"It's Not That Bad," It's SO great!

When we received our placements to Student Teach on Tuesday, I was so incredibly worried. I was assigned to teach at World History Bell Multicultural School. Colleen, my roommate, offered to trade me. It was the most charitable act. I still cannot believe she was so selfless and kind to trade placement at a school she was really excited about. She says she is more comfortable teaching World History than Government, but I really just think she is a good person. I am so grateful to her.

I will be student teaching at Duke Ellington School of the Arts. It is a performing arts school where students "major" in Museum Studies, Dance, Vocal Performance, Literary Studies, Instrumental Music, Theater, Technical Design/Production, and Visual Arts. These kids are extremely talented and their major is of utmost importance to them.

Students apply to attend Duke Ellington. If they live outside the District, they must pay $10,000 in tuition charges. We ride the Metro, beginning in Crystal City and ending at the Foggy Bottom stop and jumping on the bus for the rest of the trip. We actually haven't tried this way yet...but the way we have been going is taking us up to an hour and a half each way, so we are going to recalculate.

I'm thinking of learning how to do this all myself--but as for now, our apartment is blessed to have Meggie. She is an extreme planner...and we LOVE her for that. We especially love how she stands up and rushes to the door before the metro stops...and then waits for us all as we leisurely take our time.

Some really funny things have happened already. As I mentioned earlier, I am teaching DC History and US Government. In our class, we were talking about jail. We tend to talk about jail and Obama a lot. Anyways, there is this hilarious boy who we will call Marcus. We began to discuss how high security prisons take away many rights that include TV or exercising and he said, "What they gon do, strip you nekked and kick you in a hole?" Well that was hilarious. But what was even more hilarious was when he said, "I was walking the otha day and I hit my head on a trash can. I got so mad at the trash can that I just started kicking it..." he got really into it and kept on and on. It was hilarious. Wow. So funny. We ended up relating that to possible hidden bombs at the innaguration and what will be done to stop that. Hilarious. The funniest thing of the day though was when Ms. Chandler, my mentor teacher, when discussing prisons explained that as a citizen of the District, prisoners can be shipped anywhere. She then gave the example of a person who was sent to South Dakota and was the only African American person there (her voice was even naturally lowered which added to the dramatic effect). There were lot's of "nooo" and "uuh-ummm girl" and gasps. I said, "hey, it's not that bad." Everyone started cracking up. My students are hilarious. I love them so much. It was great.