1.5 week update:

So, after I've started to get to know my kids and began teaching them for real, am I still as happy as I was coming in?

Yes.  Very very much so.

I just love these kids.  They're awesome.  Their personalities are the greatest of any group of kids I've ever taught - they just have so much to them.  I had been scared by the other teachers into assuming that they were a disciplinary handful, but it feels like they matured enormously coming into their senior year (I'm sure the move into the new building has helped as well).  There's maybe a couple of knuckleheads per class, but the rest of the students always keep them in check.  Kids have started hanging out during lunch and after school and I feel like I'm really getting to know quite a few of them.  I love them sooooo much.

On a silly note, I've been called a lot of things since I became a teacher.  Some have been good, some bad.  Some of the funniest have been when Raphell referred to me as "black on the inside" or when a couple kids started correcting someone's reference to my skin color by saying, "Mr. Danke, you not white, you light-skinned!"  But I got a new one yesterday - while we were swapping stories about our neighborhoods, one of the kids blurted out, "You're a cholo fo' real!"

Finally, some of the seniors asked me to represent them in the class competition during the pep rally today.  Considering my experience with pep rallies in the past, I figured it was a chance to get embarassed.  I agreed to do it anyway for their sake.  I got up in front with all of the other competitors and got ready to do my best when the kids started chanting back and forth across the gym trying to show which class had the most spirit.  The seniors, of course, drowned everyone out with their rhythmic chant that they traded back and forth between the east and west sides of the gym.  Were they like the other classes, shouting "Seniors!" or "'06!"?  Sometimes.  But they also went with a loud:

"DANKE!"  "DANKE!"  "DANKE!"  "DANKE!"

 Yah, I think I was feeling pretty loved.