<Maria, all text here is a placeholder. I feel like we need something here that is a litle bit bio, but also serves as a connecting blurb to delve into Tonika’s relationship to this curriculum, if that makes sense…> Born and raised in Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Englewood, when I was 13, I commuted by city bus (two hours each way) to attend Lane Tech High School on the North Side.

During that journey I came face-to-face with segregation (though I didn’t completely understand it at the time).  I traveled through segregated neighborhoods to attend an integrated high school where I met teachers who taught me academics and friends who taught me about the city of Chicago, its neighborhoods, and the richness of its racial and ethnic diversity.  

Because of that commute, I also got to learn what it means to use a ‘grid system’ to organize a city so people wouldn’t get lost (this was before GPS). I was surprised to see a street could have the same name—but they were totally different worlds as I commuted from the “S” to “N” parts of the city.  Stores looked different, houses looked different, the bus stops were different. It was all different. In fact, the name of the street was the only thing the same.