Today was great! Day 1 of interviewing/orientation. I guess the other Day 1s would be starting Northwestern, starting student teaching, and starting my real job (eek!)? Perhaps today was 2 Day 1s? But anyway...
First, I had an interview with an alternative high school near Humbolt Park. To say that I loved it and would gladly take the low salary to work there is a huge understatement. This is a more appropriate expression of how I feel about this school:
OH.MY.GOSH. I am 95% sure that working at any other school would be a worse fit and not as amazing as working at this place. How can any place measure up to the awesomeness that is this school?! LOVE.
The school's for drop-outs who have chosen to re-enroll. They have 80% attendance and graduation rates (apparently, Chicago Public Schools have an average grad rate of 56%, so that's awesome) and a lot of students continue their education. Many of them are transient / homeless or have kids, which translates to very close relationships between teachers and students. There are only 8 teachers and 130 students, and (my fave part) they run an inquiry-based curriculum; basically, teachers ask their students what they want to learn about in the subject area, and then they teach that! And they have something called cohorts, which may also be tied for my favorite part. There are 4 different teachers in a cohort (science, social studies, math and English) who all do lesson plans together around a main theme, typically something current events and social justice focused. After 6 weeks of a sub-unit (say, based on region of the world), all the students work together on a project relating to all 4 subjects and present. If I get hired, I would teach 4 sections of environmental science with a focus on international conflict, current events, and natural resource economics (holler to my econ!!) with this cohort, and 1 section of life sciences (aka, intro to biology). I would get to do economics, environmental science, social justice / human rights, research projects with current events... all in a collaborative, supportive setting! I had no idea that any high school could be that awesome.
But anyway, I can't get too excited because I still have at least 2 more interviews. I will keep you posted, though!
Today, I also started orientation (I am actually blogging from the hostel room). We all got together to eat Chicago style pizza - let me say, not as good as NY pizza. All the people in my program seem very smart and passionate, and I am very excited to befriend them! Despite a few email issues that left me frustrated these last few weeks, the people running the program seem very organized and professional. I look forward to learning a lot tomorrow!
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