kandasadventures

I recently visited one of my childhood elementary schools in Seattle. It is as run-down and worn as I remembered, actually, even more so. Throughout my years in the Seattle School District I had this sad feeling that the best was in the past. The bones of the schools were sturdy: heavy solid wood doors, sturdy fixtures, indestructable steel desks, durable linoleum floors. But everything was dirty around the edges, rusting, dented, peeling, grungy. As glass windows were broken, they were replaced with foggy yellow plexiglass. Money was being poured into bussing for desegregation, and a proliferation of new administrative positions. Teachers were weary, striking every few years for meager pay increases, and disolusioned about having only half the supplies they needed. We had to share text books, learn to type on manual typewriters (when other districts were getting their first desktop computers), and use our crayons just once a week so they'd last all year. At each school I was one of hundreds, and then thousands by middle school. It was easy to feel lost. I wondered what it would have been like to attend the schools when they were clean and new, and the teachers were excited to be there. I'm so glad those school years are over for me. My daughter's elementary school is so colorful and cheerful in comparison. My childhood school was like a military camp, my daughter's school is like Disneyland.