70 Years Young!

My high school turns 70 this year! Most people wouldn't really care too much about that, but I do. Not only is my alma mater a pretty classy lookin' joint, but to be honest, in retrospect, I was lucky to go there and I'm glad I did. I wound my way through the status obsessed, rich-kid playground that was the local Catholic school and never really fit in. Coming to City High School was like a breath of fresh air that let me eventually find a little corner where I could, if not fit comfortably, then certainly be accepted. And that meant a lot to me at the time- and still does.

City High's motto is 'the School that leads' and the passion of pretty much every single teacher I had in high school is part of what's motivating me to make teaching my full time career. These were and remain dedicated and incredibly talented educators and even though the school is getting a lot of flak in the local press lately for 'fights and other 'undesirable' elements' I'd send my kids there hands down over West High any damn day of the week. It's a grounded, excellent learning environment and there are more opportunities than you can imagine to do whatever you can imagine doing there.

If I had pushed myself a little harder in high school, I could have gotten more out of CHS than I did. But Happy Birthday to the Old Stompin' Grounds! Lookin' good at 70 years young...



A shot of the infamous C-Wing-- one of the many new additions to the original building of CHS. It's infamous because the architects made the hallway the minimum distance wide that was mandated by the state, lined the entire length of it with lockers and stuck ten classrooms down there. Now imagine ten classrooms emptying out and pretty much all and sundry trying to get to their lockers at the same time. There was a reason the Social Studies Teachers like to mockingly refer to it as 'Charlie Sector' an off-color reference to Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall.



This is the second floor window that leads onto the roof of Opstad Auditorium. I got busted sneaking out here with one of my buddies one night during paste-up for the paper- it was my only real brush with authority in high school and as the Principal was telling the Secret Service just how secure the roof of the school actually was as we blithely strolled across it (this was ahead of a Gore Campaign Event in 2000 that NONE of us got to go too... loser) it was quite the brush! Funnily enough, I don't think I've ever seen this window open since.



This is Newslab, where the excellent City High newspaper, The Little Hawk is produced. I was fortunate enough to hang out/waste time/be a cub reporter in this very room when I was a student at CHS. Lots of memories and fun times!