Institute

I'm officially settled into the Windy City for TFA Institute. Two days in, and its already clear this is going to be intense. We are up at very early hours to shower, eat breakfast, pick up lunches, and get on the busses to be at schools in the Chicago Public School systems by about 7:15am. We don't start with our students until next week, so the past two days have been spent learning massive amounts of information about lesson planning, etc. There's no AC in most of the rooms, and we are hot and sleepy, but it is all practical and all important. This matters. I concentrated more the past 48 hours than I can remember ever doing in college.

I'm teaching at a high school on the south side in Englewood, which is notoriously the worst neighborhood in the city. Despite its rough location, the school has apparently had tremendous success in getting its students to graduate and move on to college. This is pretty amazing considering almost 90% of the student body comes from low income families, and face challenges daily I can't even imagine. I have no idea what teaching here will look like, or how hard it will be. My group's placement is Chemistry in the credit recovery program, which means our students need to pass our class to be able to move toward graduation. Oh, and for those of you who asked me if I thought I could be stern enough to control a rowdy class, my job on the first day is to introduce rules and procedures, so I guess we are about to find out :)

When I write all of this out, it seems like there should be a lot to be worried about or scared of, but right now I am mostly just excited. I know this is going to be hard, really hard. I might end up discouraged and wonder why I'm here. I'm going to fail a lot before I get this right. But I haven't taken a single step of this journey on my own yet, and I don't think God's finished yet. His love for these kids is so strong in every single one of their roughest situations, and He is the one who can heal their broken hearts. I can't walk into that school without feeling that. He's the God of this city, and greater things are still to come.