These are two of the hundreds of notes that Marge Tye Zuba found slipped under the door of Room 481 of Oak Park-River Forest High School during the five years she taught a class called Social Seminar:
– I’m not going to my afternoon classes. I don’t care if I get put in in-school suspension by my dean. I hate to say it but I don’t care. All I can do is cry. I wish I could die. Maybe I’ll come by after seventh period, if you want. Rita.
– This last week in school sucked. The hole (sic) week I went for about one day and outside of school isn’t very good either. I wish you didn’t find me when I ran away. Nick.
The kids assigned to that class were on the edge of becoming dropouts. By the time they hit Room 481 and Social Seminar, they were already chronic truants, burnout teens. They were children who stole cars, got drunk, had babies, ran away or just plain hung around, doing nothing.
Tough kids. But Marge Zuba is a tough lady.
She followed them to their homes, found them at neighborhood hangouts, lined up after-school jobs for them, showed up at police headquarters when they were arrested, occasionally blasted their parents and continuously harangued them to get to school and make something of themselves.
Sometimes she was successful and sometimes she wasn’t. But she was-and still is-tenacious.
Zuba has written a paperback book called “Wish I Could Have Told You: Portraits of Teenagers Almost Dropping Out,” about her experiences heading the high school’s chronic truancy program from 1979 to 1984 ($15.95, available at Logos Book Store, 101 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, or by phone, 800-348-7543.)
Although her job has changed, her methods and her philosophy haven’t.
As one of 13 deans at the well-regarded high school, she’s still after her students to stick with it.
“On the edge” is an expression she uses a lot. She gravitates toward people who are on the edge, she says, people who need a nudge, a kick or a massive dose of tough understanding to keep them from going over.
“Many of the students I deal with are on the edge and they’ve gotta get through this period because it’s their only hope. School is their way out, so they can end up on a college campus, or in a job, so they can be really independent. And it’s hard because a year or two years or three seems like a lifetime to them.”
Starting out as Sister Marge
Zuba, 53, is a small, compact person who exudes intensity even when she’s sitting still. She talks direct and tough; there’s no educational-ese in her speech. She drops the “g’s” off the end of words, says “yeah” and “I dunno” and “ya know” and her hands are in constant motion while she talks. Her eyes are unwavering.
It’s not hard to visualize her talking to members of street gangs, which she has done a lot, or to prison inmates, which she has also done.
It is a little hard to visualize her wearing a nun’s habit, even a modified one, which she did for 10 years as a Sister of Providence.
“For me, becoming a nun meant an opportunity to really live on the edge, to touch the lives of people who were on the edge,” she says. “Yeah, absolutely, it sounds like a contradiction. And in no way was I a renegade nun. But I was able to go to (Cook County) jail as Sister Marge, and no one asked why. I could work with the Latin Kings, as Sister Marge.”
She spoke fluent Spanish, and in her mid-20s became part of a team of 10 priests and 10 nuns that worked in the Mexican communities of Pilsen and Little Village. They were called the 18th Street Team Ministry and their mission was to try to make life better for the residents, whether they were in jail or trying to find decent housing.
That part of her life came to an end when she decided life was broader than being in a religious community allowed. She also fell in love with the man she married, Hank Zuba.
“You don’t have a relationship when you’re a nun, so I left. I had those 10 years which were just phenomenal, and I’ve had the opportunity to be married to someone who’s my best friend still.”
Helping troubled students
Oak Park-River Forest High School has 2,800 students and enjoys a reputation of sending about 85 percent to college and of having a dropout rate of less than 4 percent.
But when Zuba got there, in 1979, she wanted to focus on the kids who weren’t successful.
She created the truancy program, which included the Social Seminar class, tenaciously going after the kids who were turning their backs on school.
In classes of 15, she got them to talk about families, friends, how to communicate effectively, things about school they didn’t like and how to make healthy choices.
There was Rhonda, who tried to commit suicide when she was a freshman and whose father refused to let her or anyone in the family go into therapy. There was Kelly, who drank while she was partying with friends and who also drank when she woke up in the morning. And Andy, who brought the car he had “borrowed” over to Zuba’s house and then waited while she called the police.
“This is not the expected behavior in a place like Oak Park. So a lot of these people just close their door on their pain, they don’t feel comfortable getting help,” Zuba says.
“Yeah, I get emotionally involved. A lot of times, I get very angry at a parent’s behavior, but I have to realize that’s what the kid has and me going off on the parent isn’t going to help. But I have occasionally gone off on parents.”
After five years of the truancy program, Zuba moved with her husband and two sons, Jeremy and Quito, to Lodi, Wis. He had a new job, she wanted to write and they thought it would be a permanent move.
It didn’t work out that way. They lasted about 18 months before moving back. Zuba returned to the Oak Park school, as a dean, in 1985.
“We got up there to Wisconsin, and it was like, `OK, this is great, but where is the crisis? Where are the problems?’ Because what I learned about myself is, I love problem solving, I love being in the center of trying to figure things out.”
The problems with kids on the edge haven’t decreased over the years, Zuba says. In her job as dean, she works with all types of teens, from class leaders to potential dropouts, and if anything, their troubles-across the board-are getting worse.
“I’d say over the last 5 to 10 years, we are doing more parenting of the parents. We’re not just dealing with the students. I think parents are frightened. There is so much going on in the lives of our children, whether it’s video or high tech stuff or friendships, and parents are feeling alienated, almost like they’re not capable of having a relationship with their kids.
“Whereas in reality, that’s what the kids want. They want a relationship with their parents. It’s the intangibles that count. Life has gotten so complex that parents, and other adults, forget that children are impacted by simple things.”
Every year at Thanksgiving, Zuba asks her students to fill out a sheet and answer this question: Is there any human being in this building who you feel has been significant in any way, shape or form?
One of her sophomores wrote about the woman with the red hair who collected the money at the cafeteria line.
“I don’t know what her name is, but she smiles at me every day,” the student wrote.
“I went and found that woman and told her,” Zuba said. “We do things every day and we don’t realize what an effect they can have on a child. A school is a very powerful place, and it goes way beyond grades.”
Always on the move
Aside from life at the high school, raising her own family and staying married to the same person for 24 years, Zuba has done a number of other things in the last few years.
She received her master’s degree from the Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work, University of Illinois, Chicago in 1973, and in 1990 completed her doctorate in adult education from Northern Illinois University, where she is a part-time assistant professor. She also has a private psychotherapy practice with adults in Oak Park.
Anything more? Or, put another way, what’s next?
“Part of me wants to go back to the jail,” she says, “help prisoners (earn) college degrees. I think I’m excited by the fact that I don’t know what I’m going to be, what I’m going to be doing, the rest of my life. For me, that’s the best.”
