A Solution & a New Year's Resolution

            This fall, my Denver sister visited after a nun reunion at Briar Cliff and reacquainting with a woman she knew in the novitiate. During her career, this nun was posted in various cities and towns across the system. Cascade among them.

            She stated simply and frankly: “…the meanest place I taught 40 years.”

            When I recounted this to friend who grew up elsewhere and married a Cascade guy, she replied she is routinely appalled by the stories the hubby/his buddies tell about their dirty tricks.

            A Bernard friend shared this: She waitressed at the 12-Mile House for many years, and the proprietor donated money to every school (Senior, Hempstead, Beckman, etc.) but not Aquin. He explained that he put the $ in a “Repair Fund” to fix the damage Aquin High kids typically did when they showed up en masse.

            In November, this dishonorable tradition got me removed from the sub list (fired) at Cascade High for nothing more than demanding correct English. To ridicule me, a boy videotaped me hecturing a class of freshman and sophomores whose papers I had refused to accept until they fixed elementary errors: “your” and “you’re,” misspelled “ex(c)ercise,” and missing caps and periods.

            Thinking I had been falsely accused of something else, when I asked the principal he told me he simply did not want to expose me or the school to it.

            Then take away their cell phones.

 There is mounting evidence from research that cell phones undermine the concentration of even a well-focused adult. The French have barred them from schools totally. They don’t need them for research. We taxpayers have provided a slew of computers.

 And the “Nasties,” giving the decent people of this berg a bad name, need to make a New Year’s resolution to clean up their acts.