While school policy will prevent me from fully taking the reigns from my host teacher during this week, I was able to dive right into the experience today by putting together a laboratory inquiry activity on ingestion and nutrition of Paramecium. My efforts today will pay off tomorrow and Wednesday when I’ll have the opportunity to help small lab groups work through the procedures and analysis questions that I pieced together today from several of the resources that my host teacher has collected across the past three decades. 

Because I have just finished a semester of student teaching in Crawfordsville, I found designing and writing the laboratory a relatively comfortable way to begin my experience at this new school. My familiarity with the lab means that later this week I’ll feel more at ease helping students interact with the content. What made today’s experience richer than my day-trip in March was that I was able to get a better idea of what it’s really like to be a student or a teacher at WPCP. I observed an intimate and informal department meeting, explored most of the building, and experienced the cafeteria routine. 

Prior to today, I had a somewhat skewed impression of the surrounding neighborhood. I assumed that since the atmosphere and interactions within the school walls were so positive and focused on learning, therefore the neighborhood was one that was relatively free from crime or poverty. I discoved today that this is not the case. The school is very near a neighborhood that my host teacher called “rough.” Through the expanse of glass from the third floor she pointed out several public housing projects in which entire bulidings have been known to shoot at each other. None of the children in those bulidings, just a few hundred yards away from the polished award-winning steel, attend WPCP. 

When the school first opened its doors there was an effort to incorporate some of them into the student body, but, according to my host teacher, “it just didn’t work out.” For me, this really highlighted what I’m discovering to be defining characteristic of this city- many small, distinct neighborhoods defined by class and culture which are nested tightly together while remaining quite insulated from one another. As an example, take our trip to Miluwaukee Avenue, just west of WPCP. Travelling away from the warring housing projects, we entered with an ethnic Latino area where I grabbed a delicious cup of fresh horchata. Then, we walked just a few blocks more and found ourselves an area with an ethnic Polish population second only to that of Warsaw, where we thoroughly enjoyed a Polish buffet. 

I’ve visited Chicago dozens of times in my life, but this trip has given me a new perspective on all of the wonderful colors, smells, sounds, and faces that make the city what it is.