What deal with in the name of Education

Saturday I had to take 50 some students to the Markham, IL court house for a mock congressional hearing competition.  When we got there at 8 am there were over 1,000 people in a huge line which wrapped around the building.  It was insane.  There were no places to park either, which was not fun!  I was driving this HUGE 15 passenger van full of students trying to navigate in a very full parking lot.  We ended up parking in a private lot down the road.  When we got into the court house we were told that we would most likely get towed if we stayed there.  So I went with the handful of kids who had driven their own cars to go move them…to where, we didn't know, but we knew we didn't want to donate $125 to the town of Markham in parking tickets.

On our way out the cars we see two spots available.  I have the two boys with us go stand in the spots to save them for the girls.  As we're off getting the cars a woman tries to park in one of the spots that they boys are holding.  The one boy tells the woman (jokingly of course) that he is saving the spot for Gov. Blagojevich.  The woman believes him (sort of) and drives off.  Then she comes around again and looks at him strangely for a while & then drives on.  Well, the girls get to park & then I stand in a spot to save it for the boys.  One man comes along and seriously tries to hit me with his car.  He doesn't ask any questions or say anything; he just gets his car an inch or two away from me.  I don't move.  He finally stops and his passenger rolls down her window and asks me what the hell I'm doing.  I tell them that I am saving this spot for my high school students who are moving their car from an illegal spot to this one.  He backs away a bit & then parks, gets out of his car and finds a sheriff nearby.  He complains to the sheriff who tells me I can't save the spot.  I explain to the sheriff why I'm saving the spot and he says I can't do it.  While we are discussing this my student comes and parks there.  So I give up the argument & proceed into the courthouse.  As we enter the courthouse the woman who had been told the spot was being saved for Gov. Blagojevich comes to us with another cop in tow.  This woman is hopping mad.  She goes off on my student.  The cop just stands there.  Finally the woman seems to be done ranting.  The cop tells us we can't save spots and sends us on our way.  Thankfully she was fairly calm about all this…that helped a lot!  

Then to top things off, the people in charge of this mock congressional hearing don't like me because I simply asked if we could go to the state hearings.  Apparently that was just asking too much.  Also, in the course of events one of my female students lost her keys.  So, when the hearings were over…we had to hunt to find them.  Such fun!  As it turned out…her keys were in some other girl's purse & we did find them, so things were OK in the end, but whoa…it was one drama after another!