Friday, April 20, 2007

You Can't Go Back Again!

Last weekend the kids and I were biking all over the neighborhood. We went for three bike rides and visited 6 different playgrounds.

One of the playgrounds we went to was at my old school. The school is called King George.

When we first moved to Brandon this is where I went to school. I was in grade one and the school was a massive three storey building that was build in 1911. Soon after I started going there they started construction of a new building at the other end of the school yard. This school, the NEW King George, opened when I was in the middle of grade two.

The New building had a whole new concept. It was a totally open space school. There were no complete walls enclosing any of the class rooms and at the center was the library which also had no walls. From the grade two room you could see clear across the library to the classrooms on the other side of the school. The only exceptions to this open area concept were the gymnasium, the grade one classroom and the kindergarten.

It was great going to a brand new school and it was so different from any other school I'd ever seen. It was carpeted!

I left that school after the third grade to pursue French immersion, but it was definitely the nicest school I ever went to.

Back to last weekend.

I took the kids over to the playground at King George and it was disgusting! First of all the ground was covered in garbage. Food wrappers, paper, broken glass, clothing. You name it, it was there. Then the play structure itself was a danger zone. Broken boards all over the place, screw heads sticking out everywhere, missing railings and half of the roof of the house-type structure had been torn off. And then there was the graffiti. It was everywhere. I must have seen the "F" word 70-80 times as well as other inappropriate scribblings. Needless to say, we didn't play there for very long.

While I was there I was experiencing major flashbacks as I passed my old classrooms so I figured I'd take a peek in the windows. I wish I hadn't.

Instead of seeing the nice open design that was originally used I saw plain old, walled-in classrooms. No carpet, no view, just a plain boxy classroom. They totally destroyed the original concept. It now looks like a bunch of holding cells in a detention center. THAT SUCKS!!

How could they do that? This was MY school. Now it's just a scuzzy looking slum school. I turn my back on that school. King George is dead to me now!

Stupid school.

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