Curious about Curie

So far, I can talk only reflect on one day at Curie Metro High School, though I will say it was quite an eventful one!

I have been to Bogan High School previously, which is about 20 blocks or so away from Curie. On my way to Bogan for two semesters worth of fieldwork, I would pass by Curie every day. Though it was wrong of me to do this, I was quick to just lump Curie as a “trouble” school alongside Bogan. Some of you have been there, so you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say Bogan was quite the eye-opener. The administration cared less and less about its students, and it reflected in the school environment. When I got placed at Curie, I anticipated that the situation would look similar. Boy, was I wrong. I walked into Curie, and found myself feeling as if I were in a completely different part of Chicago. Of all schools I have observed, I will say Curie is most like my own high school, Guerin College Prep in northwest suburbs—not even Foreman, a school just 10 minutes east down Belmont, compares to Guerin the way Curie does. I still have yet to pinpoint what it is exactly about Curie that sets it so drastically apart from neighboring schools. Could it be that most students are placed in majors (IB, MYP, AVID)? Could it be the administration’s attention to the student experience? What makes this school, one that could easily fall down the path of Bogan (an IB-integrated school as well, mind you) steer so clear of this track? I hope to answer these as the semester moves along.

While I’m sure the school has its problems, from first impression, it is immediately clear to me that it is not a school you’d imagine when considering the southwest side of Chicago.  In addition to this surprise, my mentor teacher, Tricia, is awesome! She is one of two heads of the English department, so I will have the opportunity to see the inner workings of such a large and invested department. It is also really great that Tricia and I seemingly share the same kinds of teaching philosophies. She teaches at an extremely diverse (in many ways) school, and I can already tell that she attends to that in even the slightest, most minute ways that really impact how students learn in her classroom. We’re talking about instructional delivery (Cooper), and that ties in quite well to the day I spent with Tricia. In her freshman class, she is working a lot on grammar in this unit, and I observed on one of the days she was lecturing—though I wouldn’t necessarily call it that. Though she lectured on the use of Cornell notes and annotating language, grammar, and syntax use, she disguised it in a way so that the students were interacting with the “lecture,” as opposed to simply sitting there and taking notes. Her use of worksheets, mini-projects, and even voice clips took what could have been a boring 50-minute lecture and elevated it into a multi-layered lesson.