I Suck At Teaching In Quincy

today, karen and i went to visit her grandparents who live in hanover. as karen's grandparents have recently had some medical conditions, we thought it would be good to visit them and see how things were going. (plus, we figured we'd help out with some things like bringing up their laundry from the basement, taking the trash to the garage, and getting the mail.)

anyway, while we were there, their neighbor stopped by to take the trash to the dump. as it turns out, their neighbor (bob) is a teacher in the quincy public school system. because i suck at teaching in quincy, i asked if he knew our former track coach who is also teaching in the quincy public school system. needless to say, we started talking about other fascinating aspects of teaching in quincy.

we started discussing the construction of the new high school. it seems based on the opinion of bob, that the then future mayor of quincy was opposed to building the new high school on faxon commons and had actually used fear tactics to block the construction of the high school on that site. hazardous materials were discovered on the site, which were remnants of when quincy had a shipyard. the future mayor successfully used the fear tactic as he eventually become elected. regardless, the original plans for faxon commons were reviewed by an environmental engineer and was actually deemed extremely good in dealing with the removal of the hazardous materials. so it's a wonder as to why those plans would be rejected. in all fairness, it should probably be noted that teachers in the quincy public school system aren't fond of the former mayor of quincy, especially with his handling of the teacher strike.

anyway, from there we discussed other things like the ideal location for the high school and the pageant field location was brought up. pageant field is located by the football stadium and there is plenty of land around it as it is set very far back from the street. pageant field has a baseball field, and a soon to be built track. in addition to the existing centrally located sporting facilities, there is also only one entrance into pageant field which makes it ideal for a high school location in terms of security.

bob actually grew up in quincy and attended the public school system growing up. thus, he has seen all the changes to the school system over the years. he had mentioned that he knew the school system was going down the tubes when mcdonald's opened across from north quincy high school, as well as the gas station / fire hazard located beneath part of the high school.

it was an interesting conversation and i'm glad i got to meet bob today. i actually wished i had him as a teacher because he is a good communicator... which is why he is probably a good teacher.