CPS teachers take on second jobs to keep their ‘heads afloat’
By Zoe Collins Rath Medill Reports Tara Stamps is hunting for another job in either a hotel or an airport. The STEM teacher at Laura S. Ward Elementary School said she loves teaching but she needs another source of income because she will have to stretch $119 for another week. “Cost of living in the […]
Single parents spend 90% of their incomes to pay for child care
By Esther Bower Medill Reports Valisha White knows there is no sacrifice too great for her two children, Harmony, 9, and Alandis, 5. White, a single parent in Uptown, said she strives to provide the most for her kids amid strapped finances and high child care prices. “I just had to go get the kids […]
Waitlisted CHA applicants face homelessness due to delays
By Alison Saldanha Medill Reports In 2009, three years after her son Joseph was born, Diana Scott, a resident of West Rogers Park, filed an application for subsidized rental housing with the Chicago Housing Authority. A decade later, with four children in tow, she remains a candidate on the CHA’s waitlist. Scott, 40, has moved […]
Mapping the way to five of Chicago’s spiciest restaurants
By Harrison Liao Medill Reports In a way, the term “spicy food” is a misnomer. Adding heat to a dish is a global game changer for the palate but can be achieved with myriad techniques and ingredients – from herbs to pastes and sauces to fresh chili peppers and peppercorns. Spice, in this sense, can […]
Nonprofit offers resilience training to Chicago student athletes
By Allegra Zamore Medill Reports Since the 2015-2016 school year, the state of Illinois has seen a significant decline in the number of high school athletes participating in sports, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Due to costs, access to proper athletic performance training is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for students. […]
Drinking problems rampage among college students causing severe health risks
By Xinyi Zhang Medill Reports College students often assume that they can escape most of the negative physical and mental effects of consuming alcohol because they are young and healthy and some don’t drink all that frequently. But even minimal consumption of alcoholic beverages can still have significant negative impacts on health regardless of age. […]
Dew Suriyawan shares the art of authentic Thai food
By Harrison Liao Medill Reports I didn’t know anything about Chinese food until I found out how much I didn’t know about Chinese food. My parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s from Hunan, a landlocked province in central China. They had me in 1994 in Ann Arbor, while they were pursuing graduate engineering […]
Chicago area recycling industry struggles after China bans waste imports
By Lucia Whalen Medill Reports Before China halted the importation of plastic and other recycling waste from around the globe, the majority of Americans were living in a fool’s paradise. For most people, recycling ended at dumping paper, plastic and glass in a large bin – blue in Chicago. From there, most people paid little […]
Predicting climate change depends on supercomputers and Germany has Europe’s only supercomputer dedicated to climate
By Lucia Whalen Medill Reports Hamburg is home to one of the fastest-thinking supercomputers in the world at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). The supercomputer whizzes through global tsunamis of climate data to develop climate models used in landmark blueprints for the future, including the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. […]
Volunteer Coordinator supplies the heart of Community Feast Soup Kitchen
By Joshua R. Skinner Medill Reports Community Feast, a volunteer-run soup kitchen, has operated every Sunday in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago for the last 35 years. Unlike most soup kitchens, Community Feast serves restaurant-style meals, complete with seating and menus. Volunteers are at the heart of that service, many of whom have given […]