Bridget Murphy

Bridget Murphy is expecting to be a mother in 2 months or less. She was raised in the suburbs of Chicago and is now living in the Logan Square neighborhood. She is working  for Logan Square Neighborhood Association as a community parent organizer. Bridget works with many different schools to get parents to be involved with their neighborhood schools.

Bridget Murphy works for LSNA. She is a community parent organizer who believes that parent involvement in the neighborhood school is very important. Mozart has over 30 parent mentors. Bridget told us that “we should be civically engaged in our community to be able to make a change.” Bridget believes that if the parents work with the school they can change CPS for the better.

Bridget  went to Glenbrook North High School where she told us that it was an isolated bubble because it was not racially diverse. Bridget told us that she thinks that was not a good thing because there was a lot of things that she did not get to learn. What I thought was important about what she told us was “what you put into it is what you get out.” I agree with her because it’s true if you work hard you will get rewarded in the end.

Bridget’s ideas on social justice to her is when everyone takes part in their  community to know what is going on in the community. This is why she works with parents so they can be involved in their very own neighborhood schools. She thinks that if parents are more energetic and supportive than CPS would be open to support parent mentors.

Bridget told us that to her a hero is “someone who can stand up for something they believe in even if no one else will.” Katie, Bridget’s older sister, is her hero when she was young and even today. Bridget wanted to do everything that Katie would do. Katie is newspaper writer who writes about education issues, and every time that Bridget reads one of her articles she feels so proud of her to be her sister. Katie has inspired Bridget to do many things.

In conclusion, from interviewing  Bridget I  learned how helping people can make them change something as big as CPS only with a few parents that are energetic and willing to help we can change the injustices in our community. She showed me that your hero does not have be anyone famous or spectacular. It can be from the simplest of people. Anyone can learn a lot from the heroes in our community. The work that they do may not be the biggest life changing to the world, but every success has a start, and that start, starts in our community, by our community heroes.