Clinton High School...here I come!

After applying to LOTS of schools and harassing many districts with regular phone calls and emails I ended up interviewing at Clinton High School in Clinton, IA and Downers Grove outside Chicago. I can confidently say that I am certain I am supposed to be at Clinton HS! I went to the interview as "practice" for my Downers Grove interview and ended up LOVING it!

I will be co-teaching 3 sections of Physical Science with a special education teacher and teaching 1 section of Biology. They are on a trimester schedule where they have a 5 - 70 minute periods and get a new schedule each trimester. I've never heard of anything like it before, but I'm excited to have the longer periods like I had with block scheduling in Boerne! The science department seems fun, motivated and really cares about kids which is encouraging (and I was promised that they'd try to get me some Chemistry next year...I hope!)

Clinton is a community of about 25,000 people located about 30 minutes north of the Quad-Cities along the Mississippi. It's a blue-collar community with a lot of generational poverty. Now, I know that normally isn't a big selling point, but I'm pretty excited about working in a community like that without having to be in an inner city. I know there will be plenty of challenges but it's so comforting to feel so at peace about this next transition (especially when it's SO not what I was expecting/wanting: 1 hour from home, in a smallish Iowa town, co-teaching physical science)! Thanks for all the prayers as this transition is nearly complete, logistically speaking...now I just need an apartment! :)