Miss Fitzgerald-The World's Best Teacher

After two years of torture at St. Vitus, my mother transferred us to public school. It most likely was an economic decision because I do not see how she was able to pay tuition for us at a Catholic school. So we made the move one block south to Peter Cooper Elementary. The school was built in 1883, and it probably will still be standing 100 years from now. It is an impressive brick building.

It was fourth grade. I did not recognize many kids other than the ones who lived on the same street. Our teacher was a very large woman named Miss Fitzgerald. She was a jovial woman who never displayed a negative attitude in class.

The following is a comment about Miss Fitzgerald from the Chicago Public School alumni site:

Ms Fitzgerald was the best 5th grade teacher because she had time for all the subjects in a school day that started at 9 and ended at 315 (with a one hour lunch, 2 recesses and milk and cookie time). She was amazing.

The songs were American culture, but she even had one or two international songs.

She taught us to square dance.

We had teams in the class that competed against each other for a monthly prize.

Without a doubt, the best.

She taught all of my older brothers and sisters.

That was the impact this teacher had on her students.

I no longer had to sit in the back of the class because I was Mexican. Every month Miss Fitzgerald changed the seating arrangements so every student sat in a different spot every month and shared a row with different students.

She rewarded students for positive behavior and punished us for negative behaviors as well. Her reward was marked with one star written on the blackboard. Each individual star would count towards the total of the row. So if everyone in row one did their homework, they would each earn one star for their row. If someone from row two would chew gum in class. then a star would be erased from the grand total from that row.

Miss Fitzgerald would award prizes for each student who sat in the row that earned the most stars in the month. We all competed to be good and productive.

Well, almost everyone. I had a problem talking during the class and I had many of our stars erased. One month I remember a girl asking Miss Fitzgerald not to put her in the same row as me. But I earned many stars for my work in class. I was one of the smarter kids in class, especially in math.

Miss Fitzgerald was fair to everyone.

We sang songs every afternoon. Miss Fitzgerald would pass out song books, play the piano, and loudly sing in a loud joyous voice. All the classic songs of Americana that I know, I learned in her class. The son of a migrant farm worker learning Stephen Foster and the rest of Americana music.

Oh, Susana...she'll be coming around the mountain...with a banjo on my knee.

She also had fun art projects for us to engage us in. She put us in touch with our creative side. 

She had us striving to learn and to behave. She also taught us to get along with each other. She also gave us roles of leadership.

Every month she would reassign different positions of authority to every student. One month one could be a line monitor, the next month they would be the chalk board cleaner, and the next month they would be the coat room monitor.

The coat room monitor's job was to ensure that students behaved while the grabbed their coats in the coatroom The coatroom was a long narrow closet-like room where we hung our coats every morning.

Miss Fitzgerald named me the coatroom monitor one month. I lasted one day on the job. A fellow student failed to listen to my request not to talk in the coatroom. After asking them a few times to be quiet I punched the student in the face.

Role-modeling

My duties were taken away from me that day.

I probably lost a few stars for my row as well. I deserved my punishment.

Miss Fitzgerald was fair.

Old Pics of Chicago from Life Magazine Archives

Google has old photos from Life magazine. There are many photos of Chicago included in this collection. I love history. I love Chicago. I can spend hours looking at the photos in this collection. I take myself back in time, wondering about the mindset of the era and what my place in life would have been back then. My father was picking crops in Michigan in 1944.

 The randomness of thought bounce through my mind...a thousand thoughts and words.

I wonder what church is in the background?

There are no buildings or porches like this where I now live in Utah. I, like millions of others from Chicago, have many childhood memories of playing on these type of porches.

The above is a photo from 1944, taken by Gordon Coster. It is described as "Vacant lots and tenement buildings in the slums of Chicago."

I was born in the Halstead-Roosevelt area. I wonder where these houses were and if they survived the destruction of the neighborhood in the early 60s.

The one thing I immediately noticed was that someone was growing crops in these open lots. Cities are going back to urban gardening and here, 60 years ago, someone had an impressive urban garden going on. I wonder if it was the work of one family-the owner of the lots?- or if it was the work of the community.

I also like the make-shift fencing that one would never see today in the city. It would rightfully be considered an eyesore and it would be against zoning laws. Back then it worked. It served the purpose. It kept kids and animals from trampling on the seedlings.

Heck, I think that the black iron wrought fences that are now prevalent in Pilsen are tremendous gaudy eye sores. They protect no seedlings from suffering from the trampling of the neighborhood kids and pets.

(Poor dog in Pilsen is gated AND chained. In Salt Lake City, it would be against the law to chain a dog up like this for the day. Not much of a life for this dog.)

The above is also from 1944 and also shot by Coster. I wonder if the boy was actually playing ball or if he was only posing for the photographer. I think he was posing.

The building looks so beaten by time and neglect. If it exists today, I could not afford to buy it.

A woman, taking pride, is walking with a broom to rearrange the dirt and the dust from her stairs out to the sidewalk.

When I was a teen in Pilsen, we had concrete stairs like in the photo. It was a popular hang out. We called them "The Stairs."

The spacing between the buildings, or lack of, is something one does not see here in Utah. When I talk to people about the buildings in older Chicago they usually are amazed by how close the buildings are in these older neighborhoods.

These kids in the pic would be in their late 70s or early 80s, if they are still alive.

My grandparents rented a flat in an old wooden house around the corner from the old Goodrich School. They actually had a small front yard. A cherry tree grew there. Kids would climb their front stairs to reach the cherries. Free treats on Peoria Street.

There is now a UIC parking lot, next to a ball field, where the cherry tree once grew.


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My grandfather would throw pieces of fish at the horde of alley cats who would gather for his offerings. I can remember the skeletal remains of the fish in the back yard and the alley.

The alley was where the slow-walking, tough-looking cats and the dirty-looking drunks could be found.

Some people actually lived under sidewalks or slept in old abandoned sheds with the rats. I would run fast the other way whenever I would see them.

I remember a live chicken running around in my grandparents' kitchen. I most likely ate her that night, or the next day, with a home-made flour tortilla.

My grandparents gave me a jalapeno to eat when I was 5. They laughed when I cried. I laugh at the memory. I see nothing abusive about what they did; today, children protective services would investigate it.

The above photo is from 1954-Chicago. It was taken by Fritz Goro.

I am old enough to remember when everyone would dry clothes on a clothes line.

I would play with my mother's clothes pins.

I still wear the scar on my foot when a bunch of kids, siblings included, ran me over while I played at the top of the stairs of an old wooden porch. I remember laying on my back at the bottom of the stairs, blood on my foot.

It was one of the few times I ever ate ice cream as a kid. Ice cream is the best medicine for kids. I still use it for medicinal purposes.

Urban garden in the Taylor Street area, 1953. My grandmother is on the far right.

Goodrich School. Demolished in 1963 to make room for the Circle Campus, now known as UIC. The school was on Taylor and Sangamon. The famed Mexican-American writer and poet, Ana Castillo, was a student at Goodrich when it was destroyed. I was a 1st grader for its last year. My mother attended k-8 at Goodrich.




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