Excerpts from the Windy City

Well hello my long lost English friends!!
I am officially half way through my internship in Chitown. And, it has been very, very interesting. I got my first real taste of having my own classroom. Last Thursday, Friday, and today my teacher was not in school so I was in charge of planning and teaching for four hours all three days. First of all, if you thought lesson planning for fifty minutes was bad...four hours is even worse! Then actually teaching that long...wow. The air conditioning stopped working last Thursday so that was a pleasant surprise for me and the students. And so was the book I passed out that we were starting...to which on kid angrily replied, "a book...I ain't readin no BOOK," and actually refused to open his book and read with us. Oh to be in the land of bloomington-normal where comma splices were our biggest problems. These kids cannot write complete sentences, cannot understand that they was is never correct, cannot fathom the idea of homework, and cannot stop giving me CRAP for more than thirty seconds. Sigh.
I have learned a lot though. Last Friday I pulled 4 students out of class and threatened to kick them out for the rest of the day. It was fun. I was always worried about not having enough experience with classroom management or discipline...ahh, how naive I was!
Surprisingly, however, they are starting to respond. On Friday 4 students were so interested in the book they asked if they could take it home over the weekend to read (smile). And today I had them do a creative writing lesson and they had to write TWO WHOLE PAGES and I got almost no complaints. There are of course set backs, like when I assigned a "comic strip" to highlight the four most important points of section one of the book and you thought that seriously, I must have told them that I was going to feed them poison for lunch or something. And when I opened my window and there were bullet holes in it. And when the security guard had to come in and tell me my class was too loud...even though it was the most engaged I had ever seen my students.
It is really hard sometimes. I leave every day exhausted, and then have to listen to some crappy professional development in the afternoon, and go home and begin planning for the next day. But I think it is worth it (although I haven't really made up my mind about that yet). And being at Crane makes me see why No child Left Behind, however flawed and unrealistic it may be, came from somewhere for some reason to help some kids. If it is helping is debatable, but there is SUCH A HUGE achievement gap and it is really sad.
And Normal Community High School seems like a magical land, far far away right now. A good place, with smiling people, lots of paper and supplies, a place where you can assign homework, a place where I am not sweating through my shirts everyday :). Ahh, August 22...how I long for thee!
I will be back in town probably the 20 or 21...so yeah, I am up for a get together! And I am still in the city for three weeks if anyone wants to come meet me for dinner or something. Heck, you can observe my class if you want...although I the lack of airconditioning would scare even the mightiest of English teachers away!!
Miss you guys...and I can't wait for august!