Finney: North High students are going places
I took an instant liking to Hatte Kelley.
I met the North High School senior on one of my tour stops through metro-area high school journalism classrooms.
It's a simple exchange. The students ask me questions about my trade, and I pick their brains on the issues of the day.
Sometimes the simplest questions are best. Hatte plans to attend the University of Iowa and "write movies."
"What kind of movies?" I asked.
"Inspirational activism," she said. "Spoken word writing politically."
She wore a knitted purple cap; her unruly bangs covered her eyes and gave off an independent beatnik vibe, but Hatte is no social dropout like Kerouac. She's a hard-boiled wordsmith who dominates local poetry slams.
She is a young woman on the move with stories to tell. I had the fleeting thought I was wasting her time and that I should close my notebook and let her march out of the room on her way to world domination.
Hatte has rocket fuel in her veins, and she planned to use her brains and keyboard to make the world a better place.
She was the rare instant inspiration that made me mourn my decision to return to journalism rather than pursue a career as a teacher.
Jennifer Dryden's journalism classroom is chocked full of inspiration.
On the same trip, I met sophomore Madison Houska, who talks fast and never seems to take in a breath. Her family had just moved into her grandparents' old home.
She was excited that an old closet with a circular enclave was going to be turned into her private cubbyhole for writing and reading.
She carried with her a bottle of Dr Pepper, fiddled with the lid but never took it off. Thank heavens, I thought, if this girl got caffeine and sugar in her, we might have to call for the school resource officer.
But that energy! Man, it was overwhelming. And if Dryden can harness it for paragraphs, then they'll have to add extra pages to the student newspaper because they won't be able to contain the volume of copy that comes out of the girl.
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I met Reagan Clay, a senior who plans to attend Iowa State University. She is thinking about journalism as a career.
Tanna Jones, a junior, said she hated journalism class for the first three weeks, but ended up "kind of getting used to it." Like Reagan, she writes about sports "from bowling to basketball."
One of the North students asked whether their class was as good as the other schools I had visited. I had been to Johnston, Dowling Catholic and Valley high schools at that point.
Before I could answer, a student chimed in: "You can say it. We suck."
It was said as a joke, but I did not take it that way. I recalled a second cousin of mine, 20 years my junior and a relatively recent North graduate. She was badmouthing her alma mater at a recent family gathering.
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My dad interrupted her. "One thing you find with North people is they're really loyal." My dad, by the way, doesn't traffic in sarcasm or irony.
My second cousin rethought her position and said if she had to go somewhere in Des Moines, North was about the best.
"There's that loyalty," my dad said. My dad may trade in I-told-you-sos.
I thought about my second cousin when I looked across this room of bright, interesting and lively people. They weren't hangdog, woe-is-me types by any means.
Sometimes people look down on North. I did when I was a student at East. Some of it is proximity. Our neighborhoods border.
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Some of it is silly sports rivalry stuff, the importance of which expires one second after graduation.
But some of it was because North has a tendency to be down on itself. Some of the poorest neighborhoods in Des Moines send students to North.
When you're poor or struggling, sometimes it feels like everyone sees you as less than a person.
I told them that lots of people struggle regardless of where they go to school. And you learn more about yourself, what you can do and how far you can go on your worst day.
I think about my friend Tom Longden, a retired Register copy editor and his fierce loyalty to North, his alma mater. I think about every teacher or administrator I ever knew who came through North.
And they all had that that fire in their eyes when they talked about North.
Maybe North doesn't win every game or collect every award. But it puts something real strong into the spines of its graduates, something even a lowly East alumnus like me can see and admire.
North High alumni don't pity themselves. They're proud.
Because North High School is about to let loose a kid like Hatte Kelley, who might well be the next Sofia Coppola or maybe Sen. Kelley from Iowa.
North alumni have actual miles. They know how to hit a pothole and keep moving forward.
So, in answer to the question of how North stacks up against the other schools, I'd say just about right, maybe even a little better.
Because North kids are tough.
DANIEL P. FINNEY, the Register's Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus who grew up in Winterset and east Des Moines. Reach him at 515-284-8144 or dafinney@dmreg.com. Twitter:@newsmanone.
INTERVIEW THE COLUMNIST
Register Metro Voice columnist Daniel Finney is on a tour of high school and college journalism classrooms throughout the Des Moines metro. Students ask him about journalism in the 21st century, and he picks the brains of the next generation. The exchanges become future columns. To schedule a visit, email Finney at dafinney@dmreg.com or call 515-284-8144.