Q: Who are you and how long have you been working here at ETHS?
A: So I’m David Futransky. I came to ETHS in September of 1965 when I was a freshman. Wow. So I graduated in the class of 1969. At that time, we were divided into North, South, East and West schools, and I was in West school, somewhat involved in student activities and sports, but no more so than anybody else. Nothing special. It’s just part of being a wildkit at the time. I have three children who graduated here, one in 1994 one in 95 and one in 97 and during their time in high school, I was involved with the boosters club. I was president of the boosters club at one point and supported ETHS, and sometime around the time I decided I wanted to go back to school to become a teacher. So I’ve been in sales and marketing businesses for 25 years, little more, and I went to DePaul in a master’s in certification program. Became certified to teach history, taught two years in the city and started ETHS in 1999 as a history teacher. I taught freshman humanities. I taught sophomore humanities at the time, I taught African history, culture. I taught advanced placement, European history, and I taught logic and philosophy. So over about 13 years in the classroom, I taught a lot of different kids, a lot of subjects, all within the history department, which was and still is a great place.
Q: How do you think you’ve evolved as a teacher?
A: Well, I changed, you know, I was president of the teachers Council, yes, in 2005 2009 and after that, that was when we started to make a change, to look at equity, at HS in much more depth than we had before, and that led to earned honors programming at Ed and learned to the summits to much more of hiring, much more diversity into our staff. We wanted to have more teachers look more like more of the students, and recognize the diversity. When I started as a student, ETHS was about 15% students of color. Today we’re 55% students of color. So I think, in the last couple of years, I’ve been part of that transition and making sure that we were open to that transition. There was pushback in probably 2010 or 2011 from parts of The community that felt that they were losing something, and Dr Witherspoon asked me to be involved in some community outreach to help people understand that education isn’t a zero sum game, that because a student or a group of students are getting some support that doesn’t change. It doesn’t mean we’re minimizing support for other kids. And so I was involved in that for a while, and then we took a look at the Alumni Association, which had started 10 years earlier, and had stagnated, as had the Educational Foundation at that point. And he asked me to get involved with the foundation, with the Alumni Association, to try to take us forward in those things. And. And I think I’ve been able to contribute to how we connect with our 65,000 living alumni, yeah, how we interact and bring people back, how we celebrate things like the centennial this year, yeah, yeah, and recognize that as a school, we reflect community, and that community is not the same community it was 50 or 60 years ago, but that inclusiveness is a very important part of The fabric of what we do and should do, and that’s, I think, where we are today.
Q: What do you think that you’re the most proud of out of all that you’ve accomplished here at ETHS?
A: I think it falls into a couple areas. The biggest one is that as a teacher, I was able to interact with several 1000 students, and I know, because many have come back to me, that there was some impact, and a lot of that impact was just on helping them to discover or enhance their love of learning. Most people here really do love to learn. It may not be fully tapped, or they may not know how to get to that. I think in teaching, I was able to help kids grow and discover that and stay as lifelong learners. I think the work with the foundation and the alumni right now, we are looking at renovating and remodeling the arts and innovation wing of the building that’s going to have a very long term impact on 1000s of kids coming through here. We’re taking a space that’s 60 plus years old and putting it into shape for the next 60 plus years, and giving kids space to learn and grow in allows for what happens in those classrooms to happen. I’m really proud to have been able to contribute to some of that.
Q: What do you think, or how do you think teaching and being involved in Alumni Relations and bettering this school has changed you personally or maybe even professionally?
A: I think if you’re talking to other people, other teachers who are retiring, and other administrators or people who’ve been in Job, right? They, if they think about it, ETHS is an incredibly humbling place. I’m incredibly lucky to have been here and to had the opportunity to work with as many students and adults as I have over the last 25 years, if you start to get a little too big for yourself or think that it’s all about you, this place brings you back down, whether it’s a student or as an adult, being part of this is humbling in many ways. You look at all the great people around you, and I’m incredibly fortunate to be one of 600 adults who have that experience every day. I was incredibly fortunate to be one of a class of 1300 students in a school that was approaching 5000 students when I was here as a student, and to be able to walk away here with a shared love of learning. The gentleman who was just here and leaving was a classmate of mine from 1969. We know each other from fifth grade at Walker school, and he brought in a bunch of things he found these were ribbons that were sold our senior year, or our junior and senior year that people wore around, and you paid a dime to get a ribbon, and it went to some student activities fund, and he’s got all of these things that are memories of that day, and we’ll put them up outside of Alumni Hall. We’ll put them into that display case just to show people the continuity of, hey, there have always been students here. You got 140 some years of students coming through this building. They’ve all been about the same thing. They’ve been about being a Wildkit.
I think having these things are just so important to our community, not only for the people that have, I guess, experience going to school here in 1969 but I guess even now in 2025 just kind of seeing about how much our school has evolved, and I guess learning about all the different things from the past and the future. I think it’s incredible, incredible for sure.
Well, we’re, we’re a great place. We’re filled with great people, and the product is great because you look at people who you look at people who come back, yeah, you look at the centennial celebration we did at Memorial Stadium in the fall. And there were, yeah, there were a ton of people there from all ages. There were 90 year olds there. There were nine month olds there. This is a key part of the community. It is an anchor of the community. And to be able to be part of that makes you feel very good. It also makes you aware that you’re part of something. And so I’m lucky, very lucky. Yeah.
Q: What would you say is the most memorable thing that you’ve been able to take away?
A: I wish I could come down to a memory, yeah, because there’s so many, and they spread over so much time. I can imagine a state basketball championship in 1968, there were 40-50,000 of us who were here as students on that day. It’s a memory no other class or other group of people have. We’ve come close. God knows. Mike Ellis is going to get a team to do that, but that’s something incredibly unique, and the feelings of people I still see, many of my classmates, part of it’s this job. But I had a visitor today who was a classmate. My wife and I went out with a couple last night where she was a classmate who I didn’t really know much in school, but got to know through reunions, and I had lunch with a guy I’ve known since first grade. I’ve got so many memories of people, and I think what comes down to my memories of ETHS are the people. They’re the teachers I had who provided great inspiration and great learning. There’s a strong bond between us who went through and shaped our views of both the civil rights movement and Vietnam War and women’s rights, from that era to the people I taught history with, to the students that I’ve taught. It’s all about people, and I’ve been very lucky to be in a place where people matter and individuals and groups matter, and we celebrate that. That’s sort of the biggest memories are around those sort of moments.
