Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others by Shane J. Lopez Page B

behaviors, based on the decisions we agonize about daily, do less to improve our children’s lot in life than we want to believe. (The upside is that our little parenting screw-ups don’t ruin our children’s lives, either.)
    And knowing this hasn’t kept my colleagues from obsessing over finding just the right babysitter, enrolling their toddler in art and music classes, sending their tiny daughter to preschool prep courses, and trying to balance her academic life with her social life. Why do they do this, even though it won’t have a significant effect on their daughter’s intelligence, college prospects, or chances at future happiness? They do it because they want to exercise the little bit of control they do have. They do it because they are compelled to think about their child’s future, and they’re willing to do anything that might make her life a little bit better.
    Now multiply that energy by two, then eight, then hundreds, and you have the story of a group of parents in Chicago who hit the sweet spot and made a major difference for their own children, other people’s children, and their entire community.
The Roscoe Park Eight
    The parents who sat around the sandbox in Roscoe Park talked endlessly about where their toddlers would go to school. Publics, privates, magnets, charters, admissions tests, lotteries for places—when did kindergarten become so complicated? Most of the moms and dads didn’t even consider their neighborhood school, the Nettelhorst School, despite the fact that it was once among the most prestigious elementary schools in Chicago. As relative newcomers to up-and-coming East Lakewood, all they saw was a dark building with wire barriers over the windows, a reputation for administrative chaos, unruly bused-in kids, and terrible test scores.
    But one mother, Jacqueline Edelberg, decided to visit Nettelhorst to see if it was really as bad as she’d heard. During the summer, with her two-year-old in tow, she circled the school grounds looking for an entrance. She finally found an unmarked side door where a security guard waved her in. A moment later, a woman rounded a corner and screamed at her to leave immediately.
    Undeterred, Jacqueline decided to call for an appointment, which also turned out to be a challenge. Finally, after a week of phoning at various times every day, someone picked up, and she set a time to meet the principal the following morning. She took along a friend, Nicole Wagner, as backup.
    To the women’s surprise, Principal Susan Kurland greeted them warmly, gave them a tour of the building, and conducted a three-hour show-and-tell about school initiatives. They learned that Kurland had come to Nettelhorst two years earlier and was determined to turn it around. She’d made some headway improving student discipline, but she was struggling to get her teachers on the same page and to spark parent engagement. The latest setback was a collapsed roof that had required teachers and students to relocate. (Jacqueline then realized that the screaming woman had been shooing her away from a danger zone.)
    At the end of the meeting, Kurland asked the two women a direct question: “What do I have to do to get your kids to come here?” Their stunned reply: “We’ll come back tomorrow and let you know.”
    That afternoon, the “Big List” was born—nearly twenty stretch goals that led with two nonnegotiables: academic rigor and low teacher-student ratios. When Jacqueline and Nicole presented the list to Susan the next day, she read it through, thought for a moment, and said: “Well, girls, let’s get moving; it’s going to be a very busy year.”
    Susan was on board, but now Jacqueline and Nicole knew they needed to take stock. Did they have the energy and resources to take on this huge project? Several of the park parents insisted they’d be wasting their time on a dysfunctional school system. When they consulted a former district alderman about their plan, his first