By Tina Payne
For interterm 2018, a small group of education students, including myself, boarded a train around three in the morning to travel to the beautiful city of Chicago. Vicki Schmidt and April Counts accompanied Reven Bradbury, Aida Sandoval, Juliana Munoz, Stevie Stockham and me. The purpose of this trip was to complete our Introduction to Education Practicum course in a more diverse setting.
With the help of Lane Chesebro, our wonderful guide and director of the Chicago Center, we spent our first couple of days exploring the city and adjusting to our surroundings. Once we unloaded our bags at the hostel, we were taken to Chinatown where we explored and had our first Chicago dinner. We also had the pleasure of visiting a couple of museums and going on a mural tour in Pilsen. On Tuesday, we were given a thorough class on how to use the city transportation and had to map out our own game plan to get to our assigned schools in a timely manner without getting lost.
We spent the last few days observing classes in our assigned inner-city schools. Aida Sandoval and I, as secondary education majors, were sent to Kelly High School. Juliana Munoz, Reven Bradbury, and Stevie Stockham spent their time in an elementary school. As Education majors, we had a choice between doing our Intro to Education Practicum in Wichita or Chicago. Going to Chicago gave us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a lifestyle most of us weren’t used to and experience new cultures as well. Getting on the train to come back home was a bitter sweet goodbye.
