According to Pew Research, Daily Show viewers are actually better informed than people who watch cable news. Fifty percent of Daily Show viewers could name the Sunni branch of Islam, compared to only 41 percent of CNN viewers. A similar gap came about for identifying Scooter Libby (44% to 36%) and identifying Vladimir Putin (52% to 41%). CNN ended up in the middle of the pack; the worst performers were viewers of FOX (surprise), local TV news and network morning shows.

Ed.

Random Acquaintances

So last weekend I was in Chicago to take some testing that is required by the state of Illinois if I'm going to teach here, and I'm here right now, waiting for my train back to Michigan. (Unfortunately I can't get a wifi connection, so I'll have to wait to post this until I get home.) Both weekends I had the privilege of meeting some new people. Let me back up to the fall of 2005 so I can make all the connections for you. As most of you know I studied in Latin America with the Latin American Studies Program the fall semester of 2005. I have stayed in touch not only with some of my fellow students, but with some of the staff as well. Last year, I went to a Catholic mission in Guatemala (which I had been introduced to by LASP) to volunteer for four months. While I was there, I got to meet some of that semester's LASPers who worked with the same Catholic mission, and then I headed across the lake to hang out with the whole group for a day. I've kept in touch with one of those students as well. Her name is Amy, and she's student teaching in Chicago, and was generous enough to let me stay with her last weekend. One of her roommates (Lindsey) is someone else that I met in Guatemala. Her other two roommates are alumni of John Brown University. Amy knew I needed to come back this weekend, but Amy and Lindsey were both going to be gone. The other two roommates (Rachel and Jill) were gracious enough to let me stay with them anyway. I found out this weekend that Rachel and Jill both knew Heidi, someone I know from LASP and hung out with quite a bit in Costa Rica. Small world.

Friday night I went out to dinner with Rachel and Jill (keep in mind I barely know them), their friend Jamie who was in from Ohio, visiting her boyfriend, and her boyfriend Jonathan. I do enjoy meeting people. We had a great time.

Oh frustration. There's a wifi network here somewhere, but apparently I'm some distance from it, because I can't hold a connection for anything, and when I do get one I can't connect to the internet.

Teaching

As many of you know, I'm possibly going to become a teacher. I've applied with two alternative certification programs: Chicago Teaching Fellows, and Oakland Teaching Fellows. Today I had an all day interview event with Chicago Teaching Fellows. After an introduction, we were split into groups of 8-12 people. (I think there were supposed to be 10-12 people in a group, but there were 4 people in my group who didn't show, so we had only 8. The first activity in this group was for each person to give a 5 minute lesson to the rest of the group in the subject of their choice, and to the age level of their choice.

Let me back up....there were somewhere around 90 people interviewing, ranging in age from about 22 to 65. This was the third interview event, so if there were about 100 people at each interview event, that means about half of us will be offered positions. My group was all in their twenties, and 3 of the 8 of us are interested in teaching Spanish.

Anyway, while one person was teaching a lesson, the rest of us had to pretend that we were students in the age group that the person was teaching to. Let me tell you, it's hard to pretend that you're a second or fourth grader.

The sample teaching was followed by a writing session: we had 20 minutes to write a memo to our hypothetical principal regarding a parent's complaints about us as teachers not living up to promises we had made to make the year a success. After that we had 20 minutes of group discussion about how we would handle a specific hardship we might face as teachers. I felt like I was pretty evenly matched with the others in my group, but I'm not sure how all of the other group sessions went. I should hear back sometime in the next month or so.

In a couple of weeks I'm going out to Oakland California to do the same thing all over again. Fun times. Hopefully I get at least one job offer out of this. If I get two, I'm not sure which one I would choose. Chicago is near family and some friends, and I know no one in California, but Oakland is near the ocean (and bays), not too far from the mountains, and warm. Being in a warm climate only 3 hours away from great skiing sounds really appealing to me, even if that job pays a little less.

Both of the programs have a summer training institute, but both of them are paid by a stipend at the end of the training. The tentative dates from CTF are June 9-July 23. The stipend for CTF is only $1000 before taxes, but the OTF stipend is $2000 minus taxes. Either way I won't have a lot of income for the summer. Hopefully I can find some cheap housing, and hopefully I can find some sort of work to fill the rest of the summer. Chicago Public Schools doesn't start until after Labor Day, so that leaves almost 6 weeks in between the end of the training and the beginning of the school year. At the end of the first year, I would have a full Illinois teaching Certification, and would be only 2 or 3 classes away from a Master's degree. During the school year, I would have to go to class 2 nights a week, and the tuition (it's through a local university) is 10-15k. But I can get an Americorp award of $4725/year for the first two years, and Chicago Public Schools will deduct the rest from my payroll for 4 years, interest free. Not a bad deal.

If I get one of these teaching jobs, I think I might start a blog called “Confessions of a First Year Teacher” or something like that to share my experiences and reflect on them. Something for you to look forward to. Maybe it would become a book someday. That sounds like a good book, doesn't it?