At my only one-on-one meeting with Clague Middle School’s guidance counselor he advised me to go to a large department store and put myself in the hands of a retail specialist with whom I could choose a new wardrobe. I could then apply myself to buying it one piece at a time. During this dream visit I would also learn how to use make up. He warned me of the dire consequences of not following his advice: I’d go on to high school and be jealous of my friends who got dates while I did not. I was 13.
Then one day, we got a visit from three students at Ann Arbor’s alternative high school. They told us about Community High School, where the mascot was a herd of running zebras, one of which was colored like a rainbow. We learned that all of the staff – from the principal to the teachers to the custodial staff – went by their first names. The school had been opened by students 14 years earlier who sat on the hiring committees of the teachers, many of whom still worked there. There was an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Two years later when I was one of the students touring the middle schools I got the question, “What happens when a teacher kicks you out of class?” I had to say I’d never seen it happen. I’d never seen a student treat a teacher disrespectfully, or vice versa. There was no “office” to send misbehaving students to for discipline. There was no detention. There were no suspensions. If you didn’t succeed academically the school could and would expel you and send you to the factory to which the city assigned you. It was all the motivation that most of us needed. We had the highest percentage of kids going on to college, and to Ivy League schools.
We were the freaks. We were trying new religions and vegan diets and wild hair colors and cuts. We had students who were gay and lesbian and trans and out and accepted in 1987. We wanted space to try some new things without judgement. They gave us that space within the structure of learning grammar and French and algebra. We appreciated it. And we turned out just fine.
The atmosphere was decidedly un-factory-like. There were no bells. There was no cafeteria. We had an open campus. There were a variety of physical education classes but no school-sponsored sports. Students impacted the curriculum and they would teach the classes that we asked for. I took classes in both women’s studies and pop culture that were student-initiated. During the pop culture class we covered civil disobedience during the Vietnam War era and one of the custodians was a vet. That day he was a teacher.
They also taught all the regular courses, including Latin and advanced calculus, with the option of auditing courses at U of M or Washtenaw Community College for high school credit if CHS couldn’t accommodate our interests. Classes were taught without respect to your grade level. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors were in every level of every subject according to their facility with the subject matter. There was very little class distinction. Sometimes you’d only learn a classmate was a senior at graduation. We just didn’t have those gradations.
At Commie High I was encouraged to explore what I was good at. I took seven and a half years of English language classes. I struggled with science but they worked with me. When I went to my physics instructor and said that I wanted to drop his class because I didn’t need it to graduate and I was failing, he told me that he really valued physics. He thought it was good knowledge to have and he wanted me to have a basic understanding of this important subject. He said if I came to every class, did all the homework, and took all the tests, he’d give me a C. That way both our interests would be met: my GPA wouldn’t be ruined and he’d get to impart a little more physics. I took him up on it.
We had a Community Resource program where we got high school class credit for educational or community endeavors. A group of students worked with both the city and the local Greenpeace office to learn about waste water and then they stenciled notices over all the city drains in downtown Ann Arbor alerting residents that everything that goes down the drains eventually impacts local fish. I did a CR nearly every semester I was at Commie.
CHS was a wonderful experience that prepared me well for college and for life. I believe strongly in educational choice and…
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