Jimmy Kallas ’14 – Today was another great day for me taking part in the Chicago Urban Experience program. At Benito Juarez Community Academy today was a half day for the students, this meant that class periods were only 23 minutes long. Because of this my host teacher Mr. Mich spent most of the class periods for housekeeping purposes, but also allowed for me to introduce myself to the students and answer any questions they had for me. This was a fun part of the day especially when I filled the students in on the fact that I go to one of only three all-male institutions in the United States.
After the half day in school myself and the other Wabash students spent the other half of the day at a teacher workshop at the Field Museum. This was another awesome experience as we learned how to apply object based learning in the classroom. We also explored the task of planning an educational field trip, where the main takeaway was that to have a successful field trip it is more than just showing up and having a day off. To plan a good educational field trip takes a lot of work and prior planning including cross-curriculum activities. My favorite part of the day after we finished the workshop was that we got to explore the museum on our own. One of my favorite exhibits was Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is the largest and best preserved T-Rex specimen ever found.
Today was another wonderful day that I was able to experience because of the Wabash Teacher Education program, not only have I learned endless teaching strategies but I have been able to experience multiple cultures that are rarely seen in Crawfordsville. This has been a great experience and I am upset that it will be ending in two short days.
