It was a great chat about the start of his career with the Chicago Public School starting off as a substitute in 1971 and then eventually spending 10 years as a special education teacher until he was ready to advance his career as a school principal. He started at Bennett-Shedd in 1984 and left that role in 1995 to become an elementary school principal for a suburban school district.
What I enjoyed about the conversation was he definitely put together a vision of what he hoped to accomplish at Bennett-Shedd. He noted that both schools had been under a series of interim principals until he took on the role. He makes sure to note that when he left in 1995 he was confident in the team he put in place would continue the successes he had as principal. In 1995 he was succeeded by the late Mrs. Barbara Ellis.
Finally I wrote a few times earlier this year about the computer lab at Bennett School on the third floor. It was a place where my class from maybe about 4th or 5th grade and up spent at least an hour of time to do class based work on IBM computers. Mr. McCormick noted that they received a grant from IBM to put computers in our school and presumably they weren't IBM/PC clones they were IBM PCs. It's amazing to note that IBM is no longer in the PC business, though they were certainly one of the dominant players in the computer game for its time.
Regarding that computer lab, I opined that it could've been where I could have written and even preserved a copy of my autobiography that was necessary to graduate from the 8th grade. Even in the early to mid 1990s many people didn't have a computer at home. And for assignments like the autobiography many of my fellow students had to complete them by hand.
Either way I'm getting to work on the actual post starting as soon as I post this. This project I wanted got held up by current events in the world. Here's hoping Mr. McCormick is making out OK with the current pandemic. Hopefully all of you are as well.
Stay safe! Be well!
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