Mark Grishaber, Mr. G

Mark Grishaber, known as Mr. G, is a poet, an educator, and the recently retired principal of William Howard Taft High School on the northwest side of Chicago. The conversation is about the school options on that side of the city.

Taft High School is at tafthighschool.org. He has a poetry book and a site on the way.

This is episode 10 of Flipside Frolic. It was recorded February 2, 2025, published June 23, 2025, and runs about 3 hours and 5 minutes.

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Transcript

This is the conversation, proofread from the auto captions. Clear errors in names and places were corrected. The conversation itself was not rewritten.

Hey there. Thanks for joining us at Flipside Frolic, where we learn to understand each other's perspectives by flipping the script and having some fun. Here we go. Live. All right. Welcome everybody to Flipside Frolic. I'm Carl Kmiec. I'm your host. I have with you Mr. G. Um, Mr. G and I have been friends for quite some time. Um, we can have him write up a little bio, but for starters, everybody, most people know you as Mr. But let's start off by pronouncing your last name properly so that we all know. Grishaber. Grishaber. So that is going to clear up a lot of questions in in all sorts of people's minds around the world here. So we got that going for us.

But uh thanks for joining us and uh so Mark is the past recently retired principal of Taft High School here in Chicago and and definitely has a vast amount of experience in the education system and all that sort of thing. So, with that, um, I I guess we just want to start off with telling us a little bit about yourself, kind of where you grew up, how you grew up, and and what got you through education and into the educational sphere, so to speak, I suppose, cuz I would think that that's where you would agree is where your main expertise lies or so. Yeah, I would say education. So, kind of like a little two or three minute bio on how how I got to this seat today. No, no, no, no pressure.

No, no big, you know, you know, a little bio, a little background, people get to know you a little bit better cuz, you know, obviously you're pretty popular guy as it is. But, um, yeah, go from there. Um, okay. Uh, I grew up in Chicago. My I'm I'm the a son of a Chicago policeman and a beautician uh who later became a real estate agent uh on the northwest side here. So, I I was born in Englewood Hospital. Uh then we moved to the west side across from Columbus Park when I was about 5 years old. From there we moved north until um I wound up in the Jefferson Park area since god over 50 years now. So uh since 1972. So I went to uh I like to say I started at a Chicago public school and I ended at a Chicago public school because I went to kindergarten at a school called EMTT which is located at Washington and Central.

They're no longer there because I tried to look them up when I was principal. I was going to kind of walk in there and say I used to go here and but they're not there anymore. So um EMTT and then from there I went to St. Williams which is uh kind of by Montclare area. Um it would be by Grand Avenue and Harlem. And then from there we moved up to the St. Tarcissus area which is by Superdawg. I'll just I just name them all by restaurants. Uh people understand them. So I grew up in St. Tarcissus. Uh now it's St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. Um I go there once in a while for mass. Um, and then let's see, went to uh St. uh St. Tarcissus and then I went to St. Pats. A lot of my friends went to St. Pats, graduated 1979.

Uh, played football and from there I went to DePaul, majored in psychology for a couple of years and I ran out of money for college. That was the time. Uh, this is going back to Paul. I had enough for four years of college, but DePaul started doing really well in basketball. They had Mark Aguirre there. they were a number one team in the country and their uh tuition pretty much doubled in a couple of years so I couldn't afford it anymore. So I dropped out um and I started taking classes at Northeastern. Um eventually I graduated 1987 from Northeastern. I I just had lunch with my daughter who's plugging away at Northeastern right now and I said, "Honey, you just got to get done by the time you're 27." That's how long it took your dad. Took him eight years to get his degree. But just but don't give up. Got some dogs barking here.

What is that? That's That's Scruffy the dog. Is that a Is that a normal broadcasting? Um, not normally. Is that Is that outside the door right now? Yeah, that's that's live, folks. I didn't know whether this was a broadcast where you had like a little button and when I hit on something you like. We do have some We got What do sound effects you got? All right. Claws. We got We got a rib shot if we need it. All right. All right. We don't We don't really play too much with I didn't know whether the dog the dog barking was I hit on something that you liked. We're we're a low production studio here, but we're we're we're a work in progress. And oh, see, look at this. I even forgot the uh we got to we got to turn the sign on here, too. So, make sure we got the Flipside Frolic sign on. Sorry about that, folks. That must have cost a couple bucks.

It wasn't actually too bad. And we'll we'll reach out to him. I think it was AF. I I'll have to check that. But I meant cuz somebody asked on the last episode and you know we'll even reach out and maybe get them to sponsor it if I'm going to plug them too hard. So yeah, you got to give them a plug. But it was pretty reasonable and the quality is really good. Um I I was pretty happy with the results for sure. So yeah. Cool. But yeah, sorry about that. Go ahead. That's okay. What was the dog's name? Uh Scruffy. Scruffy. Shout out to Scruffy. All right. Scruff. So uh 87 I uh just finished up Northeastern. Then I I was kind of jealous of a lot of my friends that had went away to college. They had gone to University of Illinois, Western Illinois, and I would visit them. So I wanted to get my MBA.

I I what I really wanted to do, my my life's work was I wanted to get into advertising. I really wanted to make Super Bowl commercials. I thought that was the be all endall. I have a friend of mine who we actually went to the Cleo Awards in Chicago. Cleo is like an Oscar but for advertising. So we would actually go to the awards ceremony and watch a lot of this stuff. Um, and I actually did a uh an internship at a place called Qualian Company and Bob Quali, who I'm really good friends with now, um, he actually helped me with my poetry team when I was at Whitney Young. But Bob, um, had an advertising firm and he was he was brilliant. And so he had, I think, seven of these Cleo awards. And every time I went to his office, really, I would go to I would go to school. Hold on. All right, folks. Well, we're back.

Um, we had a little techno glitch there. Um, so we didn't lose any audio, so there might be like a little uh maybe I'll put the logo up or something if there was a little bit of video that that skipped out on us, but um we we can continue where you left off there. Sorry about that. All right, almost done. So, I uh uh wanted to was into advertising and I wanted to go away for college and so I applied to the University of Colorado uh the Buffaloos to uh get a master's degree out there. I had some uh some relatives out in Colorado, so I thought it'd be an easy transition. I could go stay with them till I got settled. University of Colorado said no. I had a friend of mine that moved to Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska. And I had visited her um a year earlier, and I'm like, you know what? I'm I'm not going to I'm going to go to Alaska.

And so I looked at there was a private university up there called uh u Alaska Pacific University which it was a smaller uh liberal arts college but at the time they were taking a couple of people from a lot of different countries and putting them into a cohort um which was wonderful for me because um I would take my they would give us business problems and I would take my Chicago way of doing something but then I would find out how the guy from England would do it or how the guy from India or Ethiopia would solve the problem. So really fascinating. I went there in uh 1988 um sat down with my counselor and he was uh from the University of Indiana. So he kind of took a liking to me and he said, "Well, I got you mapped out here for we can finish the program in two years." And I said, "I'm going to do it in one year.

I I have it mapped up my own way." He said, "No one's ever done it in one year." And I said, "Well, I guess I'll be the first one." And he didn't think I could. So we bet a steak dinner on it. And I won the steak dinner. or a year later I graduated. Um, I liked Anchorage. I liked Alaska, but Chicago is my home. A lot of people say what Anchorage is like, and I like to say it's like Schaumburg. Same kind of like if you go to Schaumburg, there's like those green buildings, like mirrored buildings and and orange mirrored buildings. That's just like downtown Anchorage. And so, um, had a really good time up there. I saw some, uh, great stuff.

I was up there during the oil spill um in 1988 which took place 25 years and it was in Good Friday in 1988 that the Exxon Valdez spilled the oil and it was actually 25 years to the day that they had the uh largest earthquake on the North American continent that kind of leveled Anchorage. But I was up there for the oil spill so I got to see that. So, I've got my degree, my master's degree. Uh, came back to Chicago, wanted to get into advertising, was putting out a lot of I dream job was uh either um Ogilvy and Mather um uh J. Walter Thompson, Leo Burnett. These were all advertising firms that I had studied growing up and stuff like that. I wanted to make Super Bowl commercials. It just wasn't happening. They were having nothing to do with me.

And I just kind of threw my arms up in the air and just said, "Oh, well, I'm I'm just going to take a little bit of time off." I walk into my old school, St. Pats to say hi to a Christian brother, uh, Brother Jude, Brother Patrick, uh, that I wanted to say hi to. And then as I'm walking out, one of them said, "Can you teach at all? We need a business teacher." And I'm like, "I just got my MBA." And they're like, "That'll do." And I needed a job. And so, uh, you know, when I look back, I I know it was God's way of just pushing me into into education. I I'd always a little bit thought about teaching when I was a younger and stuff like that, but I really wanted my creative side to take off. So, I taught at St. Pats. I taught there for uh 13 years. Uh ran their computer department. Um after 13 years I was getting a little antsy.

I I think in my life it seems like every 10 years I get a little antsy and it's time to move. So uh after 13 years uh I decided to move. Um I saw a job in in in the newspaper back in the day. This is 2006. They actually advertised jobs in the Chicago Tribune. Uh and because there was no online presence and so it said Whitney Young Magnet High School uh assistant principal and I called the number went through the interview process. Uh it was a long interview process but I got the job and so I was an assistant principal at that wonderful school uh where Dr. Kenner uh taught me a lot about a lot of things. Um and I was the assistant principal there for eight years. Um and again that that you know the 10 years kicks in where I'm getting a little bored and I'm just like is this all there is?

And then I saw that the uh opening for uh Taft was um up. And so I looked into it and I said, "You know what? I here was my thinking at the time is that I could stay at Whitney Young another 10 years and retire." And and it and I remember somebody saying, "A ship is safe in the harbor, but that's not what ships are made for, right?" And so I um said, "I'm going to go for this." In fact, I I talked to the people today that hired me, and they're like, "Why is this guy applying here? What what is this deal? I mean, he's he's at Whitney Young. Why would he come to Taft? And so, when they talked to me, they understood that I wanted to to to get my my ship out of the harbor. And I wanted to say like I had a lot of ideas on what could really uh make a great school, but I I wasn't going to just talk about it in the lunchroom.

I wasn't going to just talk about it wherever at at the kitchen table. I wanted to actually do it. And so, I applied for it and um and I got it. And so, I was a principal at Taft for 10 years. just retired in uh June of uh actually August 9th of 2024 and I had the most wonderful I I think I left at at the right time. I had two years left on my contract and I could have stayed but um it I wasn't passionate about I know I could have done it and I had a great team and I know that I could have just stepped back a little bit and and just coasted out the last two years, but I'm not a coaster. I can't I can't do that. Um, and so, um, I decided to retire. When I retired, it was really nice. They had a, um, they brought me to the auditorium. They made up some excuse. And I went in there and I and I probably had two or 300 teachers in there.

And it was my mom and my sister and and Tina and and uh, my uh, my brother-in-law. And they showed this really nice uh, video. Got up. They had a bagpipe person walking me out of the school with all the teachers clapping. I was looking around, teachers were crying and it was it was just a really good thing. It was it was just there's a time that that I think is just the right time to leave. Um and that was it. In fact, I just went in there last week and I saw this um PE uh teacher and he was out there teaching. So I walked up and how you doing? We're like good and stuff. I said yeah I left a little early. I go the truth is I was getting a little tired of my speeches. And he goes you know what we were too. And I go okay good. So, it was uh it was time and so I feel like I did some good stuff at Taft. I I I hired uh some great great people.

Right now, I think I have four of my assistant principles that have gone on to lead schools. One of them went on to lead Lane Tech and is now uh the uh assistant superintendent in Elgin. Uh Ryan is now the principal of Taft. Maria is in Little Village. And um Dan Kosma is now the principal at Morgan Park. So I I think that's testament to leadership is how many are now leading themselves themselves.

That's that's obviously that's an that's an outstanding uh mark of of of progress and and and mentorship and the ability to not just take all the credit as a leader, but to try to create leaders underneath you and and and the the humility to be able to step aside when you feel that you know your work here is done kind of thing is also very powerful for for people to to understand and and I think that's a big part we were talking a little bit earlier on the ride over um about the muse and some of these callings that we feel and stuff and we we do have to respect that a little bit for sure and and I think that's that's just such a powerful message that that you know we have to have I think one of the things that's missing in society a lot and and obviously it would be nice in education if it's if it's been stowed more in the youth is that that feeling of purpose right so so you're saying if my purpose here is done and I don't feel like I'm accomplishing what I was meant to do at this point.

then maybe I need to go on to something else or whatnot because purpose is very important in self-fulfillment and happiness and contentment and well you know you know what's weird Carl is that I feel that every job like I didn't start working a full-time job till I was like 31 years old okay but I had a lot of part-time jobs and I feel that every job I had leading up to being principal at Taft was preparing me for Taft I mean I worked in the insurance. I worked in medical malpractice. I worked in real estate. All these things. I worked in sales. Everything I did prepared me for that. And then when I left, I and and this is not not too many people know this, but I'm going to let you know now. I I think my calling has ever since I was 14 years old was to be a poet.

But I didn't want to be a poet because I felt like I didn't have the life experience. I didn't want to. and and and they talk they talked to Robert Frost about this one time and they said what about you know the fact that you don't have you're talking about life and you don't have the experience and he says sometimes and Robert Frost there's an exact quote I don't have but actually said like you kind of have to wing it a little bit I'm not arguing with Robert Frost the great one of the greatest poets American poets of all time but for me I felt like I needed some credibility so part of the reason why I left Taft early is because I thought I was ready to write my poetry poetry through my whole life I'm like I as I've went on like I'm gonna write a poem about this one day. I'm gonna write a poem about this one day.

And so my whole life has prepared me for writing poetry right now is which is my passion and this is the passion that supersedes any other passion I've ever had. I was a really great teacher and I was passionate about it. But it doesn't touch with the passion I have for poetry right now. Same thing with being an assistant principal. Same thing with being a principal. I love those jobs and I was passionate. But this passion is that passion on steroids, if that makes sense. That's that's that's wonderful. And I sure hope that you have a notepad on your phone or a little notebook where you jotted down to some of those ideas over the years because they come and go so quickly. And there was one motivational speaker that I saw at this one event and and and he was uh he was adamant about reading folks.

You know, leaders are readers and 20 minutes a day will change your life in two years 100%. And you will you will you will outpace the knowledge of your co-workers if you choose to like work on your craft where everybody else is just doing the dayto-day and just really not working on it. But if you're working on making yourself better, you you you blow away the competition in a very short am amount of time cuz most people are just doing the the day in and day out thing which is you know normal in some ways. But this uh motivational speaker, he had cargo shorts on and he and and he was like, "Okay, so leaders are readers. You should always be reading." So in this pocket is the book I'm reading and in this pocket on the other side of the cargo shorts is is I'm journaling, right?

So I'm reading a story and I'm writing my story at the same time and it's always there. So, we always had that to pull it out and jot something down because even for, you know, if I'm going to do a live stream and I got some ideas of what I want to rant about on a Saturday morning, whether it's some political thing or some local news thing or some story or whatever, I I won't forget. I'll I'll it it'll be a fleeting memory and then and then I'll lose it and then I'll forget what the heck I was even thinking about. So, obviously tracking that is very important. Um having some inner searching and and some the ability to kind of reflect and and see follow your passions is is is a very brave thing as well.

You know that some people would and and and folks and and if people are out there and it's like they just want to go in daytoday and just work a life and and raise a family and send their kids. God bless. Everybody's right where they're supposed to be. Exactly. And and just like you had mentioned with the idea of all the different jobs that kind of led to where you are today. Um you know good happens, bad happens. We don't know why. We don't know what's the what good comes from bad and what bad comes from. What the the five people we meet in heaven is Mitch Alurn was a great story about kind of that which you know we a great storyteller he is. Oh it's it's his his books are wonderful. Did you read the life book lifeboat book? I read all three. He's got one on the lifeboat. I'm reading right now. It's uh meeting God on a lifeboat.

Oh, this is the next person you meet in heaven. So that was like the So I wrote the the five people. But yeah, so um it's one of those things where, you know, bad the bad happens, you know, all the time and and for sometimes for good. You know, I I brought it up the other day like Michael Jordan's grammar school teacher basically telling him you shouldn't play basketball. And for some reason, of course, that's a horrible thing to say to a six sixth grader, but if that's the thing that fired the motivation, even if it's for screw you or for whatever that whatever it is that gets somebody motivated to change your life for the better, it it can't be a bad thing uh overall. And and so my jobs were, you know, very similar in a sense that, you know, I worked these series of jobs. I I also am an alum of Northeastern Illinois University. Yay.

Go Eagles. I uh I just mentioned it before, my my passion came from my experience in the Navy and how much garbage we threw in the ocean. So, that kind of led me down the environmental field that I wanted to maybe prevent throwing some trash into the oceans cuz I found it pretty disgusting once you're 20 miles off the coast, the garbage is open for dumping. And you know, when I was there, they were just starting to, you know, I mentioned last last episode, but um they just started taking plastics out and stuff. So, you know, if it's biodegradable, obviously that's not as bad. Um depending on what it is or whatever. But that kind of got me into Northeastern. That kind of led me into a field of taking classes I enjoyed. And I never declared a major till I was a junior cuz I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

And went to my guidance counselor and was like, "Tell me what I'm supposed to do." And he's like, "Well, it doesn't really work that way, you know." And I was like, "Well, okay, let's start over. Let's take the classes that I enjoyed and that I did well then. And is there a field in the world that is something based on those?" You know, cuz I liked earth science and I liked that, but then the BS was harder cuz I had to take calculus and chemistry and, you know, these hard classes. So, as opposed to the BA, right, that's Yeah. So, I basically I just basically, okay, so let's try this again. Here's the credits I have. What's the fastest way out of here kind of thing. And as it as it resulted, the concent weird major in geography and environmental studies with a concentration in resource conservation and management. Well, they go together.

Um had about I only had to take three or four more classes and I graduated. So obviously that's the way out. And as like you said, I I well, I never filled out an application in anything in even close to regards of that field cuz going through school, I was working at UPS and then I ended up getting a full-time job at Consolidated Freightway and I was doing some mechanic stuff and and and so it just you just kind of followed the money and opportunity more so than this degree. And let me ask you this cuz this fascinates me. So you when you were in the Navy, you saw how the oceans were being polluted. Did you think one day I'm going to do something that will solve this? Or did you live life and then come to the point where like wait a minute now that I have that experience now I'm going to do something?

When did the initial thought came in that you're going to have action? Well, the initial thought was initially just seeing it happening like somebody should do something about that now. Is that somebody going to be me? I I I sure as hell know that. I didn't know that at the time. But then coming back out of the Navy, I Clinton was making his military cutbacks in ' 91. So I was I did a six-month Mediterranean cruise, had the ability to go to the Parthonon and and Rome and and Turkey and Africa and Tunisia, you know, different place, uh, Palma, Spain, and, you know, a whole bunch of places in the Mediterranean. But then I got out early because Clinton was making his cutbacks. So I basically gave up my GI bill.

So the way it worked is you would put $1,000 in from your pay to the GI bill and then you get like 15,500 back if you went to school when you got out. Okay? So that's what the GI bill but was but the state of Illinois if you serve active duty and get an honorable discharge tuition at state colleges is paid for 100% by the Illinois Veteran Scholarship Fund. So I figured I didn't need the GI Bill if college is paid for anyway. And if I got out 6 months early and got a job making 30 grand a year, I made that $15,000 back. So, I thought it was a smart decision to just say screw this GI Bill. You have you have you have a little bit of businessman in you. Well, that was that was I don't know where that came from, you know, probably from some you know, who knows?

But anyway, so so I I got out and uh and and went to college, commuted to Northeastern on the on that veteran scholarship program, you know. So it's and but like I said as I was doing that I worked through you know mostly in the transportation and and mechanical area and uh fixing cars, fixing trucks and then and then uh ended up uh you know where I am today which is you know same kind of thing opportunities exist. So, so kind of like interesting that you talked about changing based on passion because I mentioned a couple of podcasts ago, but that it was like I had a friend that was like cuz I was always kind of exploring new ideas. I am kind of jack of all trades, master of none, and I get go down rabbit holes and different things and books do that to you.

you know, one minute you're reading a book and then it references something else or you want to fact check that by looking up the resource and then you end up reading that book and it takes you off into this other tree branch that before you know it I'm reading a book on metallurgy or something and a good a good pastor will do that too. If you walk away from a good sermon and all of a sudden you're looking at books that he's referencing. A good pastor can do that. Yeah. But it I mean it's truly amazing that like if you just follow your interest, it takes you on a weird road, you know, and and maybe that's serendipitous. Maybe that's where you're supposed to be. Maybe the power of the universe is guiding you in some ways.

Or maybe I think even like with children, obviously you you have a lot of experience and thoughts on how to motivate children and how to how to how to be a mentor to children and all this sort of things. And I when I was when my kids were small, I got folks, if they don't know, I got a 10 uh a 10, 12, and and 14y old boy, girl, boy. And initially, you're all stressed out, you know, cuz we I had I had kids later cuz I'm 51 years old now with pretty young kids. And and uh so we wanted to do the best you can. You want, you know, so I'm reading books on early childhood development and all this sort of stuff. And and it's just amazing that there's all these experts out there, some with personal experience and some without, which is even more comical when you have a adolescent psychologist that doesn't have children. Like, give me a break.

I want my divorce attorney to be divorced. That's pro probably helpful that you've been through the ringer to understand how to avoid some of the ringer. Um, but the with kids, it was the same kind of thing. you try all this stuff, you don't put the baby, you know, you know, and and it's obviously it with some experience now. My my truth understanding is I see it. It's nobody, you know, I'm not a psychologist or anything else, but undivided attention and love. Mhm. You can't go wrong with. And other than that, unconditional love, unconditional um but undistracted, you know, so so like you know eye level one time. Put the phone down as much as possible. Um and then all the rest of the stuff I'm not even sure how much it matters. Their personalities come out.

They're different people, whether they're the first born, the second born, the middle child syndrome, all these other things that experts could write reports on and try to pretend they understand the inner workings of the mind. But Sparky, what's his name? Scruffy. Scruffy. Should we bring him in for you guys want to see what's what Scruffy looks like? He you know, he's triggered by something you're saying. I don't know what. What is it? Hey, Scruffy. Sparky. What are you doing? Everybody wants to meet Scruffy. Everybody wants to meet Scruffy now that he wants to be a member of the podcast. So, say hi, Scruff. Wave to the camera. Hey, Scruff. What's going on? He's just checking everything out. He's like, "Where's the biscuit at?" Yeah. All right. That's Scruffy, folks. That's our noise maker. Yeah.

Don't try to break in there and steal any equipment. Let's see if we can get my uh life assistant to assist with uh with that. But so anyway, you know, what was I saying? Uh so so just talking about kids growing up and they're going to find their own way no matter what you say. So, so personality types and all that kind of stuff and where it comes from and and so, so towards the end then and and just kind of like what you were saying with uh with different jobs and different places and here you are at your current age changing complete direction. So, so in case you didn't know it, if you're a new parent out there, you can read all you want about raising a newborn. Yeah, there's like the first year of Yeah, I've read that book.

year and a then yeah what what to expect when you're expecting that's the big one and then now then you move on to toddler right and then it's like every 2 or 3 years your whole your whole life is changing so everything you knew before is useless almost cuz now you got a teenager and it's just amazing but I think that one of the main things is my responsibility as a parent to the best of my ability is to just provide opportunities for experiences And like scouting does a is a great job because they have such a wide array of of basket weaving and leather work and archery and and fitness and hiking and outdoor respect and you know uh camping and starting a fire and some basic survival skills and and then when something comes across where you see that they have a little bit more than normal liking for or it's maybe some inside passion for we fan that a little bit and just see if we can encourage that.

Mhm. And and other than that, just don't, you know, scar him too bad. Don't beat him. I think I think if you could teach him to love to read, for me, uh that I I taught my daughter how to fish. Um some people would say hunting, but I wouldn't go that far. But I think fishing and teaching them how to love to read, you're you're good. Yeah. And how do you do that without forcing it, right? That obviously that's like any parental skill. That's difficult. But I do the the numbers uh I don't have in front of me, but I am pretty confident that you read to your baby every day, one parent reads a story every night. That's there's no there's no harm that could come from that. Well, you know what?

Here here there is a study and there's been a few studies on this that the more books a kid has in their in their room uh in their bedroom, the better student they're going to be. But here's what the study tells you when you look into it. They don't have to read any of those books. The fact that they have those books in their room is an indicator of how well they're going to do in school. And if you think about it, it has nothing to do with them reading it, comprehending it, liking it. It's just that the real lesson here is the parent took interest in trying to teach them to like to read. That's the whole thing. It's not the books. It's not the outcome of reading the books. It's just that you have a parent in their life that sees the value of education so much so that I'm going to feed them with this um food of books.

They may not eat it, but the fact that the parent is there pushing that, that's really the lesson to learn. So, I think your kids are going to be fine. I think your son is looking into a high school right now. Y yeah, he's going to be fine because you're already there, you know. And again that that's part of just we we you know obviously the other aspect of you know my my uh uneducated psychological concept of teenage disgruntled teenager is more so based on my personal experience that the reality is is it's a coming of age situation where guess what there's a few truths that you're learning to realize and most of them aren't great. Number one, dad's not the strongest man in the world. I always thought he was cuz he could lift anything. He could Dad's not the toughest guy in the world.

At some point, your kid's going to be able to kick your ass, you know, and and I don't think it's quite the case yet, but interestingly enough, that's part of like it's more about what I do, not what I say is the most important thing that your actions are heard much louder than anything that you say. Yeah. Don't don't drink, but you're having a Budweiser every every dinner, right? Right. smoke with a cigarette in your mouth or whatever the case may be. And and so it was funny that you know like are you saying that that's causing teenage angst or one of the contributors to teenage angst that they're seeing that their parents aren't well if first of all if they see you're a hypocrite I think obviously that's part of it but also just the just the coming of terms that you don't know everything. You can't fix everything.

I always thought you could, you know, or whatever the case may be. And that's just part of growing up. That's part of, you know, becoming an adult because you have some of that realization and and if we as parents can even sit down and be like I just talked to both my boys the other day. I was like, listen, you know, don't ever be afraid to tell me you made a mistake cuz I promise you I've any mistake you ever make in life, I bet you I've made it. You know, I'm not perfect, you know, but and and that's what you said and this is what they heard. When you goof up, let me know. And there'll probably be some consequences, but not as not as bad as you think. That's what they hurt. Yeah.

And or I mean I I was I try to be clear with that, too, because it's more about truth and honesty that if you're honest about it, I promise you the consequences are not going to be that severe. But if you lie to me, then it's going to be triple or you know, if if you try to hide something or if you There's a big gray area between telling a lie and not telling me the truth. You're like just omission of certain facts, right? lies of a mission. Mhm. So, you know, that's like again, I'm talking to somebody with definitely much more experience with multiple children. So, obviously, you know, your theories are so much easier to test when you're dealing with thousands of kids. I've had I've graduated about um and just Tafted probably 9,000 kids have graduated uh in the last 10 years.

And just uh in case folks don't know the Chicago area or whatever, it's northwest side of Chicago TE William Taff High School. Um do you got any like not to you know brag or whatever, but some some of your accomplishments are just um not I sure didn't know too much about them. So why you know why certain things you know are in the media or promoted on WGN or any of these other things. Um, but what are some of the numbers from coming into Taft um in into some of the changes you incorporated until when you this the current situation with graduation rates or whatever your your most proud moments are as far as accomplishments as at your tenure there? Well, I'll I'll give you a big accomplishment like the big I'll go macro and then I'll go micro because in certain instances I think the micro might be bigger in the long run.

But if you were looking at numbers, when I came to Taft, uh, with my team, because I had an amazing team, I hire I hire people that are way smarter than me and when I get them in a room together, I just shut up and let them do their thing. And then once when stuff is goes bad, I take the blame. When things go good, I I I say it's on them. Okay? So, I hire stellar people. Um, when we came to Taft, and I'm going to use the word we, there was 3,000 kids there. I came from uh Whitney Young where we had one maybe fight in eight years and they didn't want to fight. They were just yelling at each other from across the lunchroom. Louder and louder until they started to walk slowly together cuz they wanted it to get broken up. So there really wasn't even a fight to where I think my first day at Taff we had eight fights the first day.

And I thought I was duped. I'm like why didn't what is going on here? What is this fighting stuff that I don't know about? Okay. So, we had a um we had a a disconnect. Okay. Um what what we had was um a disconnect with our security team. Uh and and and because it was a lot of offduty police officers, and I love police officers, don't get me wrong. My dad was a deputy chief. He was a police officer for 33 years. His best compliment he could ever give anybody is he's a good cop. Okay? But these police officers were were not trained in how to administer uh discipline in a school. They were brought up to dial it up and then let air out of the balloon where on the other end you just you keep it low and dial it up as you had to. So just the opposite.

So we had to we had to train some of our officers a little better and then some of them just left it because it just wasn't their their thing anymore and I was holding them to a higher standard I think than than they were used to. Okay. all good cops and everything like that, but we had to get some really I had to get police officers out of the security team and get counselors in there almost. Okay, I know you're doing a good job as a as a security officer if I've got three or four kids sitting around you talking with you instead of you sitting on a wall just learing at them waiting for them to make a mistake. It's it's just a bad present. So, we had a lot of changes, but I'll give you the big numbers. We started there with 3,000 kids and we I think currently we have 4,400 or close to 4,500 kids.

So 1,500 kids and I'm a neighborhood school. Okay. I'm not a select enrollment school. So that's huge. When I started in CPS, I think we had in 2006 and I started it because I saw Mayor Daly talking about uh project 2010 and I just woke up in the middle of the night and happened to catch him and he kind of sparked it in me again. God's working is like check this out Mark. I want you to look at this thing. So that made me want to get into educational leadership and I got another masters at Northeastern in educational leadership. But um we we had 3,000 kids and when I left we had 4,500 kids. That's unheard of. When I started in in in CPS in 2006 there were 400,000 kids in CPS and I think now they're close to 300,000. There's a mass exodus from CPS except at Taft. What is going on at Taft?

So, I think that's our biggest thing is that we started to bring in kids. I know the neighborhood. I am the expert on the northwest side. I don't say that braggadociously. It's just in in my experience. I I I know what the three options you have. What's your son's name? Cody. Cody. Yeah. Yeah. So, Cody's got options right now. So, can you go to the private schools? And when I say private schools in this neighborhood, you got Notre Dame, you got St. Pats, you've got Lyola. If you really want to go out there, okay, and and travel a little bit. That's your private school options. You have select enrollment options. You can go to Northside Prep, Northside College Prep, you can go to Whitney Young, you can go to Jones, you can go to Lane Tech. Okay? And I don't even know about like Maine South or something.

Once you start going into the suburban schools, even though they're like less than two mi, that's the closest school to me right now. That's not your school. But you can't go there. You can't go there. You're not in Parkidge. Although a couple years ago, um, Park Ridge opened up some maybe because they were looking. No, they they they're not supposed to touch Chicago kids. Gotcha. Unless maybe you're a good football player or something like but again special circumstances. Yeah. And so but they but but I I guess that happened and they and they were kind of caught and they were like okay our bad and so they're good now. So I don't want to I don't want to diss out cuz it's a great it's a great school really but it's not your school. You can't go there. Um so those are the options. And then you have your neighborhood school.

Your neighborhood school is Taft High School. Okay. And I grew up in an era of this was at the dinner table. Okay. Uh, well, I hope you can get into one of the select enrollment schools. I really can. He didn't. Uh, well, can we spend the $15,000 a year and now it might be close to 20. 1,500 a month. Yeah. Yeah. Times 10 probably. So, and then, but what they don't tell you is all the other costs that are associated with it. So, it's up to 20. Well, can we afford that? No. Okay, I guess we'll go to Taft. And that was it. And so when I started there, I was always like, "Hey, just put us in the conversation because it's always like,"Oh, you're going to tap. Is everything okay? Why are you going to t that was the conversation public high school?" Really? Right.

And and and and I know it because you know how I know this is because I would talk to the open houses with the parents when I first started there and I would say, "This is the conversation that you all had at the table and tell me if I'm wrong. Um and and I'd say, okay, we're going to try to get into the select enrollment school. Okay, we're going to see if we can afford the private schools. If not, we're gonna go to Taft. And then dad would chime in and say, I'll work three jobs before you're going to that place for sure. And then I would look at the audience and they would be going like nodding up and down. I'm like, I know that conversation takes place. But I said, what I used to say to them all the time, this was my pitch to them. And I really believed I'm not just a salesman. I can I can sell something that's real easy.

I said, "When I went to Alaska in 1988 to go to college, everybody looked at me and said,"Oh, you're from Chicago, um, Al Capone." Yeah. Tommy guns. Everybody thinks you're carrying around Tommy guns. I'm like, "Uh, okay, whatever." And but no, it's not true. And I said, I came back home and of course people say, "You're, oh, you were in Alaska, Eskimos and igloos." And I'm like, "No, it's like Schaumburg. Uh, but okay." You know, like they have to put people in boxes. I went back to Alaska. It's amazing because I just had breakfast or lunch with my daughter and I had just found out that my wife at the time was pregnant and I was getting on a plane to go back to Alaska to visit some friends just by myself. I was just going to see some friends.

She had no she didn't want to go to Alaska but I found out I get up there and I see some friends. Oh, you're from Chicago. Michael Jordan. Nice. So it changed in a matter of 10 years. So my pitch always was to the parents and if if any parents are out there like I remember Mark saying this pitch at his at his open house meetings. I said we're not the Al Capone anymore. We're the Michael Jordan of schools. And I believed it cuz we really are. It's a great school. Okay. Every school I can tell you if you want we can have a conversation for Cody about what's the best and the most challenging thing about St. Pats or private schools. What's the best most challenging thing about a select enrollment school? And I'll even go to the Taff side too.

I can tell you the both ends of the spectrums at all three of those schools and then you decide what's best for your child. Well, obviously that's that's the information that we're giving value and the whole point of the podcast is to catch up with old friends and talk and learn, but also give a little value to people and I'm not the only one with a kid that's about to go into high school. And you know, I may or may not be labeled as certain things over the years. I've always been a union guy. have always been Democratic for years and I'm probably more pushing towards libertarian and the Democrats could try to figure out a way to bring us back cuz I'm not the only one out there.

Um, but I could be conspiracy theorist because but I've gone down a lot of research areas and and I have a lot more information than a lot of people in a lot of different areas. So, so with that like my conspiracy theory brain initially right off the bat when I started like we we're everybody's busy, you know, every parent dual income homes. Mom's working, dad's working. I'm fortunate enough to have a wife that has stayed at home all through this process. I was fortunate enough, if you could, if you if you want to hear me say, to have a life-threatening accident at work to where I was off of work for 3 years with three kids at home. Like, they got undivided attention from two parents at home.

No children get that to the point that it was almost a problem like in kindergarten and stuff because they weren't used to authority other authority figures and other people in kindergarten and and preschools and all these cuz every a lot of other people have to dump their children off at an earlier age or whatever the case may be. So I'm fortunate in a lot of ways but my conspiracy theory brain was like I don't have time to do all this research.

So, if all this information can help somebody in a matter of a 2-hour podcast as opposed to trying to find the information on a website that I almost feel is in some ways purposely hidden because the process to get into some of those magnet schools, charter schools, you know, there's all these different things happening and and you don't even understand the differences between some of those schools.

And then all of a sudden now you're in you're in seventh grade and you start thinking about high school and you're like oh you didn't know you had to you had to fill out an application when your kid was in fourth grade you know for this school and it's like so certain people in the click would have the secret combination that it took to get that select enrollment that was a fair process if you knew all the rules but you know of course it's your job to do the research but man I never thought I had to worry about it in third grade so you know I don't even know if there's any truth to that little conspiracy about how that fair process is maybe somewhat hidden on this the the hoops you got to jump through in the order you have to do it in order to get into some of those schools or not well well let me tell you this okay first of all why what incentive do your other friends have your parents of other kids to tell you that there's a um select enrollment test coming up for sure right because you're going to possibly take one of my spots.

So, it's it's not that I'm I'm going to lie to you. Do your own research. Do your own research. It's all out there and stuff like that. I believe that's some of it because that's some of it because the bottom line is you're talking about our kids and and people when it comes to my kids, I mean, it's yeah, this is all we got, right? And and I'm not why would I increase the pool in order to lower my chances just to be a nice guy? And and I don't think people are like, "Listen, don't tell anybody about this." But if you were to ask a good friend, they would probably say, "Yeah, by the way, my son's taking it in two weeks on a Saturday." I think they'd tell you that, but they're not going to be forthright. I believe that. I think even in very good people, that's what happens. Very much probably true.

So, a lot of it a lot of it falls onto your your elementary school whether or not they're going to tell you. Okay? And a lot of times if you just check with your elementary school, they will want to to let you know those because elementary schools and a lot of principles in elementary schools are kind of judged on how many kids they get into select enrollment schools. That makes sense. Okay, it does make sense. And um so and then my mind is wandering right because I want to go to like all three schools. Okay. So so just along those same lines to kind of keep it on track. another uh just regular guy that's got some kids ready for school, right? Another problem is that now we're going to try to compare apples to oranges. So, let's look at the studies. Let's look at the test results. Let's look at this and then try to compare St.

Pat's Catholic School with Taft High School and it's nearly impossible because all so many of the standardized tests are in different categories and different things. So, this was just my experience when I'm trying to research the school to try to figure out which one's better. Even when you try to go to various third-party sites and look at state rankings and all these other things to to try to see what these school rankings are, it's very difficult to try to filter through all these different standards and all these different areas of of what's better. you know, whether you know whether but but when you're just looking at Chicago public schools, I I'm fortunate, well, not 100% fortunate, but part of the plan was to be in Orland Park School District because it's a very good school. It is. Yeah.

For grammar school and and so we were outside a district when we got our kids in their prek program that happened to be at St. James Church at the time. It wasn't even at the school cuz they didn't have room. They did an addition. Now they have the prek at the actual school, but we were out of district and got into that program as a referral because everybody swore at how great some of these prek teachers were. Donna Bulier and Miss Lee and it just off the charts unbelievable. And so we got in and then we moved in district to assure our kid was getting there. And then it was kind of funny that when my third born Connor, we were in district now and it was it was possible that Connor wasn't going to make the prek program. Mhm.

And I was like, "How is that possible?" Well, and it was told to me like, "Well, you were selectively enrolled from outside a district and got in." Mhm. And I was like, "Well, did my son getting in prevent an ind district kid from not getting in, you know?" I'm like, that doesn't seem like it makes sense if you're two blocks away from the school. So, how the standards are and how they rate everything and how they try to be fair for everybody. Obviously, it's a complicated issue and surely an idiot like me isn't going to be able to figure it out in in in a few 20 minute searches on Google or whatever. Well, let let me talk to you like I would talk to my parents when they would come into my office, okay? Cuz a lot of times, I mean, I don't have time.

I would have my speech I would give to an auditorium filled with a thousand parents three times on a Sunday on open house weekend. Okay. But if I had good friends and they would say, "Mark, can you help us out?" I said, "You know what? Why don't you come to the office on Monday morning? We'll sit there and talk." Okay? So, we and so I'll tell you exactly that what what I would tell them and then you make the choice and let your listeners make the choice because I'm going to give you the the pros and cons of all three schools and you decide. And I'm going to preface this with the most important decision that that should weigh the most when you put it on a scale is bring your son or daughter to all three open houses and let them walk around and see where they feel the most comfortable.

Now, they may feel the most comfortable at Northside College Prep, but not be able to get in. We understand that. But they may not. And then you can check that off. Okay. Um, a couple things you need to know about. So, let's do let's do St. Pats first. And I when I say St. Pats, I'm going to go with Resurrection and I'm going to go with um Notre Dame. Okay. And you're talking to a guy, a principal at Taft whose daughter went to Resurrection for a couple of reasons. She was already going to go to Taft. I I had done my research on Taft and I like their IB program. IB is we'll talk about that when we get to Taft in a minute. However, I had I had I was at a a school where the principal's son had gone to the school also and it was just a little weird and because I'm going to tell you why.

It's not good for the for the kid and it's not good for the principal and it's not good for the teacher. No teacher wants the principal's kid to be in your class. Just ask them and they'll they'll all be like makes a ton of sense for sure. I'll pass on that. You know, especially a big school. Okay. So, I knew that once I started there, I could not send her there. I didn't like that. I didn't want to be paying $1,500 a month to be sending it to Rez, but I did that. The other reason why is also because I had heard her talking in the back seat with her friend and she goes, "I'm going to Taftton. If someone messes with me, I'm going to say, you know who daughter I am." I'm like, "Wait a minute. This is this is not going to work out. I'm going to be in the dean's office all day." Police officer children.

Kind of along the same line there with having some authority and got to be careful with that. Exactly. So, so understand that's where I'm coming from. So, I don't want to sound hypocritical. Um, but that was the reason why I sent her to Rez, just for that reason. So, I'm going to give you I'm going to give you the pros and cons. So, not only so I bring authority on the private schools on the northwest side. Not only because I taught at St. Pats for 13 years and I'm at St. Pat's alumni. I am, you know, St. John Baptist deal, pray for us, live Jesus in our hearts forever. I'm a teacher there and I also went there for four years. So, I have my heart is in St. Pats, but I also know how Notre Dame works and I know how res works having a daughter there. Okay. So, here are the pros of of private education on the northwest side.

It seems to me that there is more of a clickish with the kids that go to those schools that they seem to stick together longer in life. Some of my friends, I just saw some friends at Friday at the Mystic Rogue. Someone was my one of my friends is moving to Taiwan. So, we had a going away party, but there was probably 15 or 16 of my friends there that went to St. Pat. So, we tend to stay together over the years. Okay. Now, now smaller class sizes, obviously a smaller graduating class, you're involved with these kids a lot more in in in certain ways. So, that totally makes a lot of sense, right?

And and and sorry, not to distract your train of thought, but but it was one of those things where I was talking about with with somebody else that kind of is online with this is that you you you want to send your kid to Harvard or Yale, and is it worth $350,000 a year or whatever? Are they going to get a better education at Harvard than any other school in the world? Well, more because it's a prestigious university, the chances are they should have better professors and more talented people working there. Of course, that's not always the case. And there's great teachers and bad teachers at all schools, which is undisputed, right?

But what they are getting is those connections and those fraternity brothers and those those school acquaintances that maybe have some more money at their disposal for for tapping into resources for ideas or business ventures or all these other things. So the people that you you you meet there might be a lot worth more worth that higher tuition than going to state college or something like that. Of course I I could see that. But so it's kind of along that same line where where like you're saying, they're a little clicky, they're but because they're smaller and they have more clubs that they're associated with and things like that with individual. You you also have a built-in networking system.

So if you want to grow up and you want to be an electrician, you have two of your friends that were electricians or if somebody's in a law firm, you know them from the law firm. So it it seems to be that is one of the the the good parts about the private education. I I'll agree with that. there is uh and and I don't I do not discount the the God part of it because if if if if you want to have your son or daughter have a good religious foundation that was one of the reasons that I did like rez is because they did have the religious foundation and I thought that was important because I think a lot of kids lose it by the time they're 11 and 12 if they were going with their parents to church. It they tend to lose the religious education. Um, as a teacher, I liked talking about that in my classroom.

I liked referencing the Bible or some other thing that I could talk about. In public education, you can't do that. Big taboo and whatever. So, so that's nice, too. Um, their sports, they they tend to rely a little bit on their sports where they where they try to prop that up. Uh, in St. Pats, they have they're founded in Lasalian Education. And Lasalian Education is a guy named St. town Baptist Steve Lazelle. It was in the late 1700s took a bunch of street kids off of the street, put them in a classroom, and they called it lasanian education. His big idea was almost that every kid has an IEP. Do you know what an IEP is? No. For anybody out there, it's an individual education plan, which we study every kid. This is the way this kid learns. Okay? These are his challenges. These are where he excels. This is called an IEP.

All specialed kids have an IEP. St. St. John Baptistel De Lasell in 1700 said everybody should have an IEP. We don't do that nowadays. It's not cost-effective. Okay. In the Catholic school uh in in so in St. John Baptist, he also had something where he had long rows and so they had the smartest kid in the front like at the at all the way at the left and then the next smartest kid next to him and next smartest kid all the way down. So you were not only in charge of your own education to where you had to teach yourself, you had to teach the person next to you, the one kind of less smart to you. And you could move up and down either way. And so there was some incentive to teach the person next to you. Okay. All the way down the road. So that's kind of great.

Right now we looking back like, yeah, when kids are teaching other kids, that's I mean I think it's Bloom's taxonomy when you're actually teaching it. That's the way to go. This isn't 1700. Okay. So that's what St. Pat is about. Go ahead, Carl. Yeah. So, so what just on that, it's one of those things where obviously you can have a negative and a positive attitude on anything in life, folks. There's no question about that. And so sometimes the devil, that's part of what the Flipside Frolic is even about is trying to look at everything from both sides of the coins and having a better understanding of of where people are coming from.

Um but with then that was partially with like and and again I I'm not an educational expert so I don't know the technical names to all these different teaching styles with monosuri and with these different alternate things where you don't have homework or or or it's if you're like Khan Academy for example was one thing that it's it's almost baffling that they don't use it more in the public school because sometimes they refer you to these other apps that cost money and it's like we used we used Khan Academy we used it. Yeah. It it's it's I thought it was a great story and go check out the TED talk on the way that was founded. But it's amazing how he was just tutoring from a class reunion. He's he in in Atlanta.

He was from California or something like that and he was just tutoring his distant cousins in math because he was a math teacher and YouTube was new at the time. So I'll post these videos and should I select private or should I select uh public? And it's like well I'm not going to make it private. If somebody else could use these videos, great. So he went ahead and did that and these videos start going viral just because he was a really good math teacher and really good at explaining mathematical principles or whatnot. But as the thing grew and as you start getting more data and then you really start realizing how these labels are so detrimental to kids that you just label them poor at math. So you put them in a remedial math course because they don't understand or they're not keeping up with the rest of the kids.

But all the brain development and synopsis is clicking and all this stuff. So, I was that same kind of example that I didn't me I wasn't great at memorizing stuff. But if you explain it to me to where I understand the principle, then if it makes sense to me, then I never have to remember it because it just makes sense. And sometimes that takes time. And my best analogy is that like even with an infant, my my my babies give me a high five left, high five right. I'm like, we're one clap away from a game of patty cakes here. And I could not get that baby to clap their hands to save their life. I'm trying to show them. It's like, "Oh my god, how can I?" It's almost frustrating. Like, how can I I'm a smart guy.

How can I not get this dog or this kid to do this simple task and then you just let it go and a week later they're clapping all day long, right? You know, so sometimes things just click. And when they click for a kid that now understands, he actually understands more deep than those other kids that were just able to memorize the answers and now he is excelling past them because of that deeper understanding of the ma mathematical principles. Let me let me throw another layer in on you now. Right now, have you have you ever heard of Howard Gardner? Uh he's a Harvard. You've talked about Harvard. He's in the uh education department at Harvard. Have you ever heard of a guy name Howard Gardner? I have not. Okay. So, Howard Gardner and it's amazing because this is all tying together right now.

The first time I saw Howard Gardner, he came to lecture at Northeastern when I was at Northeastern and I walked in there and he was sitting near the front and he had like a pair of ripped jeans on and kind of a shirt I'm wearing right now. And I'm like looking around, where's the guy with the suit that's going to talk? And all of a sudden, they introduce Howard Gardner and all of a sudden he goes up there and starts talking. He came up with this theory that I really believe in and I'd like your listeners and you to actually research it. It's called the theory of multiple intelligences. So right now you're talking about math. Okay. He says there is no one intelligence. There's multiple intelligences and I believe he came up with seven to start off with.

To give you an example, mathematics, okay, kinesiastics, Michael Jordan can move his body. That's an intelligence. Okay? Interpersonal, intrapersonal, understanding yourself real well, understanding somebody else real well. Something that I'm off the charts on that if if I really would have followed what my natural intelligence should be, I should have been an architect because I'm off the charts on spatial. Like I can look at an area. I'm looking at your podcast center right now. I'm like, good, good, good. wasted space over here, wasted space over here. That's what I do. I'm I'm really good at spatial. So, he comes up with theory of of multiple intelligences. Uh uh linguistics is one. What's amazing is a couple years ago, maybe it's probably 10 years now, but he added two more.

He added spirituality and he added naturalistic, which naturalistic means I could put Carl in the woods over here in Busy Woods with a knife and and an underwear and he's going to be fine for he'll he'll he'll be fine. That's called naturalistic. So, when you talk about intelligences, I think you need to to look up the theory of multiple intelligence. The reason I'm telling you that right now is cuz Cody is going to be in high school. You can go online and take these tests and you it's just a bunch of questions and stuff like this and you'll find out what his natural intelligence is and and not to say like, "Hey, Cody, you're interpersonal. You need to be a psychologist." No, but you'll kind of find out and see where he goes with this stuff and it might be interesting for himself.

And just like you had said that it this is about finding those passions also and then fanning them. So that's where like even if somebody got double promoted, there was a kid a Filipino kid that was brilliant that was in my grammar school that almost got double promoted and the social ramifications were enough for the parents to say we're not going to do this right now. Right? And in some ways, yes, I understand that. But other ways were stifling a brilliant mind in some ways, which is not great either.

And if there was an alternative level where maybe so much pressure wasn't put on this age grade co if it if there was five kids a year older and four kids a year younger in a class of 30, it wouldn't be so weird for somebody that happened to just excel at their own level and and that maybe wouldn't hold up kids or slow down kids or they give them a chance to catch up or whatever the case may be. But obviously that's a you know way more complicated. But in the same token, it almost brings me back cuz I just mentioned in the podcast uh with a fitness guy because this is what's so cool about having podcasts and these open discussions and long form because with fitness it's the same thing. There's different body types. You know, some people just have more of a pear-shaped body and some people naturally have more of this body.

So, you might have to routine the the exercise regimen a little bit differently for each person based on, you know, their lifestyle and what works for them or whatever. So why wouldn't why wouldn't it be the same for everything else in life? Of course that makes sense. And and and then the last thing that just to throw another log on the fire is is the idea of god-given talent or or a native ability. Where does this intelligence that you're good at? Yeah. Where does this come from? Right. Is learn behavior passed down? Because there is a good study about the chimpanzees having learned behavior p passed down genetically.

I don't know if you ever read that they were using uh straw as a hunting method of licking it and sticking it in an ant hole or something and getting ants and it was this feeding practice that only this one group of chimpanzees done. And then a infant uh the mother died for this infant that was just born. Never learned that tactic of hunting in any way, shape or form. Was brought into another nursing mother in a community that didn't know that tactic. And when that champ chimpanzeee got of age, it learned it shared that hunting tactic with the rest of the community and they started doing it. Let me let me let me go off that. First of all, let's not confuse what kids passions are with how smart they are in that because just you may be off the charts in say spatial or linguistics, but that may not be your passion.

So let's not assume all kids have their passions in what they're smartest in cuz sometimes they don't. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, they might be bored because it's so easy to them, too. So, that's obviously not going to be a passion if it's boring, but you never know. I I'll give you I'll give you a good example. At any high school I was ever at, you see the basketball triyouts and you see a kid that's uh 5'2, can't dribble, but he wants to be in the NBA. I mean, I I know your passion is kinesiastics. I get all that, but you don't have you're not predisposed to be to to be in the NBA. But here's this is this is interesting. And I'm I know I'm going to get this wrong, but you can you do the reading on this thing. Have you ever heard the theory of the hundth monkey? No. Okay.

So, I'll probably get this wrong, but in the in the mid 1980s, I was kind of um I was I was with a group of people and and we were just it was just an eclectic group of people. We were anywhere from 60 years old all the way down to 18 years old. And we hung out together in Rosemont. We just, you know, we were going to solve the world. we are the world and stuff like that, but we were really against the um the nuclear armorament of the world. We thought it was ridiculous that we had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world a thousand times. Isn't once or twice enough? We need to have a thousand times just in case we didn't get as the first. So, we were really against it. So, but a lot of people would come in and they'd talk to us and they say, "But I'm just one person. What am I going to possibly do with governments?

I I just feel so helpless. And so the theory in the 1980s was the theory of the hundth monkey. This may or may not be correct, but this is what we used to tell people and this is what we understood. Are you are you well? Yeah. Just just to pull it up as an example, the hundth monkey effect is a hypothetical idea that a new behavioral idea can spread rapidly between groups once a critical number of individ individuals adopt it. So this was this was the the theory that they had proposed. two islands. One has 99 monkeys, one has 100 monkeys. On the hund monkey island, one of the monkeys, uh, everybody gets their coconuts and they're spending half the day opening them up.

And one found, one monkey found a coconut in the water, pulls it out and says, "Wow, this is a lot easier to open." Next thing you know, on the 100 monkey island, the second one does it. The third one does it. Pretty soon it's 20, 30, 40. Then all 100 figure out that when you soak the coconuts, it's easier to open than to spend all day. Well, when the scientists were studying both monkeys on different islands, as soon as that hundth monkey figured it out, the next day all 99 of these monkeys on this other island soaked the coconuts without without learning that. So almost wireless once it's a truth, right? Once it's a grand consensus and a unanimous support, then maybe this information could be shared in another way, right? That's the theory. Okay.

Don't know whether it's true, but that and so and so and then people would say and so the the theory would be you may be that hundth monkey that says having this much nuclear disarmament or armament is ridiculous. So join us and we will. So incidentally I wrote a poem called Betty Lewis just on this thing. Betty Lewis was part of our group. She was 64 years old. When I was up in Alaska getting my NBA, she came up there and we were having a couple of beers and just talking. She goes, "I'm going to" and she told me what she was going to do. She was going to jump She was going to go to Missouri and jump this fence and put bird seed on a Minute Man missile silo. And I said, "Betty, you're going to get arrested." She goes, "Yeah, I know.

But if they arrest a grandmother and someone that's got seven kids and a grandmother, then maybe people will look at this and say, what the heck is going on that they're arresting a grandmother and stuff like that?" I go, "You might go to prison." I mean, that's like big stuff. And she's like, "I'm I'm willing to do that." I said, "I'm going to I'm going to join you, Betty." And she goes, "No, you're not." And I go, "Yeah, I am." She goes, "No, you're not. you got your whole life ahead of you and you don't you don't need any of this on your record right now. It just it doesn't feel good with me. So, you're not doing it. So, I'm not going to tell you when I'm doing it. So, you're out of out of the loop.

I said, "Fine." So, anyway, Betty did it, was arrested, spent 6 months in uh a penitentiary, I think in Kentucky, and got out and I met with her after that and stuff like that and she was all happy what she did. But again, if you if you read the poem, you'll understand that. And uh so again, middle of the night, the muse, we talked about the muse. The muse woke me up in the middle of night and said, "Write a poem about Betty Lewis." So, boy, we went on a tangent there, didn't we? Yeah. So, that obviously that's what free will and and part of that um religious and or spiritual scaffolding, whether it's coming from the home or whether it's coming from a high school that you're paying tuition for or whatever the case may be. Understanding the difference of rights and wrongs.

And then the other thing is we talk about talent and learn behavior. Okay? So, if two Olympic swimmers have a kid, chances are that kid's going to be pretty good at swimming right now. It could be a Michael Phelts that there's a genetic a physical disposition that makes them better. His arms are longer. He's got webbed fingers. You know, there's some of that. But why is it that they have this maybe talent and what do we call talent? It might just be that they already kind of know how to do it. So, it's just a little easier for them in some ways, but it's not going to it's not going to discourage them from hard work and having to work those muscles and do and have that drive to be successful at it. But they probably do have an advantage maybe. Well, the advantage of is the parents are there and you're learning from two worldclass athletes.

That as well. Yeah, that is that as well. For sure. And so, so it's almost like I I got some cards around when I was when I was uh 20 years ago. I was dabbling around with magic and doing a few little things and manipulating cards is an interesting world and you could get a book and you can learn all these tactics and all these secrets and all these other things and the reality is is there's 8, 10, 12, 15 different tactics that are most common and used in almost every magic trick out there, right? Mhm. So, you might find that you have the right length fingers and you can manipulate cards a little bit better and learn how to underde all these different things. And you might even consider yourself having a God-given talent for, you know, this this this card game thing. Well, then you have a gift from God, but we still have free will.

So, how do we choose to use that? Now, do I want to cheat my friends at the poker table and have four aces every time, or do I want to entertain people and bring joy to people's lives by doing magic and and baffling them with with with the the awe of of entertainment? So, so we always have those choices, too, which is kind of along that same line, but we could try to get back to Let's get back to the education, the three different types of schools and and so I talked about I talked about all the the the and there's more, I'm sure, on on the private schools, okay? Um they they do tend to spend a lot of their uh energy on sports teams. Their sports teams are usually good. They usually recruit real well um on that. Uh they are lealian in nature the background. So so the the negative side let's go with the the the most challenging side. Okay.

On on private education number one number one is a lot of times in like St. Pats was been around since 1861. Okay. We moved over to Belmont and Austin in 1959. So a lot of the time they had free labor. They don't have free labor now. Okay? Because a lot of the Christian brothers, I think brother David is still there, but he may be the last of Christian brother. Wonderful. He he touches hearts all the time. Um but that so they they don't have a lot of money to pay their staff. Okay. Their staff I believe the start and this is could be wrong right now, but I think their starting salary might be 36 maybe $40,000 a year. I'm guessing it could be a little lower, could be a little higher. So, they can't afford to pay their staff real well. So, after a couple of years, what happens?

Now, I lasted 13 years there, but after a couple of years, they start to look around. They say, "You know what? I can go to Taft. I can go to any one of these or they could outsource to the suburbs that are paying well." Well, even even the Chicago public I think the Chicago public schools right now starts a new teacher at 58. And so, that's a big jump. That's like $1,500 a month in in extra funds. And so they start to look around. So they lose a lot of their new teachers that are that are better teachers. Okay? And and and not that they're los they're bad teachers, but I used to love getting a a a private school teacher with four or five years experience cuz now they've got the experience and I've got like a a road tested teacher as far as classroom management goes too, which is which is really important.

And then I could bring them on at a new teacher salary. Okay. So that's one of So they lose a lot of their really good teachers and so their turnover rate and that might be something you might want to ask you know I wouldn't ask it in in front of everybody because you don't want to embarrass the principal or anything but in the side like what is your turnover rate because your turnover rate might be 25 30 40% every year you constantly turnurning in these new teachers here that are really you're almost training them for the next gig which is for their exactly for their next gig. And so that's one of their challenges right there to keep really good teachers when they know that the the market right there can they can go somewhere else. So they're so they have constant turnover like that.

The next thing is the price when you're looking at at $1,500 a month. What I used to always tell my parents I haven't gotten to the pros and cons of select enrollment or Taft yet, but I used to say go to Taft and pretend you're going to one of the private schools and put that $1,500 away every month. If you can afford it, do it. And then by the time, and this was my big my big thing in in the in the uh open houses, I said, "This is when you do it. You're going to have $80,000 in the bank and collecting interest for four or five years, and when your daughter gets married, you're going to be all dressed up. You're going to be looking down the aisle at everybody at you and whisper in your daughter's ear, "Mom and dad bought you a house." That's what you do with that money. And people would be like, "Yeah, like that." Because that's a lot.

You know, I I could tell that we're both crazy people here because I my brain obviously, you know, sometimes thinks exactly the same way, but I I I shifted it a little bit in a difference because one of the one of the draws to one of the schools, I won't even name which one it was or whatever, had a better engineering kind of classroom and they had a better 3D printer and they had a better um um uh something along those lines that was an interest to my son, right? And then so I was like, "Oh, so then I have to go there." Well, at $1,500 a month, I could donate a $4,000 3D printer to a public high school, possibly if they have the room and the resources and the security or protection and all that kind of stuff that goes along with it.

But wouldn't that make sense to just spend four grand on something to donate to the school to make it better as opposed to this is the reason? Yeah. So, that was an interesting thought. By the way, Taft has uh four 3D printers and a really wonderful robotics program, but also Lane does too. So, I mean, I I I'm going to I'm just going to keep it honest with this broadcast. I'm not I'm not in education anymore. I'm just going to I'm just going to tell it like it is. And so, um I love it. So, so that's your that's your that's your private schools right there. Um and again, I'm a product of St. Pats, so I have my own heart there and stuff like that, but I I believe the pros and cons. I think there's a better option. Okay.

So, let's go with select enrollment schools because a lot of people are like, "What's with the select enrollment schools?" So, can you Yeah. Can you explain the different names of the different schools and kind of what that even means? Cuz I sure don't know. Right. So on so on the northwest side here, okay, like I I'm going to I'm going to just tell like it is. Okay. On the northwest side, you you have options. Northwest uh North Side College Prep is considered one of the best schools in the country. Okay? Because they have something that it goes a lot of people uh because it's US News and World Report. Okay? Whitney Young is up there, too. Whitney Young's usually in the top if if we're looking at the best in Illinois if they ranked them by and a lot of people go by US News and World Report.

Um the schools that are usually on there is usually going to be Northside or Payton's going to be one or two. Okay. Then you got Whitney Young and Jones are going to be three and four and maybe Lane three, four and five. And those flip every year. Okay. But it's usually North Side and Payton one and two. And then you have New Trier uh Stevenson and you have a lot of the public schools. Okay. the numbers a little skewed. Okay, understand that because a they get to handpick every one of their kids. So, it's not apples to apples right away. So, Taft is never going to be in the same conversation with that. Also, their special eds departments are a little bit skewed. And when I say that, one out of every four kids at Taft is a special ed kid. Okay, that's 25%.

There was a time when back in the day some of the select enrollment schools didn't have a quota which they have to which they had to have. So they would have two or 3% okay of their of special ed kids. But look at how they pick them. North side I believe had um autistic kids which could be off the charts brilliant and considered special ed. Whitney Young would have deaf and heart of hearing kids which could be off the charts smart. Okay. Whereas Taft doesn't have that. They have any we take anybody in our building. Okay. So, we're automatically going to have, for lack of a better term, an anchor of the test scores of these special ed kids. Okay? So, it's a it's kind of a rigged game, but a lot of people go by that number. And again, I worked at Whitney Young for eight years. A wonderful school. Okay?

So, those are what you're going to try to get into. And up here, a lot of people try to get into Lane. Uh, North Side, I think, would be the two ones they want to try to get into. Okay. Um the other the let's go with the positives of them. Okay. Well, let's how do you get in it? Okay. So, what's going to happen is you're going to take a test um and it's going to be in your senior year, but what they're going to do, it's kind of like odd, okay? If you want to get in, there's there's a program called um um academic centers. Okay? Taft has an academic center, Lane has an academic center, Whitney Young has an academic center. Those are for seventh kids. seventh and eighth grade kids. It's supposed to be for gifted kids. There's a difference between a gifted kids and a kid that's just really smart and does school real well.

I think in those programs, you might have 20% of kids that are actually gifted. I mean, when you meet a gifted kid, you're like, whoa. You know, like if if I saw at Whitney Young one of the gifted kids in the in the academic center or even at Taft and they were gifted and I would say and I caught them in the hallways acting up or something, I'd say go to the dean. they would start spouting constitutional law from the 1700s as to why I shouldn't. That's how brilliant these kids are. But there's also kids that are really good at school and they're smart and they do well and they're focused. And so that's what an academic center is, seventh and eighth grade. And they're usually about 150 kids in each class, seventh and eighth grade. So that's not for Cody right now because he's too old.

If you were going to get into that program, you would apply in sixth grade because it's a seventh and eighth grade program. But they would look at it's always odd numbers. your fifth grade test scores and um your grades, okay? Test scores and grades in fifth grade to get into that seventh and eighth grade program. It's only the best of the best that are going to get in there. If you want to get into a select enrollment school as a high schooler, they're going to look at odd number seventh grade test scores and grades. And then you're also going to take a test. Each one of those is worth 300 points. Okay?

to get into a north side you're going to so it's going to be so you're going to seventh grade grades if you got all A's you're probably going to get 300 points you got a B on there you might get two 90 or something like that okay so and then you got your test scores and then you got the test you're actually going to take so it's actually 300 300 300 900 points used to be a th000 points they used to count attendance for 100 points but kids were going to class the next day they would have their appendix out because they want their chances ruined. Okay. So, they they they stopped the whole uh attendance thing. So, now it's 900 points. So, to get in, if Cody had really good grades, decent test scores, and then he does well, the best you can get is 900 points.

To get into North Side College Prep, I think they're going to take anybody that is above 980. Okay? So, that's really tough to get into. And they got their pick and they're going to turn a lot of people away. Okay. Whitney Young, uh, Lane, Jones, and I should say North Nside, and Payton probably above 980. Might even be 990 as far as I know. The other three, the other four schools, Whitney, Young, Jones, um, Lane Tech, it's probably going to be down to 950, maybe a little higher, 960. Okay. To get into Taft, first of all, if you're in my neighborhood, you're in. Okay. um you to get into the IB program, which is a whole different program. It's like a program inside of Taft. It's the best of the best high school degree you can get. You might need to get above 940 to get in. Okay? It might be a little higher right now.

It depends where it goes. So, that's how you get into a select enrollment school. Okay? So, say you're into a select enrollment school. Here's the here's the good things about it, and this is why I'm from a neighborhood school, but I would advocate that we need select enrollment schools because um but people would say, "Mark, but if there was no select enrollment schools, that means all those kids from your neighborhood that went to all those select enrollment schools would now have to go to Taft and that would increase your test scores." And I'd be like, "Yeah, but I'm I'm I want what's best for each individual kid, right? Not what's best for Taft." I mean obviously if I was for test I wouldn't want that. Yes, of course. Let's get rid of but it's not best for a whole segment of our population that thrives on putting smart kids together.

Okay. So this is one of the the advocates I I'll advocate for select enrollment schools. If you were from our neighborhood and you didn't get into a select enrollment school, it's no big deal. You can go to Taft and take every one of those classes because I've got 4,500 kids there, which means I have 300 teachers, which means I'll have every one of those classes that was over there. Every AP class you want to take, I'll have it at Taft. However, if you get a kid from another neighborhood in Chicago that didn't get into, say, Whitney Young, they got to go back there. Their high school does not have all those AP classes. They just don't have the clientele to take it. You can't fill it. you got to fill it with at least 25 or 30 kids to to run a viable class. You can't have five kids in a class. So now those kids are at a disadvantage.

So this is why select enrollment schools are really good in Chicago that you need it because you need to bring those kids together because they thrive and it's unbelievable. It's it's the epitome of being a great just if you want to see how education real education can thrive and and and crackle go into a select school. Okay. So, those are some of the really good parts about it. Okay. The negative sides that I saw about it is now you've got kids that have trying to get into the school their whole life. In fact, you you asked me what was one of the best things about that I've done at Taft. I told you the numbers. I haven't told you about Freshman on track. Freshman on track used to be like 85%. I couldn't get on to it. Now, it's like 98%.

Which means every kid when they start as a freshman, they they leave 98 out of a hundred of our kids when they start as freshman, they're walking the stage. That's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And I think that has something to do with our freshman academy. But you look at Whitney Young Jones, they may be 93 94% 95. North side pay maybe 98%. I I So it's really good. St. Pat's not like that. St. Pats might be ask them what their freshman on track is because they lose a lot of kids either because they can't afford it anymore, right? Or um St. Pat has drug testing. Maybe I maybe I smoked a joint with some of my friends and now I'm kicked out, which is not the Lelian way, but again, I'm losing it. So ask the principal or whoever's there on the on the side, what's your freshman on track? What are you doing to keep these kids?

Well, maybe a more affluent family might should decide to up and move to Texas or something along those lines, but so there's a lot of variables for sure. Right. So the the negative side of of the select enrollment school is say Cody is like off the charts. He's 900. He's in to North Side, Whitney Young, one of these schools. Okay. However, when he walks into a school, he's walking into uh at Whitney Young, I'll just go with Whitney Young, 500 kids as a freshman. Um there's 500 Cody's in there. Yeah. You're not top dog like you were in your class before. You ain't You might not even be top dog. You might be bottom 10%. For sure. And so what does that do to their ego? If you have a son or a daughter that can take that, like listen, you ain't going to walk in as the big dog now.

You ain't going to walk in there like you may have come from a grammar school where it just where it wasn't rigorous to where you know how to do it and you could do it real quick and you you were you know like really encouraged it and whatever and you got a phone if you whatever you did. Yeah. If you could feed off that motivation you're in a good place. But if you if you're discouraged and become become depressed or something else then it could be a challenge for sure. Well you may have come from a school where you got good grades because you played school well. You knew how to play the game. Mhm. You smile at the teacher and maybe you're even smart, but now you're going to school with kids that are really smart. And so, are you going to be able to keep up with them or are you not?

Are we going to be at the therapist three times a week because I just can't keep up and I got all this pressure on me. If you have a son or a daughter that is coal and they're going to become a diamond, good for you. But if you have one that's cold that's going to burn up, it might be something to think about. So, that's something to really think about on that education. But I do believe asking a neighborhood school uh principal, I think we we always need to have select enrollment school because it's really good. Okay, it makes a lot of sense. It also it also is nice as a bragging point for Chicago when you got like the top five schools in Illinois are your schools. That's also look nice if you break it up. It's not going to be like that. You're never going to compete with the new or Stevensons or whoever else is going to be up there.

So yeah, I mean at one point I did consider a move to the Denver area and and and I was trying to compare, you know, Colorado schools with, you know, Illinois schools and sometimes you got to find that right website even that is going to kind of compare them on a fair basis. Who wrote the website? Yeah. So, I mean, and and I was seeing like B+ ratings for some of the local schools in the area in Colorado and then like even um Orland Park and and and was like a B rating here in Illinois. So, you're like, "Oh, wow. Is there schools better out there?" Whatever. But, you know, there's so many different variables here.

And that's why I love the perspective you're given for sure because you know even sports as a as as a thing it's like it's obviously there's so many benefits for for sports for hard work discipline you know uh pushing the line you know pushing harder you know all these sorts of things that can transfer into other areas so it's very fascinating for sure. Well, one of the um one of the points of of the school, I mean, you asked me before what was one of the the best things about Taft and and I want to kind of do a little bragging on this. Myself and my team, we we it's we did I think we did such a great job in the last 10 years and and Ryan uh Glowitz over at Taff right now. Keep it going because he's amazing. He's going to be Dr. Glowitz on March 17th.

But just to keep it going, um, I used to like, you remember I told you what my mom did for a living. I'm going to touch you. What did my mom do for a living? Teacher, no. But andician and real estate agent. Okay. So, she was a real estate agent on the northwest side here. And so, I still know some real estate agents up here who knew my mom and they would say, "Mark, when I list a house on the northwest side, I put in Taff's boundaries." Yeah. which is huge. It's a selling point now. It is a selling point now. So much so that property values have increased on the northwest side more than they have in other areas of Chicago because I feel like Taft because they choose it. They choose safety, which we have, schools and access to park districts and and you know, you got Bunker Hill over here, you got Busy Woods.

So, it's a nice area to grow up in here. But I really feel like that was one of the areas right here. When we got our freshman academy about five years ago, the area over there where if you were if you had a house in that area, your school was Steymits. Okay, Steyets is kind of like Taft in the early 2000s. They're turning it and they're doing a good job, but they're still a couple years away and and they'll get there. If it was up to me, I would turn them into a trade school. I think that would be beautiful in that area. Like you walk in, you're going to be what do you want to be? Electrician, plumber, HVAC, uh carpenter. Which one? You pick the path. you're still going to get a high school degree. And I think I think we can do a really good job with Steyix if we did that.

I I think it would just it would have to be almost like one of those magnet schools that that was the choice as to go there. That wasn't just the neighborhood kid that's forced to go there because again, you need that option. So like for me, I went to I chose to go to Holy Cross High School in River Grove, right? And and as a as an option uh that my parents provided for me. But when I I was at Cicero and Diversity and I took the Cicero bus to Belmont and I took the Belmont bus west to to to St. Pat no past Foreman past Weber past St. Pats that was a crowded bus line going westbound and very diverse to say the least going past these different schools in in in you know 91 or whatever. Um so that was interesting too just to have the perspective from all that diversity which is you know amazing. Um but yeah go ahead.

Um with um so so those numbers increased um so so property valley increased around. Oh right. So so basically I guess my my closing point was the just this idea of marketing and branding. So so this is what it's about that it's something that it's it's it's an asset to the community as opposed to a draw down like some people might think. think they don't want to be next to some public high school with all the drugs and all the gangbangers and all the tr crime and trouble and fights and and noise and all this other stuff. Um, and that's not necessarily the case today. So along with the freshman academy, one other thing that I don't know if I succeeded on, but I threw I threw the ideas out there as something to do without wanting any credit towards not only my union.

I'm the a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which sounds sounds awesome, but it's it's pretty much machinists. Mhm. Um but when they were building that high school, the the freshman academy, they were also building a a city of Chicago fleet service facility right next door. Right. Mhm. And I said, you know, you could probably get with the international and get some money for a training center and start an apprenticeship program and have some of these high school kids go right into a city job working on squad cars or something, right? And and I was like, this is just stupid not to do this. Well, see the problem with that, Carl, is that everybody wants that title or I did this or No, everybody wants everybody wants the trade school, but not for their kid, for your kids.

But I I know that I know that's starting to change now, but it really is. It is. I really do feel that change happening a lot. And I just mentioned, you know, somebody else just mentioned like if your kid is second year in college and says he wants to drop out of college and and start his own plumbing business, the most parents are going to say, "Are you crazy?" Um, and I think that maybe it's shifting a little bit. I know from my experience, again, I I ended up in the trades. I worked with a plumbing company for 15 years part-time kind of on the side. All Northshore stuff, Kennallorth, Wana, the highest incomes in in the whole country in one area with Kennallorth or some of these different high-end communities up there.

And the awesome benefit of it was I'd be able to see these fu, you know, some of these interior designers come in and do this crazy stuff. And some of it you're like, "This is crazy." and other stuff you're like, "Wow, that actually worked. I didn't think those two colors would work. It's pretty amazing." And then under count, you know, some of the different high-end stuff that you can do for a quarter of the cost by yourself or whatever. As you can see, my basement doesn't look too bad with, you know, the cord solid core doors and different things, but spatially it's okay. Yeah. And so, so the interesting thing with with that was every single tradesman on those job sites on that Northshore all had college degrees.

Well, here here tell me if I'm wrong what I used to tell my kids because then when they when I'd walk down the hallways I'd say where you going to college where you going to college and they would say you know this that and then I would get the kids I'm going to be an electrician and they and they thought that would be the conversation stopper and they could walk by me and I'm like well okay where you going to college well I'm not I just told you I'm going to be an electrician. I said I know but let me bring you to my office and we talk. So, this is the story I would tell these kids. And I've told it a thousand times, and you're going to see how easy the story comes out of me, how many times I've told it. So, you tell me if I'm right or wrong by telling these kids these stories for the last 10 years.

I'd say what's going to happen is you become a plumber, electrician, HVAC. You're going to go out there and you're going to make some, it's going to take you a little time to apprentice and stuff, but pretty soon you're going to be making some good money. Maybe making 50 to $70,000 a year, and you're going out there and you're and you're going to be in a company, and all of a sudden, the company's going to say, "Hey, listen. We need somebody to work half the time in the office and half the time out on the street. And so we need somebody with a little bit of college to understand some business. If you've got an associates degree or a college degree in like business, you just plop that down. Now you're in the office half the time. You're outdoors half the time, but you're making $20,000 more a year.

If not, they're going to give it to some one-year guy that's still sticking a fork in the in the outlet when he goes out there, and he's going to get the office job making $20,000 more than you, and he doesn't know anything. That's the reality. Have I been lying to my kids or not? No. Okay, that's what I tell them. So, real world experience obviously, you know, we could pick on obviously we love educators at Flipside Frolic.

this is why you're here and and but the you know those that those that you know or what what's that line like those that those that can't teach or you know it's just ridiculous you know and in in in some ways people are giving back that experience that can help and and and and in in in so many different ways but real world experience for an engineer for somebody designing a car if you want to be an engineer and you never worked on a car that's like the old school thing you can see YouTube videos up off the charts about how much mechanic hate engineers cuz why would you put the starter here when you can't even get it out easily? You don't understand some of those basic principles.

And anybody that could step back and have a more bird's eye view of the bigger picture is obviously going to be way above um their potential for their client that don't have that information. And again, maybe you want to learn a little bit of business and how to run your own business and be your own boss, control your own hours, make your own living instead of just working for the man. If you want to get into a unit apprentichip program and just be an electrician your whole life and maybe go into a foreman and reel or whatever, you can make an unbelievable life, you know, giving opportunities to your kids and and being a man and supporting a family or whatever your definition of what success is, of course, as well.

So, there's all those different avenues and and and and we can't discourage kids from fanning that flame if that's something that they feel they want to do. But but like you said, if you want to one day have your own hot dog place, obviously go get a job at Chen and Juds, right? See if you like it. You know, see if you like it. See how to make a hot dog. See how they can run an efficient business and still be in business for 35 years selling hot dogs. You know what I mean? And and so that's any biography of anybody. It's like R&D. What does it stand for? You know, sometimes people would say research and development and other sides people would say rip off and duplicate. Mhm.

But we're not saying to be unethical about stealing people's proprietary information and knowledge, but if you want to learn how to do something, find the best people in the industry and do it. Because, you know, one thing that threw me back to a a story you told recently earlier about a profess a professor from Harvard that came to talk at a university. Now kids, Howard Gardner, now kids listening, this advice was given to me and yet I never followed it because that's what most kids do. They hear all kinds of [censored] and they never listen. They don't have the ability. But they said every time you go hear one of those speakers talk that is in an area that interests you. Take an index card, write down their name, where they're from, what briefly what they talked about.

Because if you want to be an expert in the field, and if that field is an interest to you and you go see the experts in the industry that are coming to visit your university, it's pretty likely you're going to be across the interview table from one of those people at some time. And if you can come back and say, you know what, in ' 91, you spoke at Northeastern and University. I really liked what you said about this, that, and the other. Boom, you're in. Right. It's amazing that those little things that can make the difference on that interview table that separate you from the pack um being an Eagle Scout or you know some of these other things because any 18-year-old that achieved anything is so much different than most. So those are certain types of things that obviously are going to affect your career.

You know my my first my first couple of maybe my first year when I would talk to people or kids I'd say you know we are you going to be a you know where you going to go? Are you going to be a doctor lawyer? And then I kept adding on to that. I'm like, "Doctor, are you going to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher?" Then I would say, "Doctor, lawyer, engineer." Then I would say, "Well, you going to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or own your own plumbing firm?" And I would keep adding on because I didn't want people to think I either had to be a doctor or a lawyer because you hear that like you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer. Well, those those both those fields, you know, you want to be a proctologist or you want to be a, you know, a divorce lawyer all your life and just be around miserable people. That's those aren't fun jobs, right?

So, you know, there's all other jobs that that interest you. Let's let's move on to the I got I think I'm halfway done here. So, I've done pro and con of private. I've done pro of select enrollment school and I did one con of it is that you're not going to walk in as the top dog maybe. Okay. The other con too is you have to take in the travel on the northwest side here because if you're going to go to north side, not as far as say like a lane or Whitney Young. Whitney Young's not bad. I used to being living here. I would take the blue line and you get off at H Hallstead and I would take it a couple times a year and beyond with some of my kids just to see what they were going through. Uh Jones is downtown.

So these these you have to you have to factor in the fact that it may be as much as 10 hours of traveling time every week that they could be doing sports clubs activities or studying. So So pay attention to that. Yeah. Even if it's an afterchool club, it's still a benefit as opposed to sitting on the blue line dealing with the best that Chicago has to offer. Right. And I I know people, well, they'll study on the on the L. They don't. Nobody studies on the L. You just look That's right. You can't even Yeah. And And we have a safer I think we have a safer uh public than New York, but still you're still your eyes are open and it's just it's just not that way. So that's a con too that you need to look at. Okay. For travel. Yeah. Yeah. And and maybe some kids. And then there's I had one friend that kind of liked it.

He's like, you know, it's uh it's like a sense it's Randy. He's like my son is on L. It's like a sense of independence for him. He likes that. So no, it's like riding a bike. You've got this freedom. You could go anywhere. You could stop and get a sandwich and it's it's very independent. But that needs to get talked about at the kitchen table, too, for sure. Okay. So, let's go to Taft now. Okay. Now, Taft, understand I I I'm I'm going to give you pros and cons on it. Okay. Taft is a neighborhood school. It's one of the best schools in Chicago. So much so that like when we had the freshman academy built, uh my assistant principal at the time, who's now the principal, Ryan, was at a party in Lake Forest. He went to school out there and he was with some developers.

He's like, "When that school when we when we heard that that freshman academy was going up in that neighborhood and it was changing from high schools, you were going to have Taft District, we were buying up homes and we were we made a killing on it because they knew the property value was immediately going up because the brand of Taft and I think that's one area it's it's if someone would ever interviewed me on what a good principal needs to be and if you considered me a good principal, I would say they need to market their schools. You don't need you need a marketer more than an educator. Okay? I don't like curriculum. I hire people that love curriculum that fall asleep at night with a curriculum book on their chest because they love it. I'm not particularly about curriculum. I have experts at at Taft.

I have 300 teachers that are experts in their curriculum. I don't need to be. So, I let them do their thing. But I'm a marketer and I'm a businessman. So, I'm the brand of Taft is very important to me. That's why I made the school look real nice. Yeah, the merch is cool. Everything Everything's cool. So, you got to brand. So, that So, you got to brand it. So, one of the really the great things about Taff number one is it's a neighborhood school and it's big. A lot of people, oh, it's so big. It's not. Understand this. 95 to 98% of the time, your kid is in a classroom. And that classroom is going to be anywhere from 25 to 30 kids. May have 31 or 32 in there, but he's going to have another one with 24. So, usually about 28. 28 is the is the union what they want to have in there. It's not mandated.

28 is suggested, but you could go as high as 34 if you needed to, but you're going to be 95% that's where you're going to be. Hallways are a little crowded getting in between classes. That's usually about the first couple of weeks of school until people find out, oh, there's another way I can get to class. I don't have to go through this narrow hallway. So, it's a little crowded in there. The beauty of Taft with 4,500 kids is you've got 300 teachers and these teachers all have different um abilities and interests. So, you have so many clubs. I think we have like 90 different clubs. Any club you want, you can have. I have we had a Play-Doh club. It was uh your your brother's uh daughter. I I walked up to him and they and and I was this is a strange story. I walked up to them.

and they were in the in the cafeteria and it was all like the goth kids and they were all just you could tell that it was like they were in their crew and I walked up there and it was your your brother's daughter and I said and I sat down there like what's up Mr. G I said I got an idea that all of us share something and like what's that I go I bet at one time all of us at one time in our life tasted play-doh and they're like yes we all did yes cuz I know every kid did. So anyway, so I said, "We're going to form the Play-Doh Club." And so I got t-shirts and and I said, "We're going to form the Play-Doh Club." Got a bunch of t-shirts and one day I went up there and just ploped the box on the on the lunchroom table and they were now the Play-Doh Playboy or the Playdoh Club.

So again, I'm just one person that does that, but think of 300 other teachers that have it. We have a wonderful robotics team. We have any we have a Palestinian club. Any any kind of ethnicity. So that's really good about it. Okay. We also have the IB program. And let me explain the IB. First of all, if you go to Taft, Taft is an IB school. Okay, this is what an IB school is. And this is the brilliance of this was Rahm Emanuel that brought this here. An IB school is it was formed in 1969 by a bunch of uh United States diplomats or might have been world diplomats. I'm not I'm not sure the exact, but they said, you know what, we're traveling all over the United States and we go to a school in Paris and we get this education. We go to a school in Dubai, we get this one. We go over here in New York, we get this one. And they're all different.

So they had like a standard curriculum for IB, okay? And they also had IB attributes, which means every kid, we want every kid to be a communicator, a risk taker, okay? Reflective. These 10 different which are which if you as a parent looked at it for Cody like, yeah, I want them to have all 10 of those. That's that's what I want. So So every kid that goes to Taft is an IB kid. Okay? Because an IB is more like they get teachers to collaborate with each other, which means they can get to go. They're like, I'm having problems with Cody and he's just kind of shutting down. Oh, you know what? Cody just lost the bowling tournament. He was ranked number one. Really? I didn't know that about. And so they can talk to each other about each individual kid. And they also their subjects are are kind of mirrored together.

So if I'm going to talk about in the music department, we may talk about uh music in the Roaring 20s where jazz started. I'm not sure if it started in the 20s, but where it was developed. Then in another class, in history class, we're talking about the 1920s and we're talking about Wilson and we're talking about Hoover. So everything kind of mirrors each other. So that's that's a beauty about IB uh an IB school and and right now I believe Taft is the fourth largest IB school in the world. Okay? But they also have the IB program and this is the program you test into. Okay? This is the best of the best high school degree. And when I say that, a lot of experts have told me it's it's a better degree since it's an international degree than any of the select enrollment schools.

In fact, University of Chicago came out with a study about eight years ago that says you don't need to go to a select enrollment school to get into any school of your choice. You don't need that. Um, and so if you get into this program, it's really tough to get into. You're kind of in a cohort. So you get the beauty of kind of what St. Pats had where you kind of had like a smaller class size, you know, like a a module. You get the beauty of what um Whitney Young had or North Side where you're with all the best of the best and then you're also in a big school where you can have a lot of interest.

Well, like one of the selling points at Notre Dame was because of their Notre Dame College uh brothers and Notre Dame College and their their feeding program was a big selling point for them that they were able to to get you into some of these other schools that really respected the Notre Dame degree or or diploma, so to speak. Notre Dame what? High school. High school. Yeah. I don't know anything about that. Well, that that that was at just at their open house and something that they were selling that they that that that they can get they had connections to get some of the kids in some of these schools maybe that they normally wouldn't be able to or there was preferential treatment of some kind or whatever. They don't that's a lie.

That is No, I know it's a lie and and and I get it, but I'm just I'm not going to sit here and tell you that, you know, they may have, you know, if if one of their counselors went to Notre Dame University, maybe he's got an in or something like that, and that may be what they're they're doing. One of one of the negative side of the private schools we have up here is they don't understand special education. I think I don't they don't have a special education department. They don't have the funding for that. So, I think they lack on that. They may have changed the last couple years. That I don't know. But I mean, special ed is is an area that I think is more and more kids need special ed uh programs right now, and I think they kind of lack on that.

So, I hope in the next couple years that they do beef up their program and actually have a special ed program. I don't think Notre Dame um can actually call it an IEP because they're not really doing an IEP. They have to call it something different. So, I would ask them if if any if you're out there right now and you have kids that have special ed needs, talk to them. And again, I don't want you to embarrass the speaker in front of everybody. Don't do that. Pull them aside and say, "My kid has special needs. What kind of department do you have?" So hopefully they've increased that. It's been my experience over the last couple years where where places like like Taft, our special ed department is, you know, we have a thousand kids that are special ed.

I mean, if you have 800 kids in the whole school of the 300, you know, 150 graduating class, then the statistics are going to say that you're going to have low special needs or whatever. And if you do are a special needs parent, then obviously you're seeking out the best programs for special needs. And Taft or something with a larger, you know, a larger pool of of students is more than likely going to have a higher percentage of those as well. Right. I I've also had experiences with with some of the uh the private schools that have offered kids scholarships because they're really good athletes and then the next year they've pulled them. Yeah. And and then you're stuck.

and you're stuck because you're now your kid has a year of friendships and everything and then and next thing I know they're at at Taft and they've you know they got a year under their belt but now they kind of have to start over again. So again if if if a private school is going to offer you a scholarship say can you put it on paper for four years and then and then that'll be honest. It really would be and then and obviously they can't because if you just suck at golf after two years and you can't even make the team I can't keep you a scholarship. I'm just going to say that's kind of suspicious if you can't do that. So I mean if you if you do it then I'm wrong and and good for you. Yeah, for sure. Makes sense. And so, uh, so those those are great things about Taft.

Um, I think Oh, the other one more negative side on the select enrollment schools is the kids come from all over the the city. So, there's really not a lot of camaraderie that goes on. Whereas at St. Pats, the private schools, a lot of the kids come from the neighborhoods, same schools. So, that's one of the reasons why they click together. whereas that when you have a north side, a um Whitney Young. So, they're from all over the city. So, there's not a lot of camaraderie after school. Yeah. If you're catching the first bus to get back to the other side of the city to try to beat traffic, you're not going to be hanging out at the local malt shop and just hanging with your friends or Exactly. hopefully staying out of trouble and all that other stuff.

Whereas the private schools really have that on the select enrollment schools where the kids kind of know each other. They're walking home together and stuff like that. But I also believe Taft has that too for sure. a lot of they're all my kids. I mean, I just I went to Dino's. I saw one of my kids. I was walking out a kid that came out of trios. Mr. G, how you doing? So, everybody kind of knows each other up here, too. So, so that's one of the selling points about Taft. Okay. And and not to get too sidetracked, obviously, but the the neighborhood aspect of Chicago is something that it it could get into a whole another area with racism and with all these different things because my whole life, it always seemed to be something that was branded and something that Chicago was proud of with our neighborhoods and our culture, right?

with the the south side of Chicago being the African-American community and the west side being the Latino community with Pilson and with with uh cultural museums and and restaurants and all these different things. So you could truly tour the world by going to Little Italy or Chinatown or or the Pilson or the Southside and get some soul food and and and and it was such a benefit to Chicago and and and they just have to control the crime and the gangs obviously and to to to maintain that in a sense because you're losing some of that when they diversify everything to the point that there is no culture left. Yes, we're all Americans. Yes, we're proud to be an American. It's say it's okay to say you're proud to be an American. You don't have to say you're proud of everything the country's done or whatever the case may be.

And but you can also be proud of your heritage and your culture and have that as part of the community. So I believe that local community and and and you know is is important. You know you think globally but act locally you know all these same sort of premises for a better world all starts at that community level. So being close to the community is important. Well, I I also think I mean that's kind of one of the negative sides of the of the of the um private schools on the northwest side here is the diversity. You're not going to have a lot of diversity. When you go to Taft, you're going to get you're going to get kids in the hallway with wheelchairs. You're going to get every nationality denomination. You're going to get them all. And that's what the real world is like.

So, it's not sticker shock when you walk out into the real world and go, "What the heck's going on here?" So when you go to a place like select enrollments can be I mean they have certain uh you know with their zip codes that go on and stuff like this they can take kids from different neighborhoods. So so they're a little bit more diverse than the than the private schools I believe but Taft I think in in all neighborhood schools or most neighborhood schools are are more diverse on on everything. So I think that's a selling point. I really do. I think that's there's no question that just being around it is something that's important. Of course we grow up I grew up a little bit more on in a predominantly white neighborhood. It's just their own diversity and but at that time we had some we had definitive lines.

You went south and North Avenue was an African-American community. If you went east of the railroad tracks, you had more Latino and then that also stipulated which gangs you were involved with or or were in the area. And it just so happened that you know gaylords or jousters were predominantly white gangs. And if you're in an area that was predominantly the same gang, as long as you found a way to deal with those gang bangers in in some ways and maybe got picked on a little here and there or whatever, but if you chose not to become a gang member, there was still always those choices. You know, you know what's weird about that, Carl, is when I grew up and I was about I was a generation older than you. So I'm a high school 79 and you're uh what year degrad? 91. Okay. So we're about one one generation apart.

But when I grew up on the northwest side of Chicago, you were your park district or you So I was a Rosedale boy. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And then we had Anaheim Boys and you had the Gumper Park and you had Clarin Park. Yeah. The neighborhood names were based on the local park more. And you know what's weird is that I was just about couple months ago, I just got off the phone with Jim Jacobs. Jim Jacobs is a a Taft alumni grad. He wrote the movie Greece, the musical Greece. And so I was talking to him. We were talking about neighbors. He says, "Mark, you know what? When I went to school in the ' 50s, you were you were named after the malt shop you hung around with." Wow. So, you would be like Jimmy's whatever Jimmy's hot dog stand over here.

And that's how And I was like, "Wow." It's so it's it's always a group and it's just the the what changes is the zip code or not really the zip code, but the name of the institution or the hangout place, whether you were a wave bowl guy or whether you were whatever the case may be. Rosale Boy, you met there at 7 o'clock on a Friday. Everybody met there and then you took off from there. Yeah. We didn't have pagers and cell phones and we you had to know where people were going cuz you didn't know where they were going once you left the house an hour later. Carl, I'm 79. I had a CB radio. Okay. So that was I have a CB radio. So don't tell me we didn't know where we were at. I'm in a I'm a hand radio club guy. You're a ham guy. I I love some of the old school, you know, clubs that that you know we got to keep alive in some ways.

But that's Let me be fair because people are going to say you ended the podcast and and you did finish the last point. Yeah. You didn't say we can't leave the ape hangers out there for come back next week. I know. No, but you Mark, you left the negative side of Taft out there and it's not negative. These are all challenges that they all school. There's not there's not a positive negative there. You just need to do it. So, Taft, if I was going to say if I was going to uh kind of just show you some of the challenges we have is that sometimes you have kids that it's it's their default school and they're really not into education. So there, so you could be around some kids that just aren't into education and and they they don't see the value of it and and most of the time it's their parents don't see the value into it.

I'm not I'm not trying to say anybody's bad. I'm just telling you what the situation is. Like I I had a kid uh um give you a good example. I won't tell you his name, but it's um walking down the hallway and he called me a a bad term. And I said, "What' you say?" And he he said, "Are you deaf?" I and he said it again and so I didn't I didn't dial it up there because that's old school. You don't dial it up and I just so I got his name and I went in the office and I looked him up and he he had a he's a tough life and he's living with his grandparents right now. Okay. And I and I talked to some counselors and I found out his backtory. He's got a he's got a rough back. That doesn't mean I let him go. He still had to come in the office and we still talked about Yeah. And he respected that.

And and then before before long I'd say, "This is my office over here. Stop by." And so he'd peek by. Hey, Mr. G, what's up? And I say, hey, come on in. What's going on? And we talk a little bit. Never never anything like that. And then I hear in the hallways, you know, he's he's in the hallways over here and stuff like that. So I I walk over there. What's up? Hey, what's up, Mr. G? Can you come with me, man? You got I'm like, why you causing problems? What's going on here? I don't And a lot of times they don't they I'll be honest with you, um is they're not going to class because they don't see the value in the class or they or they feel disrespected in some way. Okay. So, I always I always tell the teachers like if they're not going to your class, what what are you doing in class?

I mean, I I would hope that you'd want the kids to get to your class and it's not an excuse, but there's it's not always their fault completely. So, there's there's a nuance. It's not always the teacher's fault either, but I mean, but I I I gave the benefit out that most teachers are trying to have a relevant lesson that the kids are going to want to be there for it, but sometimes it's not. And so, you got to take that into consideration. But a lot of times it's just the kids just don't see the value in education. They want to walk around the hallways. So you're going to have some of that. Okay. So it's not like like I don't remember ever kids being in the hallway at Whitney Young. They might be running to class or something like that. At at St.

Pat you can make a phone call and next thing you know the kids are at their desk with their hands folded where in education you might you know you might call the parents and say hey he's your problem during the day. I got that guy at night. You know and so you don't have a lot of the the the parental thing. So that would be so understand if you do if you do send Cody there, he's going to have some of those kids, but it's also with with a neighborhood school 100% that you have to go to school or you're going to go to jail at a sense that you know, I mean, not you know, but but that's that's part of it that that it it becomes a daycare center for some kids. There's no question about that. So you try to tap into them. You try to find a way to motivate them. Of course, so many kids are just looking for attention.

And God forbid you give them a little attention or a little respect or the the scientific aspect of neurological linguistic programming and the way the brain works where you look a kid in the eye and say I believe in you that changes the chemistry in their brain. It's like people a lot people don't even understand that that sometimes that's the case too. So, so but but like to for your point exactly that you got a large number of students. The numbers are there percentage-wise that you're going to have an element of that for sure and and and and how best we could try to tap into save one whatever the case may be. You know, you can't save them all kind of same thing. But with that, I 100% you you hear programs like No Child Left Behind and these sorts of things. But in the same token, I do a lot of work with veterans.

I do a lot of work with rehabilitation with drugs and alcohol and different things. And so it's like you can't force it on somebody either if they don't want it. No. So do I believe that with public education, if there's any kid that's testing and working hard and and doing and and and making the grade, they should not not have an opportunity to go to any school and that they even consider dreaming of because they are if they have the talent and they're doing the work. if it's only a financial resource that's preventing them from being the best person they can be and curing cancer or doing whatever else can be. Um, of course that's important. Um, but again, we can't force it on somebody. And so I didn't know how I felt like cuz I don't want to seem like Germany or or or some some other not necessar sorry Germans.

I mean, nothing against Germany, per se, but if a country that forces kids into the military, of course, I don't necessarily agree with that either, but maybe there can be some little bit harsher program to where kind of like you said that once you graduate high school, you're you're becoming a man or a woman, you have a decision to make. Are you going to college? Are you going to trade school? Are you going to the military? Those are some three choices that you do have. and with ROC programs and all these other things, that's an option. So, stop right there. Okay. So, that's what all Chicago public schools have right now. You cannot graduate unless you pick one of those things and show us your route. Because that happened a couple years ago where they're like, "We're graduating all these kids and some of them are floundering.

They don't have a plan. So now you cannot graduate high school unless you sit down with a counselor and say, "Okay, what college you going to?" "Oh yeah, let me see that you applied to it. You're going into the military. Let me see that you applied." you're going to take a gap year. Okay, what are you doing after the gap year? And so, so you need to do that. So, at least have a plan. Now, whether or not they enforce that, at least you've got something. Well, that's where maybe on a more solutionbased opt op option, there needs to be some sort of consequence for not following through with that.

Now, I'm not saying that if you don't choose one of those options and you just choose to go be a bum and sling dope or whatever the case may be, then maybe you're not qualified for public aid or or some there has to be somebody that could find some way to have more of an incentive to but you but you you have to understand and this is one of the be beautiful things is that you know like I just mentioned these kids walking the hallways. You got to understand no kid got up in the morning and said, "I'm going to be a pain in the ass at school today." They're they're dealing with emotions that they don't know how to deal with. Okay, they just spent all some of these kids and I'm not making excuses for all of them, but a lot of them, okay?

A lot of them just basically and and I'll give you a good example and and this is from when I learned when my parents got divorced when I was 16 years old, okay? I they were up arguing a lot at night, okay? Yelling at each other. And you hear stuff like you take the kids. you when you hear that as a 16-year-old, not great. Not great. When a when my sister who was 9 years old heard it, it was devastating. So, I would go in her bedroom and I would put a pillow on her on both sides of her ears and make faces at her try until she fell asleep, okay? Until the arguing went away. Well, I stopped going to school and I stopped going for a couple of weeks, okay? Cuz I was up all night. I would fake like I'm going to school, wait for my parents to leave, go back, and I would sleep all day cuz I was tired.

Well, we found out at the school finally got to my parents, okay, at St. Pat. So, they call it, "Where the hell you been?" And I tell them, and so I, you know, I took a a little bit of some stuff from home, but anyway, um, when I went back to school, there was one guy that said, "You ain't never going to graduate. You're a loser." And all this other stuff because you missed school. Yes. And so I remember I remember taking a test in his class one day and he passed it out and right when it got to my desk, I ripped it up. Nice. and and everybody's looking at me and I just kind of sat there like this. I wasn't going to do anything for that guy. It's goodwill hunting at that point.

You're it's a pissing contest, you know, I don't have to do, you know, but there was brother Jude, brother Jude, who I went back to see uh that one time said, Mark, what's going on? And I said, nothing. And he he got it out of me and I finally told him and he said, it's g and he talked to me and he it was a good influence on my life. I would do anything for that guy. anything he brother Jude wanted to do if it was whatever whatever assignment I would do it and I would do it so wonderfully and it taught me a lesson that you gota and again it's a St. hats thing. You got to touch these kids' hearts. These kids come to school and some of them are up all night. Some of them are taking care of their younger brothers and sisters cuz maybe their mom or dad are on drugs or gaming or whatever, whatever they're doing, whatever they're doing.

And if not that, then they're on their phones. Whatever. They're not getting any attention. And this is a kid that would just go into the military. You need to go. No, you need to you need to touch these kids' hearts. You really do. That's what it's all about. And I think that's why Taft is is great is because my team understood that because we took the Lasalian education that I learned at St. Pat's and it was like you got to touch a heart because St. John Baptist deal said if you don't touch a kid's heart there can be no effective learning. We coupled that with Whitney Young that was their motto was excellence, academic excellence, sports excellence. They called themselves, it's funny cuz Lane Tech calls himself the school of champions and I'm like, "No, Whitney Young, we won 18 state championships there.

I don't remember when the last time you won one. They're a good school and all that stuff, but the champion thing goes to Whitney Young. If you're really looking at state championships, I know I'll cut some crap on that, but it's the truth. I'm just telling you the truth right now." So, we take the academic excellence and and all excellence and touching your hearts, and that's what Taft has right now. And so, you get the best of both worlds at that school. So, that would be kind of the negative side of that. I want to I want to tell you the story though and and and this might this might show you what what good educators do and and and and I'm going to give you an example what I did but I guarantee my teachers are doing this, my counselors are doing this, my my administrative team doing this.

This is something that they do on a daily basis that I'll tell you what I did but a lot of people don't get credit for. There's two two kids at my school and they and they fought a couple of times for some reason. Oil and vinegar and they fought and they were good fights, okay? So, we separated them, but they were both hall walkers. So, they would constantly run across each other in the hallways. They had gotten over the part of fighting, but they were still going to yell at each other and cause some kind of ruckus. And so they wanted to be loud enough to where it would get broken up right away because they didn't want to fight anymore, but they weren't going to let the other guy walk by without a few choice words to each other. Okay. For sure.

So I got wind of both of them and I had had a little bit of a relationship with just by talking to him. So I brought one in my office and I said, "Sit there, will you?" He sat on the couch. Okay? I won't tell you their names. I had another one. In fact, I just wrote a poem about this one, too. Um I had another one. I said, "Come over here and sit down." And he sat in a chair at the conference table. So they're about 20 ft apart. my desk is kind of in between just in in case they started yelling at draw each other. I can get right in the middle of them. So they they weren't going to do that in front of me though. So anyway, they said they're like, "What? Why are we here? Why are we here?" I said, "Just relax.

I got to check a couple of emails here." And um so I was checking emails like half checking them and just I just wanted to give them time. Yeah. So So now they had one thing in common. They were in a room and they both didn't know what the hell was going on in the room. Yeah. Yeah. And so anyway, so I go to them and I say, "Hey, listen. And I got a a a professional development with the teachers next week and I want to get them these donuts. I want your opinion on them. So I got I got a box of Aliggretti donuts. Have you ever had AlaGrady Donuts right down the street here? The best in the city for sure. I tell you what, this this podcast sponsors AlaGradi donuts. Best donuts. When I first tried AlaGrady cake donut, I'm like it's a donut. It's ridiculous. It's un it's it's a crack doughnut. Okay.

I mean, you have one, you're like, oh my god. Just to be fair, House of Cakes with those cheese strudles, those cheese sticks, those are off the charts, too. We got a lot of local baker. Sweet connection on Northwest Highway. I get it. I get them all. But I'm telling you, the Aligeri donuts. So, I got a couple of Aligretti donuts and I gave one to the one guy. I gave one to the other guy and I said, "Don't try them yet." And I got sat at my desk. I said, "All right, go." We started eating them and you could see the smiles come to their face, but they were still tough guys, so they couldn't smile too much. And they're eating it and they're eating it. And they get done. They said, "Can we have another one?" I said, "No, I got to give them to the ladies in the main office." And so I walked out, gave them to the ladies in the main office.

I said, "What do you guys think? Uh, should I give them to the staff?" And they're like, "Yeah. Uh, will you let us know when you have any when you'd have that?" And I said, "Yeah." I said, "Okay." I said, "Um, hey, um, uh, thanks for your input. Now I need you to go back to class." Okay. Get out of here. You guys go. About 2 hours later, I'm here because I got my my thing. Yeah, they're walking down the hallway. Yeah, they're over by G's office. Yeah, they're over there now. So, I know what they're talking about cuz they said the names. And so, I walk over there. They're walking together talking. They stopped by my office. Mr. G, you got any more of those donuts? And I go, "Nope, sorry, guys." I'm like, "Okay." They never fought again. They were really good friends. In fact, I just talked to one about a week ago.

And he said, "Um, I said, "How's the other guy doing?" He said, "Good." He said, he he said, "We were just talking about he'd love to hear from you." I said, "Well, give him my number. You got my permission. We talked to they're good friends right now." The reason I said it because on a micro view, you ask me what I do on a macro view and what principles do on a macro view important. But that micro view I bet might be just as important if not more than that macro view because right now they're they're friends and I think they're going to go and and that's done on exponential proportions every day by good educators in Chicago.

Of course, the butterfly effect and those simple little differences in that, you know, we could talk into soci sociological issues with uh with with poorer communities that seem to again incentivize bad behaviors instead of good behaviors like marriage and fathers, fatherless homes.

Like we could if you had the statistics on what percentage of the disgruntled kids were fatherless homes and and and I'm sure it's very difficult most very much so and and I even know that from different diversity of friendships and and people that I know when I was actively working on myself and trying to educate myself on on racism and and and and not you know not saying I'm going out of my way to find more black friends but if you don't have any black friends you have you don't have much nuance or perspective on their struggles and their, you know, these sorts of things and I'm reading white fragility and I'm in arguments online with people that I I I didn't understand how I don't even have a place to be a part of that argument even though I want to be part of the solution. It's like that doesn't seem fair.

And so just trying to understand more of a nuanced perspective with that. But and again and and the percentages are there that you know all of these successful or or friends that I have that happen to be African-American or some other cultures all had fathers that kicked their ass in their houses. You know big lion. It's it's it's a tough one there. If they don't have that, obviously, if this is the mentor or this father figure that these teachers don't realize that this is a responsibility that they're taking on for some of these youth that you're that missing link in that place and if they can't get it anywhere else, then you know, unfortunately, that's part of your job. And I think it's the most probably the most joyful part of that job with with having purpose and and and being to affect something and have a few success stories.

Of course, you're going to have a few of those horror stories as well, but you might have been a part of of the ego getting involved and and and and some dope or some what whatever else. And before you know it, those that could have been a murder case as opposed to two friends four years later. So, right. Who knows?

And you don't I mean, after my first year, I actually visited one of my students who was in prison and he uh um he was at every year there's Edison Parkfest and everybody knows that goes to Edison Parkf Fest especially you're in high school that when all the adults are at Edison Parkfest you're all going to go to that park about three blocks away I forget the name of the park but it's you know what I'm talking about it's south of Edison Park and just a little bit east there's a huge park right there and everybody goes there St. Pats, Notre Dame, Taft, there's Loyola kids there, there all all kids there. It's where you meet. Okay. And so the kid that went to Taft there, there was a fight going. I love I love it when they said, "Oh, there's fights at Taft." I said, "Have you ever been after a Notre Dame St.

Pats basketball game or football?" So like, okay, kids fight. Kids fight. Okay. Parents fight. I mean, it's just the way it is. I don't like Notre Dame people. I went to St. Pat. I don't like Holy Cross people. You, you know, battle of Belma. I know you went to Holy Cross. Yeah. It's all You're not my favorite person. tribalism at the at the greatest level for sure. And it's fun at the end. You know, it's uh you know, I I I do believe the the greatest basketball game, high school basketball game you'll ever see. And remember, I was at Whitney Young, part of many state championships, uh with Tyrone Slaughter, one of the best basketball coaches ever, uh is go watch a Notre Dame St. Pat basketball game. And it's it's fun. It's it's it's like Green Bay in Chicago. It's just a wonderful game. The chanting that goes on.

Um, but the perfect the perfect cross is Joe Rogan is is is is the biggest podcaster out there. And he was always a fight an MMA fighter, all this kind of stuff. Never liked sports that much other than fighting in Taekwondo. And then he moves to Texas and started going to a few football games cuz his wife was kind of into it. Now he's like, "Man, this is kind of fun." The high school and you know, high school football in Texas, guys, if you don't know how serious they are about a high school sport, you you know you're missing something. What's it called? Uh which which team or whatever. What's high school in in Texas called? Oh, Friday Friday Night Lights. Oh, Friday Night Lights. And the reason I tell you that will be also Well, the reason I tell you that is cuz we've got that at St. Pat at Taft right now.

And we've got Friday Night Lights. We've got um the stadium that was built over there. Um stadium is is is a big word. It's not really a stadium, but it's it's a nice football field. It's a lot better than what we had across. Yeah. And when we finally got that built, I was calling everybody and saying, "Listen, I'm the third largest school in Illinois." and my kids are playing on dirt and I mailed a picture of my kids and it was like 4 in of of rain on the ground. I said, "This is where my high school football team is playing right now." And so they, you know, granted they did give us a great st Friday night lights, we'll have 1,500 people in the stands. You know how long it'll take us to sell out tickets online. Less than a minute. That's wonderful. Less than one minute. And it's such a wonderful thing.

We've got the parking lot there where we have different classes. Class of 88, class of 89. They get three spots. They can go out there. They can grill. They don't grill because no grills, but bring your food in. So they bring pizzas and chairs and stuff like that. Yeah. VIP tailgating. So Friday Night Lights is is a wonderful thing at T that the other schools don't have. So that that's a wonderful thing. Um so it's a it's funny cuz uh like when I I grew up at Kilborn Park, so that was my park growing up in a sense that that's where I played little league baseball, but I was on the east side of Cicero and a lot of my schoolmates were on the west side of Cicero. So they were white cap, so they were at a different park, right? Um, but we were at Kilbourne Park and same thing.

We're pl, you know, we're uh playing on broken pieces of glass and and stone and, you know, all this other kind of stuff and and and then, you know, when you talk about as growing up as a kid playing little league baseball, you you would be fortunate to have a sober dad that could show up to babysit these kids for a few hours in a practice. They didn't have fundamentals. They didn't understand. They didn't have YouTube videos to watch. What's a good drill to do with the kids nowadays? And now now gez, you know, all these little league dads that played in college and they're getting these fundamentals at such an earlier age and every everything is so expedited with the ability to learn. Connor is the perfect example.

You could look at some of the Tik Tok videos that I have here and there, but out of nowhere, I didn't I didn't I didn't offer I wished I was a better dancer cuz you'd get the ladies better and stuff. You're I'm a big tough guy that's too cool to dance and then all the guys that are out there dancing are getting all the ladies and I'm just sitting here by myself. So, who's the idiot? Learn how to dance, dumbass. You know? Yeah. But but um it's one of those situations where through a YouTube video or whatever, you got um um what's what's the K-pop group that's that's huge. They're coming to Wrigley in like June or something like that, too. These Korean kids that are dancing these dance routines in Japan, is that what it is? Kind of. Yeah.

But they're doing these dance routines that are just off the chart that could be on maybe they were on American Idol or some, you know, America's Got Talent or some of these shows or whatever, but they're unbelievable and they're hard. And he is sitting there with these mirror image YouTube videos of people doing tutorials on how to do these dance routines and stuff and he's he's he's sweating his ass off at 10 years old working for an hour and a half trying to get these dance moves down. So like, how do you not fan that? That that there's some drive. Taft has a K-pop club, just so you know. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but yeah, it's it it but it again it's whatever their passions are, if we could try to polish them a little bit. So, well, you know what?

What's weird is when we when I was pitching the idea of Friday Night Lights, Chicago public schools don't have a clue on Friday Night Lights. They had no clue because they were a basketball. They're a basketball district. And if you look at the rankings all the time in in when the basketball comes around, they usually have five or six teams in the top 20 in basketball. In football, it's terrible. Right now, we might have Morgan Park or Simeon in the top 25. But the travesty of it all is, and it's why Chicago public schools need to work on their sports department, is that first weekend of of playoffs, when we get 20 or 30 of our teams in the IHSA playoffs, with the exception of one or two of our teams that probably might play each other, all the scores are like 49 to nothing, 50 to nothing, 56 to nothing.

They need to do something about football. And that makes sense. But sometimes it's hard. It's an expensive sport. Sometimes it's hard to sell sports as as something that taxpayer dollars should be going towards because people don't understand the benefit of so much of that and then CT c you know injury and trauma and you know all this all this other kind of stuff too. It makes it challenging but and and these but those suburban schools that you know suburban ca Catholic you know conference that Holy Cross and St. Pats and Mount Carmel and Julia Catholic and and these schools were monsters that are have produced plenty of NHL athletes. throughout the entire city. So, one of the reasons I moved out to Sycamore is a it had to be an hour away from Chicago cuz my daughter still lives here.

Uh it had to have it had to be a thriving city and they had the decal county courthouse there so it's not contingent on just antiquing. And number three, it had to have a good football team and Sycamore has really good Friday night lines. I want to I know No, we got time. We got to we got 30 plus minutes. I know. But what I want to say is I want to give some advice to some parents like yourself when they go to college. This is what I really want to tell you cuz it's really important. Number one is like I told you in the beginning, take your son or daughter to the schools that they're interested in. Let them walk around and let them get a feel. Okay, this is really important from a personal standpoint. When I went to St. Tarcissusus, we had a really good football team and I had a scholarship to go to Weber to play.

Now, their scholarships were you're going to be working in the hallway or something. It was like a working scholarship, but it was still tuition free. And I went to Weber and visited it with my dad at the time and I walked around and for some reason I was looking at the ceiling and I saw some ceiling tiles hanging and it just didn't fit. And I asked it was a weird place for a school in a neighborhood like that. It was just so far off the path and but it was it was one bus. It was just I was going to take a bus either way coming from the northwest side. You take the Austin bus all the way down to Austin cuts over in Gunnison.

But anyway I and my dad says, "What do you think about that school?" I said, "I just don't like that school, Dad." Taff was out of the question even though we lived four blocks from it because it was one of these I'll work four time four jobs before it wasn't it didn't turn yet. Okay. And so my other alternative was St. Pats and I visited St. Pats and I kind of liked it and I I shadowed. See here's one of the secrets that that the Catholic schools won't tell you. The shadow program where you go walk the day with the student. They're all doing it and you know why they're doing it? Cuz when they do it the kids are 95% chance going to go to your school. That's why they do it. So when they walk the open house, they sign them up right away for a shot. And the kids are like, I get out of school free to walk around at school. Yeah.

But then 95% of those kids go to that school. That's why shadow especially, God forbid, the kid's kind of cool. You're looking up to another student. Man, I I want to be cool, too. And remember, I worked I worked at St. Pat, so I know the game. Okay, you're going to shadow them with somebody that was probably a good sports star from their school. So it might have been wherever, St. Julian's, wherever. You're going to have that kid shadow you. So now you've automatically got something in common. So it's brilliant. I get the mark. Remember I'm a marketing guy. You know, we can't do that at Taft because it's just it's I have a thousand freshman every year. And so um you just can't do that and logistically you can't do that. So but anyway, so here's some advice for parents that are going to send your kids to one of the high schools.

So number one, that's number one. Bring them there and see if they like it. Okay. Number two is I get this too much from parents is they're like, you know what, your first year, let's just concentrate on academics. Don't do that. Let them do whatever they want as much as they want. If they want to, you should almost mandate them that they join some club or some activity. The more involved they are, the better they're going to be in long term. It really is. It's so important. The sports, whatever it is. Dan, my brother is a perfect example of that that he went to he went to St. Pat's first year, right? So, he was smarter than me in grammar school and then he didn't do well because and he didn't get involved in any sports and and so he ended up going to Foreman, right? And Foreman was predominantly black, probably on the 90%ish level.

So he was a he was a burnout, right? Is that what they call dropped out of dropped out of the Catholic school and had to go to public school, but we were kind of headbangers. So it was like we were heavy metal guys at a predominantly black school. So it worked out okay. So you know, in ' 91 or in in the 80s, if when I went to school, it was you were a jack or a burnout. So what was it in your in your era? Well, I was one of like six or seven people that listened to like heavy metal and hardcore thrash at at a predominantly Italian school. Okay. So, Holy Cross was predominantly Italian. So, there was all the neighborhood they they were all driving iRocks and dance clubs and kept the labels you had jock headbanger, stoner or something like that or and then and jocks. It was still jocks. There were still jocks.

I was a baseball, soccer, and band. But the interesting thing about band was it was funny cuz we had a pivotal teacher. Shout out to Mr. Koolik, unbelievable teacher for that started a new program. And and so freshman year going to band, it was the typical American Pie kind of band dorks, right? And and by senior year, everybody wanted to be in band cuz band had all the cool guys. And we did band trips and we I mean he turned the program around and and we do band trips to Canada and we went to Nashville and we went to IHSA solo ensemble contests and all that. Man, who doesn't want to go on a bus and go to Nashville and see Opry Land or whatever? It was it was it was outstanding. Um, and again, and and that's another aspect that people don't understand.

And and if if your kids are still younger and they're not high school age, piano, guitar, anything. Music changes the brain and creates good people. Please stop. Don't stop, Carl. Stop. No music. No. No. I'm going to cut you off. Don't let him do anything. No. I'm gonna shift your focus here. Okay. Because I talked to a guy in uh in college. First of all, when I talked to him college, I said, "This IB diploma, is this the real deal?" Cuz I'm I'm I'm telling this to thousands of people. Tell me this is the real deal. He said, "Mark, as a college admissions officer, when we get somebody and they've got an IB diploma, okay, not just it's not a tap diploma. It's like you went for the IB and it's it's like its own course sections real hard.

People have said, I've had people that went to North Side and they're and and kids at and their IB diploma and the and the analogy is um the kids at North Side and and whatever they they take the elevator. IB kids take the stairs. Okay. And they're they're both brilliant kids. I'm I'm not saying that it's just it's really hard. And the guy would say we when they have an IB diploma, we put that on the side. That's their own separate pile. And I said, really interesting. I said, "What else?" I said, "Is it is it you know violin?" He goes, "No, stop." He goes, "We don't need any more violin players. We don't need guitar players. We don't need piano players. We need obo players." Nice. So, I'm telling you, if you're if you're fourth, fifth grade, get them in the obo band. They can't have enough obo cuz obo is not a sexy instrument. No.

I Well, if you don't know instruments, I think the obo is one of the sexiest instruments in an orchestra cuz it you could be a violinist with 16 people in your section, right? To be the soloist. Usually there's one or two obo players and it's a double read instrument. It's very difficult and and again again music. I think I was right. Yes. And and and I'll probably have a guest come on cuz my great friend from high school uh shout out to Ken Brazina, Chicago Fireman. His wife is an or is a concert orchestra or obo player. So I'm right here right. And he also said look and look here. I got I got saxophone reads sitting up here. You're in the studio with a drum set and an acoustic guitar, a couple of amplifiers. Where's your obo? Where's your obo for Cody? I don't have an obo. I have a flute. There's a flute book right behind you.

And I planned on buying the clarinet because when they were younger and playing the song flute in school and stuff, the finger Oh, you unplugged that. The the uh the fingerings are very similar from the song flute to the to the to the uh clarinet to the obo. Um, a lot of those fingerings are very similar. So if you go multi-instrument then when you're smaller and younger in grammar school and you don't have the lung capacity for a saxophone so to speak I minored in jazz performance u uh playing the tenor saxophone. Yeah. I had a passion you write down. Yeah. So we we we might not have knew that about each other. Um so when you talked about the 20s and jazz and you know all this sort sorts of stuff um I got quite a selection of jazz saxophone um music. So we're going to start a GoFundMe for Cody. Cody needs an obo. GoFundMe, right?

Because we're going to get him an obo. Maybe we could get him an obo. I I definitely was still gonna I I'm always into musical instruments because they're usually pretty good investments if you hold them. And if you got a grandma or grandpa or something and you got some old attic where there's some saxophone that looks like almost a kind of faded out, you know, dirty, dingy kind of thing, it might be worth like 12 grand. Folks, you don't don't throw those instruments out. I'm I'm going to ask you right now because this always fascinated me. Do do people actually go to school to learn these instruments? The triangle, the the what's the big clapping plate one where the symbols or symbols? Yeah, the symbols or the or the one where uh I want to say the Suzanne Day played it in the Partridge family where it's tambourine. Oh, the tambourine.

Do you go to school for that and learn that or is that just kind of like, you know, I need an instrument for you, you go do this and when I point to you, you do it. Is that like you go to school for that? Maybe it has something more to do with like No Child Left Behind. Like, so if you're going to become a band member and it doesn't seem like you're picking up anything very well, they put you on that. Now, if you're part of the percussion ensemble, now if you watch a movie like Drum Line or something, when you start getting into college level drum percussion teams that are off the charts with doing back flips and stuff and playing instruments and all this craziness for for college games and stuff. Um, but a percussion ensemble and percussionist, they would probably rotate. there wouldn't be the same person just playing tambourine.

I don't think you would get a minor degree in in in playing the tambourine, per se. But so it's just the percussion that has to learn all those. And so you're as a percussion, you would be a drummer and the Yeah. the timies and and and maybe the you know the three drums instead of just two with different tones and then you can do different sounds. cuz I I love Tina and I have been to I think five different cities and have gone to every one of the symphonies in those cities. So I'm fas I love the symphony and I always wondered like the gong person like how does that guy get that job and not like 20 other guys that say I'm a symphony gong person.

That that's that is an interesting question and we'll we'll table that discussion for our concert oboist when when she comes as a guest on the podcast because she has more authority to speak on that manner. I would imagine there's auditions just like anything else and and and there could be a challenge to some of those instruments that that and and and more than likely the person that strikes the gong might play three or four different percussion instruments. And so that could be a challenge in itself that you're keeping beat, you're staying alive and then you have to rest and count and then know your time after like six minutes of playing where you have to hit the dong on the right. you gotta hit that gong on the right and then you move to the the you might run over to them and do the back scratching thing or something like that.

So it'll be interesting but let me So that's a good one. So parents let your kid get involved in a lot of stuff. Okay. Don't say uh let's take a year off because once you take that year off it's exponentially harder to get into it after years when when when clicks have formed and everything else. So get on the ground floor. Okay. Yeah. I I for one never played organized football my whole life. My mom wouldn't let me. It was too dangerous. All that kind of stuff. I played baseball, but when I went to Holy Cross for the first time, I had some guys who are like, "Oh, play football." I'm like, "I can't play football. I never played organized football." And so, I go out and play soccer my freshman year, thinking that's a a little bit more of a wimpy sport, and I should be okay with that cuz I'm not a tough guy.

And and now again, it was an predominantly Italian school with a bunch of people that have been playing since they were four years old. So, so the learning curve was a little higher because, you know, but I had some crazy aggression and I was I I tried hard. So, and and that made up for some skills to where I ended up being a pretty good player on the team over four years or whatever. But, um again, it a lot of the Italians like would argue that been playing their whole life, they'd be like, "Oh, I'm not playing. That team sucks." Well, if all you guys that have been playing your whole life played for the team, we'd win state, no problem. And no, what's going on? I don't like the the the coaching style with the 14 defense and whatever all that, but um so so get get involved in a lot of stuff.

Also, it's really important if you wanted to get into a a really good school, okay? Understand it's going to be highly competitive and so they're looking at things like I'll give you a good a good idea. There's a kid at uh Whitney Young that had a 36 on his at ACT, which was the best you could get. He applied to Harvard and he didn't get in and he had a like a 5.0 GPA, 36. Perfect. You've done everything perfect. And I and he didn't get into Harvard. And I called up the Harvard guy and I said, "Listen, I'm the I'm working over at Whitney Young here and I'm wondering why you're not letting this guy in. Is can I talk to anybody?" And and he said, "Mark, everybody that applies to Harvard has a 36 on their ACT and has a perfect score. What else is he doing?" Right? So, it's not just getting involved in clubs and sports.

um found some clubs like if if you wanted it like if your son was going to found the let's clean the riverways of Chicago club, he founds it and he's the president of that club that looks good. Also volunteer if he needs to volunteer at one of the churches around here, Habitat for Humanity or any you need that on your because that's what they look at. Okay. And folks, again, Eagle Scout, you know, there was a not to get too sidetracked, but there was a little controversy and story in regards to the Girl Scouts of America and Boy Scouts of America and the possibility of them merging as one organization.

And then there was a lot of I I did research cuz when I this was one of those things where there's like the carts and some philosophy and logic and reason and critical thinking and these sorts of things that seem to be missing in the world a little bit these days. Um, but the idea with social media is I see a headline and I have the right to have an opinion. And some better thinkers than me thought that an opinion is not necessarily a right particularly if you have no information on this subject. Your answer should be at most times I don't have enough information on this subject right now. Uh, let me do some more research and I'll come back with my thoughts or my opinion on this matter. You don't get that too much on Tik Tok and Facebook and some of these different areas, but that's okay. Nothing wrong with that.

So, so with that, I I did I was not sure when the Boy Scouts of America said, "We're going to allow girls into Boy Scouts." I'm like, "Can we have nothing? Can we have nothing? Please, is there any," you know? So, that might have been my initial, but I was tentative to say, "I got to do a little bit more research on this and I'm not sure how I feel about this." And as it turns out over time, I am 100% supportive of that notion of what of girls in Boy Scouts only because they don't really have another alternative.

And it's like Girl Scouts was out there, but the fight seemed to have been, and I'm not 100%, please don't totally quote me on on on too much of this, but from what I saw and from what I gathered, that the tenants of the program, any institution or program that can stay focused on principles and and matter of facts are going to get through trouble. And obviously the Boy Scouts have had their share of trouble as a national or international organization. It takes parental involvement. You can have some guidelines and some checks and balances and you can have rules and regulations about multiple parents and nobody be alone alone to try to prevent some of the bad things that could happen with regards to pedophilia and some of these other instances with children and stuff like that. You got to have people there.

You got to have, you know, that's in life. Yeah. It's everywhere. Um but the Boy Scouts held through, right? Um What what's your number one I know we're getting way off subject here. What's your number one sub? Why would you have Girl Scouts join Boy Scouts? So, Girl Scouts was a different organization and and they allowed So, it's not it's not equal. No, they were completely different organizations. They they they have Girl Scouts to sell cookies. Well, and the different principles and different premises. So, like one of the things was like in their in their scout oath, you can change the word God to whatever you want if you want.

and and in Girl Scouts in Girl Scouts whereas then the Boy Scouts were like, "Well, we're not telling you which God to believe in, but the word is God and you're going to say God." And so that was a tentative thing. And then so some the the marketing the branding seemed that most people a lot of people out there saw Girl Scouts more as like a whole mech thing which was almost sexist in a sense that you're supposed to so so why not why not change the girl scouts to to to more mirror what Boy Scouts is doing rather than have them join Boy Scouts. That's my question. Well, that would be up to the Girl Scouts in order to do that. And if they were unwilling to do that, then what? So, well, you but you don't know because you haven't tried that yet. So, why automatically let them into the boy scouts when you can say, "Listen, stop being homemac.

We stopped doing homemac in in since title nine in 1972. So, stop stop doing all that stuff." Well, that's the that was the general consensus that a lot of the suburban soccer moms would see that they're they're raising activists in that organization more fighting for causes and where the Boy Scouts of America's main focus 100% was leadership building. So it sounds like this is what we do. Sounds like wokeism got into Girl Scouts first and then wanted to like now take over Boy Scouts. It was kind of maybe that could be part of it and we're then but then from the gender standard of the scouting of America, which if it is now, they took the boy off. Girl Scout still exists, but scouting has both. It's co-ed, but their focus is leadership building.

And if you're just worried about building leaders, it really don't matter if you're a boy or a girl. And obviously at the younger ages it really means nothing because they're just having fun anyway. Now when you start getting into 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds, the YMCA's, the different camps that they always had, family camps where there were boys and girls, if done properly, it can exist no problem without trouble. Um, but the whole point was that one thing that the Girl Scouts were pissed about is that you didn't know what the Golden Clover Leaf Award was. What's the Golden Clover? Well, that's their highest ranking achievement. Well, based on marketing and branding, I'm sorry that nobody knows what that is, but everybody knows what Eagle Scout is, right?

And if you're sitting across the interview from somebody and you say you achieved Eagle Scout at 18 years old, that's an achievement that a lot of other 18-year-olds didn't do. And most people know that the requirements in order to do that is not easy. And a lot of people don't get it. You don't just It's not like paying for a black belt at a crummy martial arts school. You'll get a black belt eventually if you keep paying your tuition for long enough. We call those mad dojoos. Mead dojo. Yeah. Um so scouts is similar to that, but there's a lot of requirements and people don't know them all. But they know it's not easy. And so with that, by the way, I've got I've got the Parvulli award, just so you know. Put that on my resume. You know what the Parvuli Award is? I do not know what the Parvuli award is. Tell us, please.

You know, when we're done, you can you can uh do it on your computer over here. Oh, we'll ask that for you. Okay. We'll we'll search it up. So, so, so let me let me get but to close the loop on that just that that the idea of leadership building is the main focus and and doing things yourself and so some of the tenants even at like Notre Dame or some of the other universities were about leadership building. I got you. So, you're so Cody's going to get his Eagle Scout. I hope so. Is Cody How does Cody feel about the Girl Scouts joining the Boy Scouts? Um, I don't think he's he's probably indifferent to it because it's just a different generation at that at that age that I I don't I'd never asked them specifically.

I could ask him, but I I think that, you know, if with with the like the kind of the way that I'm presenting it that at the older ages, like you said, it's a little bit different, but um for for uh an organization that's bait on leadership building and and why why not allow them to do that? So, I did change I did some research on that. I am for um gender neutral gender neutrality in the scouting because those tenants are so pivotal and most of the time you you'd interview Girl Scouts that are in Girl Scouts of America and they're doing some of the making brownies and stuff and they're like I want to go camping. I want to go shoot archery. I want to go do those fun things too. And and for some reason it didn't seem that the organization wanted to shift. So then just do your organization.

We'll do our organization but I guess we'll just let girls in. which which you know to tie into the whole couple hours we've been here. You may want to ask Cody is is he going to be okay or all parents out there are they going to be okay going to a single gender high school because that's really important too. St. Pats, Notre Dame and res are all single gender high schools and there are benefits and there's there's ups and downs and downs on on that situation as well from distraction and worried so much uniforms. You don't have to worry about what you're wearing or what you're going to you know style and don't worry about your identity and your style and all that other stuff. just focus on your education or whatever. There's pros and cons. Pros and cons to all. So, it's just another conversation you need to have with them. Yeah. No. Yeah.

No doubt. That's that's pretty cool. The other thing I would tell parents is um and and I'll give this and and I put this out not to parents but to grandparents. Grandparents, this is my dare to you is find out what books your your grandson or granddaughter is reading. Is it Lord of the Rings? Is it One Flew of the Cuckoo's Nest? visit McBth, find out what that is and read that when they're reading that cuz it's really cuz they don't want to they it's not cool to be doing it with your parents.

just they're they're in this I need to separate from them thing which is an ingrade I need to get out of the nest one stop removed kind of thing is cool but the whole grandparent thing you both have a common enemy and that is the parents so you can kind of go so grandparents out there try to find out what books your grandsons and granddaughters are reading and read it with them and have that conversation over Christmas table or Thanksgiving tell you won't say oh did you read Lord of the Rings what did you think about Piggy and you know you can have that conver and they'll be like really surprised that you did that so I put that out to the grandparents to do that. That's a good challenge out there for for for grandparents. For sure. And yeah, also let me give let me give another one for the parents.

Parents coming, don't come to my office and complaining about the way the teacher is teaching. If and if I look down and see you haven't been at any of the parent teacher conferences in three years, don't do that. Okay? Get involved with your kids one way or the other. Show up. Show that you're interested in them. Okay? I I think that's an important message. Um, I happen to believe in the ability to to take some action and again with a different different programs that I'm in and other things that I'm responsible for the action, not the result. And so I you need to have that voice and you have to if you want to be that union guy that's sitting around bitching about the job and the work and this and that and you don't show up at the meetings to be a part of the change then I don't believe you have a right to voice your concerns.

Here's what I say about parent teacher conferences and let me ask you this. I'm going to kind of put you on the spot. Why would you go to a parent teacher conference? What's the what's the rationale of why Carl would go to to complain about something for the most? No. Honestly, what would you why why would you go to a parent teacher conference? To learn more about what's going on and what I can what what what I can do to maximize the benefit of this experience for my child, let's say. No, you fail. Good. Okay. Cuz I'm that's why I'm a stupid idiot with a microphone on the But you No, because you speak like your audience. Because I bet 99.9% of your audience would give that same answer or or some kind of variation of that answer. Okay. Now, just to preface that with my thought on the Illinois education system as a system in itself.

Now, this was told to me, Hold on, let me finish my thought here. Okay. Okay. The reason why you go to a parent teacher conference is to show your son or daughter that their education is important to you. That's the number one reason. Whatever happens there happens. But you have shown them that your education is more important than me being at work right now, than me going out with my friends, than me going home and cooking. It's you and me right now. And it's so important that I'm giving you my time because that's how important I think education is. That's what it's all about. Everything else is fluff and and [censored] I mean, you can get stuff done, but that's really because it because the kid, like you said earlier in the interview, I said earlier, watch what I do. Don't don't listen to what I say. Yeah.

And if you're, you know, house school, house school, house school, but parent teachers p and you don't do anything. You're just saying that cuz that's what you say. So, so go ahead. Illinois education. First, first, one of my one of my things when it comes to teachers unions and different things. Now, I'm a pro union guy. This and that, all that obviously with with the principles and with teachers unions and all these different things. That's a whole another five hour podcast for sure. 10 hours at least. Um, one of the things where I understand that like people don't like switching hours and all these different things, but when it comes to parent teacher conferences, this was a scenario where in in this specific school that I was at, the parent teacher conference hours were from 8:00 to 3:30.

And I thought that was the most sacriiggious thing I ever heard of. It's four times a year. Um, if you have the day off anyway, if you can't switch your schedule and make those parent teacher conferences from 400 p.m. till 10:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. so that working families can go and be a part of their kids' education and get updated on what's going on or suggestions on how to fix little issues or these sorts of things, which is pivotal. Um, shout out to anybody out there with parent teacher and conference scheduling. It should be available for pe working families to be able to come and not have to sacrifice take a day off of work and take personal time that should be spent with their family to go to a parent teacher conference. Okay. Very good, Carl. Now, we're going to move from 2019 to 2025. Okay.

And if you'd have said that in 2019, I would agree to you. But we had something called COVID that happened. And one of the ancillary benefits of COVID is just about everybody can do a Zoom meeting right now. Yes. And so I think it's really really important that we need to shift because again it really is some people are hardwork. I mean everybody's hardwork but some people cannot take off to go to that meeting. So I totally agree. I would rather have the meetings like if it was it was 2019 from 2:00 until 9:00. So everybody can come and you have an influx. Problem with that though is that a lot of people get off at 5 and so now you've got all these people that are scheduled and you're sitting in line with 10 people ahead of you and and and all of a sudden you get up there and now it's her break time. That makes sense.

So the way that's a good argument there's no question. And I flip side, but here here's here's the thing is is what you do now is you can do an 8 to3 because no matter where you're at, I believe you could tell any boss. Listen, I need to do a a a a meeting with one of my kids teachers from this time to this time. Can I please have off? Where are you going to do it? I got my phone. I can go out to my car, but I need to do this. So So you make appointments. So all day long you have these appointments that teachers have in all the way. They can't possibly meet with every teach every parent because they just don't have the time the same day. You can't do that. However, we always say that if you couldn't meet then then send them an email and we'll find another time for you guys to meet.

But this way you could schedule these Zoom meetings which a lot of people do work at computers that we can sit there and say and say listen I'm going to take a break right now. I'm going to uh talk to one of my teachers. You can go one-on-one. So that's where the argument from the 8 to three thing. That's a good that's a flip side good argument. And then just to flip that one more time in the same sense is that we could be doing this little interview and podcast via Zoom very easily as well. But there is something that is missing when there's not just a one-on-one personal contact and conversation with another human being and and you can do that. You could still do that. You could say you could do that anytime. Hey, can we meet another time? There's you can all it doesn't have to be on that day if you're really concerned about your kids.

And then of course the argument is also that shifts are different. There's afternoon workers, there's midnight workers. So even that 3 to 10 is almost prejudice to somebody that works midnights and loves the 9 a.m. meeting because he just got off of work or whatever the case may be. So and and then I ask and I ask you this, first of all, another one of the reasons why uh kids do really well at one of the select enrollment schools is that there's so much parental involvement. They call it helicopter parents. And so I guarantee that's not the first time these teachers are talking to the uh the the the parents are talking to the teachers because they're they all email them when their kid got their first B in 12 years. My kid got a B in your class. I will meet with my lawyer. We will meet on this time and stuff.

It trust me when it goes like that. It does. I believe it. You're going to ruin my kid's life just cuz he didn't turn in one assignment. Well, you know, maybe and again it's different teachers. when you're when you're at a neighborhood school, you have to deal with classroom management a little more than you have to deal with at a select enrollment school. But, however, if you're at at a uh select enrollment school and you have an assignment, you have 150 kids, you're going to get 160 papers back, okay? Because you're going to have some kids doing extra credit where over here you're not going to get as much, but you have to motivate them more. So, they're both tough teaching jobs, just different. It's tough in a different way. Gotcha.

So, that parlays perfect into that last point that I was going to talk about about the Illinois education system. Yes. True or false statement? Is the So, so the Illinois education system in this state, which could be um people from around the country can have various opinions about the state of Illinois for a lot of different reasons, uh most governors in prison, most corrupt, any of that. But over that that the Illinois um education system, it was kind of explained to me once that it is one of the best systems in the country undisputed. Although just what you're talking about is the lack of parental involvement is what's the problem in a sense that people don't understand the differences between a PTO or a parental advisory board and the stu and and and all these different programs that exist.

So sometimes those positions all go unmanned because the principal might not be out there just like we were saying before like I'm not going to go out there and give you information about being in competition with my child. Um because um some of these parental advisory boards have a lot of power that they don't even know they have. like Al Zerzoga is a personal veteran friend of mine that was real big in kind of going into some of these school districts and teaching the parental advisory boards their power cuz sometimes the principles would come in and start dictating the meeting and telling them what they can and can't do. And they didn't at the time realize how much power they have and he would educate them and say, "Hey, no, that's not really how this works. You have the power to remove principles.

You have the power, you you have the power to adjust curriculum, different things that if parental parents are involved, you really can make a difference and change the direction of where that school is in some ways. And and and then with that to maybe comment on the differences, which I don't understand very much now about the elected school board as opposed to the appointed school board, which is a new issue um that's just handling in this area right now. Well, that's a big question. And what you got to understand is is if you're going to get into that, understand that the Illinois Board of Education may be the the number one uh entity going forward. If Trump gets rid of the Department of Education, it's going to be the Illinois State Board and then how it is.

And so, um you know, I I I you know, again, we're going to go on we're going to go on 12 different tangents here, but again, you you say that the the these boards, these school boards have the power to pick curriculum and stuff like that. So, um, let me throw it at you. We'll do a little flip side here. And and so should they not have the power and then people are saying they're banning books in Florida when in and and what they're doing is saying I don't want this book in here. So, what what's your opinion on that? I mean, these books that are talking about kids in in in sexual compro, you know, some stuff. Should should they have that right or should that be the in your opinion, should that be the school that picks the books that the kids can get? Well, that's the the the in the interesting point on that's book banning in Florida.

But right because it's book choice. This is book choice for certain age students that maybe the parents would disagree that if if the Illinois school board decides that sexual education should be taught at age four and most parents disagreed with that and said, "Hey, can we just let these kids be kids?" Because they're not thinking of any of that crap at that age. And they don't even see the difference between girls and boys at that point. everybody's just another friend that there's playing with the blocks or whatever the case may be. So at what age is it appropriate to start introducing some of these alternative topics? So it's a choice who chooses that of of course there couldn't be an opinion from an educated um demographic of people that are experts in these fields when it comes to best sociolog sociological development of children.

But maybe the the parents should have a say in that and what's appropriate at what age regardless of what the experts say. But but you're being kind of vague to me right now. You're like they have an opinion. They have a say. Who's going to who's going to who's going to say this is the book that we want them to do? Who eventually gets that power in your in your eyes? I'm not going to give you well that would normally be the school board in some way and the teachers that believe that this is the book that best demonstrates the lessons that we're trying to instill at this time. Now if we look at it and say what the hell is this and a parent objects to that then there should be a process to maybe we where the the consensus or the group conscience has a voice that says no this is not appropriate for a fourth grader. Okay.

So a whole different podcast we're going to do. Well, that's okay. I mean, but in in the same token, it's the same thing with gay rights and all these other things where I 100% believe that every adult has the right to do whatever the heck they want. Now, you when you say adult above 18, we're going to say above 18 at this point when it comes to relationships and marriage and who they choose to allow in their bedroom and all these other sorts of sorts of ideas. And so I don't think it's appropriate for a man and a woman to be deep throat tonguing in a restaurant with my kids there. I would find offense to that and I would maybe even make a comment. So that's the same thing as two gay men making out in a restaurant. It's inappropriate. It's not that I'm anti-gay or I'm homophobic.

It's appropriate any any way for you to be showing affection that way in public in my personal opinion. Now, in a free society, do I have a right to tell them they can or can't do that? Of course, that's a deep Flipside Frolic and and that's a constitutional republic and and we have rights and freedoms. So, yes, that of course can go into all kinds of different areas. Um, but when it comes to book and curriculum and and sexual content at what age is appropriate, that that's a reasonable discussion that maybe the parents obviously should be involved in if you think it should be happening at such a young level. Right. I I know. And just so you know, at at Taft High School in the Chicago public schools, you can opt out of that uh sexual ed the sexual education. And what grade is that? Well, that's high school.

So, seventh and eighth grade also. Seventh and eighth grade would probably be considered appropriate, but it's scaffold. It's scaffolding. Okay. But there is Yeah. And you know what? A lot of that too is again what is appropriate. Is it is it appropriate? And they show you boundaries and stuff like that. So it's not just, you know, we're that people always take it to the limit, you know, it's not all that. If it's a graphic picture and this and that and and and you know, and they'll find that one instance and they'll put it all over the media because it happens. But then that's the whole point of why the Constitution is such a beautiful document and that states are autonomous as well because the culture of a kid in inner city you in in inner city Chicago.

If you have a problem with 12 year olds getting pregnant then OB if if possible if if they've already of course they are if they bled or Stop stop right there. I'm going to back up. Don't say the city of Chicago. Just say anywhere cuz it's more the suburbs probably. Yeah. Well, that's very very very good call. And and so I'll retract that statement and say if you're in a in if you're in any community in which there seems to be a teen pregnancy problem or even a pre-teen pregnancy problem, well then obviously there's going to have to be some education at an earlier level to try to, you know, alleviate that issue and make sure that people are aware of what the root causes or the conditions are for why that sort of thing is happening.

and and that'd be an interesting study obviously and and I'm sure there's plenty of government taxpayer dollars out there for somebody to do a study on something like that. But now, how many times is the word education in the Constitution? You brought the Constitution up. Well, um, not many. Zero. There's this book, the Federalist Papers, that's pretty good read for some people, too, as well, that you don't have to be a a right-wing Christian nationalist to think that some of the premises of that document. I just shared that. Remember the Joe Peshy movie with School Ties when he when he's the bum at Harvard. I never saw that movie. What's it called? School Ties. Is it School Ties? School Ties is the Brendan Frasier. Yeah, I I think it's School Ties. It's a Pesci movie. It's okay.

Maybe it's not School Ties, but it's definitely a Pesci movie. I just shared the video on on my on my feed, but he's he talks about the Harvard guy's education on what he thought was the um the the the genius of the Constitution and then this bum his genius of the Constitution to not to be a you know, so I could I could probably YouTube it and find that clip. Oh, no. I'll I'll text it to you for sure and I'll I'll maybe I'll even put it in the description of this video. Um because because his the genius of the Constitution is it could be changed because the the founders were humble enough to know they weren't they didn't know everything and they might make mistakes. So that you can alter that document as it goes. It's a living breathing document. It's not the same as it was when it started. Oh, I I get all Yeah.

But I think but I think definitely when Trump's coming in, I mean, he is giving, you know, it says, you know, if it's not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, it's a state's right. So I think that's why they're giving it back to the states and stuff. I think it maybe should be. I I mean there might there might be some oversight that could be done nationally, but because of these different cultures and these different set you know it's going to set up competition among states to have better education systems much like Chicago is and why you move to the northwest side. Why did I move to Orland Park school district for a better school? Why are people going to move to Connecticut and move out of I'm I'm just putting Mississippi out there.

I don't know if they're I know that sometimes they've been low but and then there would be an influx that I want the best education. And so maybe that's what people do and then there maybe dollars will go for that. I I put the name of a book here that maybe you can read. I I will definitely. It's called Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. Okay. It's not on my list. Ko Z. And he'll talk about if you're talking about Illinois education. And one of the things that we need to maybe discuss one day at a future date, maybe when I'm not 10, but I'm like 20 or 30 when you really get going is the inequalities of the of the funding system in Illinois education right now. like why does a new TRE student get I think close to $30,000 and a Chicago public school student get $12,000 15 whatever.

So so not not to take a complicated issue and and and and and turn it into a 30-se secondond clip like you were an 8 minute segment on Fox News or something. Gotcha. Um but school voucher. Yep. What do what do you think if you just give me some of my tax money break and I give it to whatever school I think is best for my child instead of maybe some of the government officials controlling where all this funding goes particularly if they're not getting the job done. Is that creating a form of competition as well like the states? No, I I would be I would be against vouchers and and I'm I'm going to tell you why. It's because you're you're turning the tax code into individual like you. And then if if you're going to do that, then you know what? I want a voucher for the highways because I don't use the highways a lot.

So I So give it back to me right now. You know, I haven't had a fire in my house in 30 years. So I want some of the vouchers back for that. So the education that that they're paying for and you want a voucher is just for your kid. But understand the voucher is to educate the American people and and because society is better when you have an educated public rather than an ineducated public. A lot of people would want you in educated, but we want an educated public. So it's not just because of your kid. Yeah. That's better for everybody, right? But if you're going to go with a school voucher for your kid because you're going to send them to to one of the the public schools and you want money back, then I want money back because I haven't had a fire in my house. I don't put that much uh trash out like my neighbor over here.

I don't use the highways a lot. I and so I went about it complicated and that's a that's a great response and I and I didn't think I didn't think even more than 10 seconds on what my opinion was on the matter prior to that but but in that in that same soens I that's where all these labels kind of come in and and somebody wants to be a left-wing this or a Republican this or a conservative or fiscal this or that and at the end of the day when having a table conversation with anybody of any political affiliation without even knowing what it is most of us 90% of the time. And this is kind of the same thing. I'm I don't believe in socialism and communism and all these other things and that the government should do everything for us, but I 100% believe that the fire department should be there.

I'm an employee that provides social services to the taxpayers of the city. And I do it at cost. I don't do it for profit. I am a nonprofit organization that works on clearing the snow at O'Hare, collecting the garbage in the city. So when you bring a private company in that's just there to make profit and they pay their employees less and one or two people are making a bunch of money instead of everybody making a little bit more money and bettering their community and their curb appeal and fixing up their house and and and you know all those sorts of things that that that unbelievably help a community prosper are there.

So, so even with when it comes to education, the same thing I agree that I I can chip in for the greater good of the of the cause, you know, and and it doesn't necessarily need to be um and if I want extra, I can pay extra just like the but I do believe I do believe that we should have socialized care in a sense of at least pre uh preventative maintenance. Preventative care should be almost free for everybody. And you would think that the pharmaceutical companies and the and and the insurance companies would like that because you would catch diseases earlier. You wouldn't have these bigger costs, but you know, some of them may want sick people. And that's why we have to get the corruption out of the system.

And maybe there's too much corruption in the federal education system that's wasting a lot of money that could be better spent more on a local community. But if you cut my income tax and tell me I don't have to pay money to the federal education system and I could afford now to put more money towards my local school, maybe that's a good thing, right? But then, you know, you have people that every once in a while the equal education amendment comes up in in Illinois where they say, you know, everything should go into a pot and then every kid gets the same amount of money. Yeah. And if every kid got the same amount of money, of course, you're going to have the suburbs up there saying, I'm paying a higher property tax.

And so when your property tax is tied into education, which I think 90% of your property tax goes to education, they're like, "Hey, so flip side, I I'm paying more. I should get more." So I get all that. But okay, but you're it's a 100 yard dash and your kid is starting on the 30 yard line. You understand that? Well, that's just the way it is. Well, it you need to understand that. So it's fair for everybody, but everybody doesn't start in a place. We want to try to get everybody to be able to start in the same place, but obviously we can't expect the same outcomes best based on how much work somebody's willing to put into it as well. So, it's equal opportunity, not equal outcome. And and that's what most I think most people believe.

So, so my my last piece of advice for parents is is choosing a high school is probably going to be tougher for you than choosing a college because when it comes to choosing a college or a trade, it's you the groundwork has been laid for four years and you've been talking to your kid about this for a while. So, so that choice might be a little bit easier. But if they are going to go into a trade, I would I would recommend that you try to get them over to Wright College for a while. I mean, right college is is really is really nice. One of the the good things is when I first started at Taft, I think we had like 48% of our kids applying to a 4-year university. Now, it's up to 78%. Okay. Real good.

However, there's something called a STAR scholarship where if you went to a Chicago public school and you got above a 3.0 average, your tuition is free at Wright College. Nice. So, that's what I tell when you're when you're looking at the next bridge you have to cross over. There's nothing wrong with going to Wright College or you know what else is good?

uh especially to get even some of the prerequisites covered and save some money and go get your your master's degree at at Northwestern or whatever whatever you want to do and right but again understand that you when you go to when you go to a community college like that you're going to be with kids that are doing that that are like I'm getting my prerex and you're also around half maybe some of the kids I won't say half but a lot of the kids are there because their kid their mom and dad said listen you ain't going to be sleeping till 10 o'clock every day you're either going to get a full-time job or you're going to school so what are you gonna do so they put their time in over there and so that's what you're going to be around there too.

So if you and then of course on the flip side of that is that the idea of going away to college and staying at a dorm and joining a fraternity and crawling home drunk once in a while and being a right of passage and and and you can afford that. Yeah. It it's a different experience. It's not just all about the education. It's about making those connections, making those networks, learning those people, learning how to live without mom, looking over your shoulder, and and if you could balance all that stuff and still go to Southern Illinois University, the biggest party school in the country when I was looking at college, I applied there for that very reason.

I wonder if they ever got over that cuz that they were like that for I don't know if the stigma is as big as it was when in ' 91 when I was looking, but I didn't get I didn't get accepted. if you can't get accepted at the biggest party high school or party college in the country, you know what's going on. So, I joined the Navy, you know, but but that was that was my experience. But either way, if you can get through with that stigma in that school and I can meet somebody that has a degree from that school, obviously they can hold together a whole lot and still manage to finish making achievements. What I would tell my kids too is like where where do you want to live when you get older?

Because if if you want to go to college and you want to live in Chicago if that's your goal, then go to University of Illinois, go to Northwestern, go to because you're going to be applying to jobs with people that went there. So a lot of times they hire people that went to University of Illinois. That's a good tip. That's great. Yeah. Whereas opposed like if even if it's finance in Chicago and you want to be in the local hub of a central business district then or if you want to be an environmental guy which Southern Illinois is really huge on some of their programs because they have all the the Shauny National Forest or whatever is right around there. There's a lot of envir do you know how a college grows its program like that? You just said Southern Illinois is really big on what? Environmental oh marketing.

Then what is that what that uh environmental that used to be the case in in '92 when I was looking but I again you have to kind of have an idea of what you want to do when you grow up in order to have an educated decision on what college you're going to go because they do have so many that specialize in various things of course but what's interesting is is how does a how does a college become Southern Illinois was the party school everybody knew that they get that branding it went down to party okay but how would they change their image say they wanted to get into pharmaceuticals right? Like we're going to be the pharmaceutical. How would they how would they get that? Marketing and branding, right? No, this is how they this is what they do. You've heard of the uh SAT, right? Yes. It's a test that everybody takes in in junior year. Okay.

The college board which runs that test, do you know how they make their money? No. You would think it's by giving tests, right? They give these tests and these kids have to pay for these tests. That's not how they make their money. The way they make their money is the is the 30 second questionnaire you take before you take the test. Nice. And on there you're like, "What what interests you?" Oh, I like uh pharmaceuticals. Uh how would if you went to college, how many miles would you want to be away from Chicago? Oh, maybe only 20. And so what happens is Southern Illinois contacts uh College Board and says, "I want that information." And then College Board sells them that information. So that's how they can then market to those pharmaceutical kids now. Yeah. That's how they grow the program.

And that that's the information the the the the the value of information with Google and with all these sorts of search engines. It's it's off the charts. And having the inside tip on all that stuff is obviously a big part. I just heard I just heard that it was it was Walmart that was selling their TV division which is Vizio or something like something like that. And the number one component that they're selling is not that it's the TV set, it's the information that's downloaded from that TV set that they can sell that. And I'm like, wow. It is all about the information. Yeah, we're going to have a lot of what change with privacy acts and all that sort of stuff in the future. But you know what? It's been a good time. We're good.

It we we we we killed uh 3 hours a little bit plus depending on how much the uh the previous little techno glitch was. I enjoyed myself. But yeah, it's been a blast. I love you all to death for sure. It's been great. and we'll have you back. Um, we'll talk about my Can I plug my poetry? Yeah, you could plug your poetry. Any social media you got, any way to contact you if anybody's interested, what websites, whatever you got. I'm just going to give you mrgpoetry.com. mrgpoetry.com. Go on there. I always got about nine poems on there. I got a book coming out in the summer. So, uh, just that's my plug. All right, let's let's show them the power of the Flipside Frolic army that's out there. And at least give them four or five clicks. There you go. Cuz we'll see how that changes as we go.

But we got a few gifts for you as always from Flipside Frolic and uh and we will uh we'll catch you next time folks. Thanks for joining us. Take care everybody. Hey everybody, Eagles, school starts at 7:30. See you later. Thanks for joining us at Flipside Frolic. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe learn a little something about other people's perspectives. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and throw us a like on the video. Comment if you have any questions and we'll see you on the next episode.