Studying Abroad in Chicago

Two representatives from the Chicago Center For Urban Life and Culture, Scott and Emily, came to our Monday night session to give us some information about the center. They used a phrase "it's basically studying abroad, but only 5 or 6 hours away", and from what they said, I believe them 100%. From what they described about the large diversity in the area and the contrast from where I went to school when I was growing up, it would be like traveling to a foreign country. In diverse and exceptional learners, we are taught to embrace the diversity in the classroom, but from what Scott and Emily told us, in parts of Chicago, it's the schools that are diverse from one another, not necessarily the students in the schools. Many of the schools are located in neighborhoods that are predominately one ethnic group, which results in the school in the area to be predominately made up of one ethnic group. They even told the joke of "Why did the chicken cross the road?... To see a new ethnicity...". This opportunity to "studying abroad" sounds like a very beneficial experience to get to learn about city public schools and the students and ethnicity groups that are in the education system.