"Whats The Big Deal About Oak Park?"

 Oak Park. Where do I even start?

I was born and raised in Oak Park, meaning I also attended OPRF for all four years of high school. When you tell someone that you are from Oak Park, you get the same 3 responses :

"Don't you love the history?"

"Oak Park is a great school. You are very lucky."

Or my personal favorite. "Wow, your parents must be very well off."

I always find these responses interesting because they seem to come with an assumption that everyone who grows up in Oak Park has the same experience. People hear “Oak Park” and immediately create this picture in their head of what your life was/is like. And honestly, sometimes I don't even know how to respond because I don't think I ever experienced Oak Park in the way that other people seem to imagine it.

So what is the big deal about Oak Park? To me, it's nothing. There is a sense of pride that seeps out of the pores of people who live there. They are proud to say I am from Oak Park. But then you ask them why. Silence. 

That is probably why watching What's the Big Deal About Oak Park? was so interesting to me. I have lived there my entire life, but I don't think I have ever really stopped to ask what makes Oak Park such a “big deal.” The documentary looks at Oak Park from the outside and inside, bringing up the history, reputation, race, class, and ideas of progress that have become attached to the village. Watching it, I kept recognizing the Oak Park that other people describe to me, but I also kept thinking about how different that version can feel from the Oak Park I actually experienced.

I think the documentary made me realize that Oak Park has almost created a character for itself. It is the diverse suburb. It is the progressive suburb. It is the suburb with the good schools and the historic houses. It is the place that people are supposed to be proud to say they are from. And because that image is repeated so often, it becomes easy to forget that real people live inside it who might not experience all of those things the same way. 

I think that is where my own experience comes in. When I was actually living in Oak Park and going to OPRF, I wasn't thinking about the village's reputation. I was just a student. I had my own friends, my own experiences, my own problems, and my own opinions about where I lived. But now, when I tell someone I am from Oak Park, I realize that they often have an idea of me before I even get the chance to explain myself.

That's exactly what I found myself thinking while watching the documentary: How much of Oak Park is actually Oak Park, and how much of it is the story we have created about Oak Park?

The documentary also made me think about how this happens in schools. OPRF has a reputation, just like Oak Park does. But a reputation doesn't tell you what it is actually like to be a student there. It doesn't tell you what someone's home life is like, what they have access to, or how they personally experience their education. As someone who wants to become a teacher, I think that distinction matters. We can make assumptions about students based on their school or where they live without ever actually knowing their story. 

Students like Key-Shaun in the documentary said the exact same thing: "Some of the teachers would treat me a different way because they already knew who I was."

Maybe that is why I don't have a great answer when someone asks me what the big deal about Oak Park is. I have lived there my entire life, and I went to high school there, but I don't think I can give someone one simple answer.

Because when I say, “I'm from Oak Park,” people seem to hear a whole story. Who even gets to decide what the big deal actually is?