Chicago Public Schools

Chicago Public Schools is the public-school system that opens a route into teaching for Brett Bohlinger after she applies to substitute. The book presents it through concrete points of contact rather than an institutional overview: an eligibility call, an urgent fifth-grade vacancy at Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School, and a referral to teach sick children at home or in hospital. Those encounters make the system both an employer and the setting for Brett’s attempt to turn an item on her mother’s life list into work with practical meaning.

Entry into substitute teaching

Brett’s application moves through several explicit checks before she can take an assignment. Susan Christian, calling from Chicago Public Schools, confirms that the system has received Brett’s application and immunization records and completed a background check. She tells Brett that the results are satisfactory and that she is eligible to substitute-teach. The call turns an application into permission to work, but it does not guarantee an easy first placement: Christian immediately asks whether Brett can cover a fifth-grade class the following day.

That rapid sequence gives the system’s role in Brett’s new direction a particular shape. Eligibility is established through records and screening; the next step is an immediate staffing need. Brett has little time to settle into the idea before she must decide whether to accept a real classroom assignment. The school system’s requirements are therefore not abstract background: they bring her from aspiration to a specific job, at a specific school, on a tight timetable.

Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School

The assignment is at Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School in Woodlawn. Brett arrives in black slacks and a black sweater, with bright orange shoes chosen for Halloween season. Principal Bailey leads her through a terrazzo hallway toward Mrs. Porter’s classroom. The details locate Brett at the threshold of a school day she has not yet experienced as a teacher, while the principal’s presence makes clear that the placement is organized around an actual classroom and an absent teacher.

Principal Bailey describes Woodlawn as home to several housing projects and a variety of street gangs, and says the school is not the easiest group to teach. She also characterizes Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School as a safe haven for its youngsters. This pairing matters: the school is presented in relation both to pressures in its surrounding neighborhood and to the protective purpose it seeks to serve. The account does not offer a wider description of school policy or resources, but it establishes that teaching there requires engagement with a challenging local context rather than simply filling a classroom vacancy.

The vacancy becomes potentially long-term because Mrs. Porter has gone into labor three weeks before her due date. Principal Bailey asks whether Brett would be available to substitute for six weeks if needed. Brett sees the bright red EXIT sign at the end of the hallway and considers leaving; instead, she connects the commitment to goal number twenty on her list and accepts. The six-week prospect is daunting, but it gives her a concrete chance to attempt a goal she had previously approached with uncertainty. Her answer is a consequential first step, not evidence that the assignment itself will prove easy.

A difficult-to-staff system and a second teaching route

Brett later tells Brad Midar that Principal Bailey recommended her for a homebound position. The work involves teaching sick children in their homes or in hospital, usually one-on-one. Brett explains that the position is associated with zone 299 in the Chicago Public School District, which the personnel director described as difficult to staff and suited to someone willing to take risks. She has been the only applicant. These details distinguish homebound teaching from the earlier classroom substitute assignment: the work moves out of a school room and into individual children’s homes or hospital settings, while remaining within the school system’s educational work.

The recommendation follows Brett’s experience at Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School, linking her initial substitute placement to a more individualized role. The evidence establishes the referral, the description of the assignment, and the personnel director’s account of the staffing challenge; it does not specify the full terms or later course of the job. Even so, the contrast is clear. The first opening demands that Brett step into a fifth-grade classroom at short notice; the second asks her to teach children separately in places shaped by illness. Together, the opportunities show the system giving her more than one route into teaching as she tests what kind of work she can undertake.

Narrative significance

Chicago Public Schools connects Brett’s private goal-setting to public-facing work. Her mother’s list supplies a deadline and a reason to try; the system supplies the application process, the school placement, and the referral through which trying becomes employment. At Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School, the visible EXIT sign marks the temptation to retreat, while Brett’s acceptance of the six-week possibility turns fear into a decision. The school’s description as a safe haven also places teaching within a larger responsibility to children living amid neighborhood difficulty.

The organization’s role remains defined by these encounters rather than by a broad portrait of administration. Its significance lies in how successive practical steps—records checked, eligibility granted, a vacancy offered, a principal’s recommendation made—bring Brett into contact with students whose circumstances differ from her own. The account thus presents school work as both a personal challenge and a form of service, without suggesting that the life-list deadline alone can explain the needs of the children or the demands of the work.