Wow: I Got the Chance to Visit our Community’s High School Yesterday
Yesterday through a lucky coincidence I spent the morning visiting Cleveland Heights High School. Ours is an inner-ring Cleveland suburb whose high school serves close to 2,000 students. I jumped at the opportunity, because it is difficult these days to visit classes at a school. Security is an issue and, as we know, ideological attacks on public schools and their teachers tend to make everybody feel very protective.
Here was my chance, however, and at 8:00 AM, I presented myself and my photo ID at the security desk. The guard cheerfully cajoled the hundreds of students who entered when I did to show their IDs, please. This was a nostalgic morning for me. Heights was my children’s high school, and I know its halls with the polished red tile floors so well I could walk them in my sleep even though my youngest graduated twelve years ago. Yesterday I was privileged to observe three full classes: Advanced Placement (AP) world literature, non-AP American history, and a social studies elective in political philosophy.
Heights is a majority-African American high school; 63 percent of the students in our district’s
