one of those columns.
I offer you hope through education.
There are teachers who stake their livelihoods on what you will one day become. There are teachers that value you and feel constrained through a conventional curriculum while instructing you in unconventional times in adverse areas. Those are the teachers that hug you each morning, knowing it may be the only encouraging touch that you have had all summer long. It is these teachers that tell you how handsome or beautiful you are with the understanding that these words may be the only esteem-building sound that have echoed through your household in the last three months. It is those teachers that brag about you to their families and pray over you each night before they sleep.
They will challenge you not because they view you as the world does or even as your parents do. They will push you to excel in academics because as time evolves you will not be judged on the basis of your skin color, but on the strength of what you know or what your grades look like.
I think my grandfather had an eighth-grade education, yet he was pretty successful in his job as a maintenance man. He took care of his family, bought a home in Austin and was an example of what hard work could get. My grandmother worked at the Board of Education for a while and held a number of odd jobs to help out around the house. My mother told me of how she taught herself how to read. They were both children of sharecroppers. They were from a place where if you worked hard, you could get a piece of the American dream. Education was not the way to success for them.
A college degree is most likely the ticket to success these days. We see the result of gangs and drugs every time we turn on the news or walk outside of our homes. I challenge you to do the opposite of what you see. I dare you to dream big. I dare you to turn that hobby into a career where it seems that you never worked a day in your life.
I see you going to school in your neatly pressed uniforms; laughing with friends enjoying your youth. You are the smart, beautiful, ambitious leaders of tomorrow. Some of you have taken top spots in science fairs, spelling bees and athletic competitions. I see the sparkling promise of architects, rocket scientists, Yale, Harvard and MIT graduates. You will shape the future in some way. It is up to you in what field your carbon footprints will be left.
As you enter the doors of a new school year, I want you to know that not everyone expects you to fail. There are some of us who want only the best for you. I want you to know that you are uniquely designed for a purpose, no matter what kind of home life you come from. There is an assignment for your life that only you can fulfill. Remember, God doesn’t make mistakes.
Good luck and best of wishes.
Sincerely,
John W. Fountain III