CHICAGO — As self-help gurus and savvy politicians will tell you, you can’t solve every problem in your life, so the smart thing to do is to work on the ones you can.
It was with this practical attitude that Ashanti Johnson came to Moos Elementary School recently to help fix a problem that has been bugging her and a lot of her schoolmates.
“During the years,” said Ashanti, who is 13, “we felt the bathrooms were disgusting.”
Ashanti, a seventh-grader, is a member of the Moos student council. Not long ago, aiming to better serve its constituents, the council surveyed the student body to find out what disgusted them most about the bathrooms.
They heard words like “ugly” and “nasty” and “smells.” They heard complaints about the old paint (drab and depressing); the old metal mirrors (dented); and the toilet paper spitballs plastered on the ceiling (totally gross, more like big blobs than balls).
Some survey respondents cited the drawings on the bathroom walls.
Drawings of what?
“Inappropriate stuff,” said Alejandro Guerrero, 14, as he stood Saturday in a boys’ bathroom, holding a roller doused in blue paint.
And what qualifies as inappropriate?
When Alejandro hesitated, Ashanti answered.
“Private parts,” she said.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Moos, which sits in the heart of gentrifying Humboldt Park, within eyeshot of the popular, new 606 recreation trail, is a healthy school. Most students come from financially struggling families — almost all qualify for reduced or free lunch — but the International Baccalaureate program is thriving, and inside the old brick school, the kids feel safe.
“There’s always someone here to look out for me,” said Alejandro, who lives nearby with his mother. “Moos feels like home.”
Home. Other students use the same word.
“This school is a very safe school,” said Deonna West, 13, who likes it so much that even though she recently moved closer to downtown because her mother worried about the dangers of Humboldt Park, she makes the daily trek.
The school’s original wing was built more than a century ago, in an era when most Chicago schoolchildren were herded down narrow staircases into basement bathrooms. Moos’ design - separate girls’ and boys’ bathrooms on every floor - was hailed as radical in its day.
But everything new gets old, and in any home, when money’s short, home improvement gets shortchanged. It’s also the nature of school — any school, anywhere — to have students who like to make trouble in the private precinct of the bathroom.
The students involved in Operation BBB — short for Building Beautiful Bathrooms — say the troublemakers, the ones who scrawl on the walls or toss toilet paper spitballs, are a minority.
“They get bored or don’t want to go to class,” Ashanti said.
Some like to show off their throwing arms by hurling wet toilet paper at the high ceiling.
“They just want to mess around,” said Deonna.
For several hours on their work day, Ashanti and Deonna and the other bathroom beautifiers painted walls — blue for the boys’ room, turquoise for the girls’ — struggling to keep the rollers from dripping, carefully brushing the grooves between cinderblocks, wiping paint off the floor.
Some of the girls, who had never been in a boys’ bathroom, giggled when the urinals flushed automatically.
Boys and girls, they worked with the belief that if the bathrooms look better, the troublemakers will act better. Their hope, however, is grounded in reality.
“When you have a freshly painted wall,” said Alejandro, “they can just draw on it again.”
But for now the walls look fresh, and as the self-help gurus and savvy politicians will tell you, part of learning to solve problems is learning that you can’t guarantee outcomes. All you can do is try.
Last week, Moos students gathered with 400 or so students from around the city at the annual Action Civics Showcase put on by Mikva Challenge. Mikva, a Chicago program that helps young people become leaders, supplied the grant for the bathroom improvements.
“This wall?” Ashanti said Saturday, pointing to a bathroom entrance. “Here, we’ll paint artwork and a quote.”
The quote will say: “Make your smile change the world, don’t let the world change your smile.”
About the Author
