I've finished uploading my entries from this summer. Now its time for the current ones to start. I'm going to attempt to stay somewhat current.
It's funny how my journal this summer and now this journal have been motivated at least partially least in part by my frustration with Teach for America (TFA). Today was the big group meeting for Round Zero, as TFA calls it. Registration started at 8:30am, which meant I had to get up at 6:45 to run. It turned out to be a nice run, but I sure wouldn't have minded going at say, 8:00 a.m. on my day off. Anyway, back to TFA...
The first session was about the importance of properly analyzing problems, their causes and possible solutions. Really? I had no idea it was important to do that. I felt like I was back at institute starting over again. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to make "data-driven" decisions, especially when kids' educations are riding on the decision, but at this point I think my time would have been better spent worrying about my particular situation rather than working through scenarios. As annoying as that session was, at least it was with Scott, my program director (PD). I enjoy working with Scott a whole lot more than my CMA and others from the summer, which has made my post-institute encounters with TFA manageable.
Anyway, back to the SIX HOUR meeting today. The second session was on balancing personal and professional responsibilities. They made us list out things that stress us out personally and professionally. A girl I was sitting next to wrote something to the effect of having to come to work on Saturday just to be told I need to take time for myself. Seriously??? I subtly spent that session grading papers. I wouldn't be surprised if the TFA people saw, but at this point I don't really care. The afternoon sessions weren't too much better. At this point I want to work on my classroom or helping someone work on their specific classroom. The scenarios we have to read about and watch are nice for introduction, but at this point I want specifics. I think I came up with more things I want to change about my classroom during my long run before the session than I did at the session. Hopefully I'm just the crazy kid who didn't find it very useful and others got a lot more out of it than me.
In other news, the Cubs are going to the playoffs!!! Could 2008 finally be the year?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
11 July 2008, Friday
LAST DAY OF INSTITUTE! I am so happy that this “experience” is just about over. A few people have said how its gone by so fast, in I guess in some ways it has – mainly how fast the weekends went, but I don’t think it went by all that fast. It was a lot of long nights, longer sessions, and challenging time in the classroom. However, I have managed to survive without coffee and, for the most part, not giving up my running time. It’s a miserable experience but I will leave institute a better teacher than when I came in – though that might not be saying too much. It’s amazing how much less bitter/angry/frustrated I feel since I’ve gotten slightly more sleep this week. This is not to say that I have suddenly changed my mind about anything else that I’ve written previously – I still think there’s a lot of things that could be changed about institute to make me a much better teacher than I am not – but when I get more sleep its so much easier to see things as less negative when I’m better rested. I wouldn’t call it “well rested” by any means yet but it’s beating the 5 hours I was getting the first couple weeks.
9 July 2008, Wednesday
After we got back last night I ran and then played soccer with the Eastern North Carolina corps for a while. That’s one thing I’m going to miss about institute is the other corps members. The people who play are actually pretty good – there’s a few former D-I players in the mix. Sadly, my playing got cut short because I had to meet with my CMA. The meeting was better than previous ones. The point system was more effective when I was giving points to the class rather than taking them away from the class. What I might do is instead of giving myself points in the future, I might either (a) take away points from the class and instead of giving myself points and have the class goal to be to get a certain number of points rather than trying to beat the number of points I have or (b) just give positive points and nail kids for negative behaviors with consequences.
8 July 2008, Tuesday Part II
Part II:
Today’s class was slightly better. Brandon said they were pretty bad for him so they must have gotten it out. Zederick was a disaster. He refused to move, so I told him that was his warning, waited a few seconds and asked him to move again. He still refused, and this time I told him to move to the penalty box. He refused and called me a name so I told him to leave the room. To my surprise, he actually left. Granted it was storming out, but he still moved. Katie went after him and I guess she talked to him because he came back in the room in a few minutes into his new seat.
The effects of the point system were minimal but generally positive. At times, a few students tried to get others to be quiet because they didn’t want me getting points, but I think more often when I gave myself a point the class mocked the way I said it or just didn’t care. I need to do a better job of bringing back control of the entire class. Several times students were talking or calling out, and while it wasn’t a lot, it was enough to be disruptive. I don’t have enough time to teach what I need to teach what I need to get through as it is so I don’t want to waste time bringing everyone back together, but I’m thinking in the long-term – like when I have an entire school year – the time I spend bringing the class back to order early in the year, even if its fairly often, will be offset by the time I save later on.
The most frustrating part of the class for me was that Jennifer was getting everything we were doing in class – I had to tell her I needed to call on other people so much because she kept being the only person with her hand raised. However, when the test came, she bombed. Thankfully, she talked to me at lunch and wanted to know what went wrong. I hadn’t graded the tests so it wasn’t like she got the test back and knew she bombed, she knew it from the start and told me she knew it in class but didn’t get it on the test. At lunch we went over the assessment and she seemed to be getting it, but I don’t know if she’ll still understand it on the CRCT tomorrow.
Lunch took longer than I expected and on the way back the principal saw the line and stopped us several times. So, incombination with class running about 5 minutes over, we got back at 11:50 instead of 11:40. Ms. Jones had said she wanted 20 minutes with the students to review geometry so I was hoping she’d be done by 12:10 and Chris would be able to start. That didn’t happen…I don’t know what time he got to start, but he was also interrupted by a fire drill (yes, on the day before the test the school decided they needed to have a fire drill. Why they waited until basically the second to last day to do this, I don’t know. At least we didn’t have a fire during the first four plus weeks of school. Anyway I feel really bad because it screwed up Chris’s review. There were several incredible aspects of Ms. Jones’ lesson. Her classroom management is insane. She stands at the board, facing the board, and reminds everyone that when she’s writing the should be talking – and the listened. She tells everyone to take out a pencil and paper – and magically everyone has one. They never had pencil and paper for us. The other incredibly sad thing was that not a single student could even venture a guess at what the formula for a circle was. This is 8th grade summer school.
Today’s class was slightly better. Brandon said they were pretty bad for him so they must have gotten it out. Zederick was a disaster. He refused to move, so I told him that was his warning, waited a few seconds and asked him to move again. He still refused, and this time I told him to move to the penalty box. He refused and called me a name so I told him to leave the room. To my surprise, he actually left. Granted it was storming out, but he still moved. Katie went after him and I guess she talked to him because he came back in the room in a few minutes into his new seat.
The effects of the point system were minimal but generally positive. At times, a few students tried to get others to be quiet because they didn’t want me getting points, but I think more often when I gave myself a point the class mocked the way I said it or just didn’t care. I need to do a better job of bringing back control of the entire class. Several times students were talking or calling out, and while it wasn’t a lot, it was enough to be disruptive. I don’t have enough time to teach what I need to teach what I need to get through as it is so I don’t want to waste time bringing everyone back together, but I’m thinking in the long-term – like when I have an entire school year – the time I spend bringing the class back to order early in the year, even if its fairly often, will be offset by the time I save later on.
The most frustrating part of the class for me was that Jennifer was getting everything we were doing in class – I had to tell her I needed to call on other people so much because she kept being the only person with her hand raised. However, when the test came, she bombed. Thankfully, she talked to me at lunch and wanted to know what went wrong. I hadn’t graded the tests so it wasn’t like she got the test back and knew she bombed, she knew it from the start and told me she knew it in class but didn’t get it on the test. At lunch we went over the assessment and she seemed to be getting it, but I don’t know if she’ll still understand it on the CRCT tomorrow.
Lunch took longer than I expected and on the way back the principal saw the line and stopped us several times. So, incombination with class running about 5 minutes over, we got back at 11:50 instead of 11:40. Ms. Jones had said she wanted 20 minutes with the students to review geometry so I was hoping she’d be done by 12:10 and Chris would be able to start. That didn’t happen…I don’t know what time he got to start, but he was also interrupted by a fire drill (yes, on the day before the test the school decided they needed to have a fire drill. Why they waited until basically the second to last day to do this, I don’t know. At least we didn’t have a fire during the first four plus weeks of school. Anyway I feel really bad because it screwed up Chris’s review. There were several incredible aspects of Ms. Jones’ lesson. Her classroom management is insane. She stands at the board, facing the board, and reminds everyone that when she’s writing the should be talking – and the listened. She tells everyone to take out a pencil and paper – and magically everyone has one. They never had pencil and paper for us. The other incredibly sad thing was that not a single student could even venture a guess at what the formula for a circle was. This is 8th grade summer school.
8 July 2008, Tuesday
TFA has finally cracked me – I didn’t get to run yesterday. My CMA wanted to meet about her brief observation…great. Yesterday’s class was a disaster. Since Thursday’s class didn’t finish because of Mr. Barksdale’s speech, we had to pick up mid-lesson on Monday. I think eventually everyone got it, but it was a challenge. I tried the strategy that my CMA suggested of doing a problem with the class – but only the first few steps before handing them over to try to finish it on their own – and then bringing them back together to hopefully get kids to understand on their own. Though I was skeptical, I gave it a try with good intentions, and it didn’t seem to have any positive effects. The kids who typically struggle still needed individual attention.
Moving Zederick was problematic. He eventually moved, but I feel like it cost me time and class control because as I was dealing with him, most of the class was getting off task, so I had to use more time to try to reign them back in. There just aren’t enough minutes in the class to give each student the amount of individual attention they need to be able to do the problem. I am going to try moving Zederick again today. I tried prepping him for it this morning during math lit hour, telling him during my class he would need to move, but he went off telling me how I was belittling him and that he was going to tell on me for hitting him (for the record I have not touched him or threatened to hit him, much less actually hit him). We’ll see what happens when we get to class.
During class it was problematic because so many students were off task while I was trying to explain the work to the students who need individual attention. I am having trouble giving positive feedback during the class because I feel like I’m spending so much time trying to teach and control the class. I also think its partly my upbringing – when I was in school, I wasn’t brought up expecting to be given rewards for being quiet and doing my work, that was just expected. Obviously, I’m in a different situation now but it’s still hard to make that adjustment.
Yesterday morning, the students took TFA’s final exam. I haven’t graded them all, but so far the results have been somewhat disappointing. I’m fairly certain they will blow their original results out of the water because they didn’t even try, but I think they’ll still be low. It’s frustrating because these are the exact same questions as the pre-test, some that we even went over IN CLASS, and students are still getting simple ones wrong.
Moving Zederick was problematic. He eventually moved, but I feel like it cost me time and class control because as I was dealing with him, most of the class was getting off task, so I had to use more time to try to reign them back in. There just aren’t enough minutes in the class to give each student the amount of individual attention they need to be able to do the problem. I am going to try moving Zederick again today. I tried prepping him for it this morning during math lit hour, telling him during my class he would need to move, but he went off telling me how I was belittling him and that he was going to tell on me for hitting him (for the record I have not touched him or threatened to hit him, much less actually hit him). We’ll see what happens when we get to class.
During class it was problematic because so many students were off task while I was trying to explain the work to the students who need individual attention. I am having trouble giving positive feedback during the class because I feel like I’m spending so much time trying to teach and control the class. I also think its partly my upbringing – when I was in school, I wasn’t brought up expecting to be given rewards for being quiet and doing my work, that was just expected. Obviously, I’m in a different situation now but it’s still hard to make that adjustment.
Yesterday morning, the students took TFA’s final exam. I haven’t graded them all, but so far the results have been somewhat disappointing. I’m fairly certain they will blow their original results out of the water because they didn’t even try, but I think they’ll still be low. It’s frustrating because these are the exact same questions as the pre-test, some that we even went over IN CLASS, and students are still getting simple ones wrong.
7 July 2008, Monday
Long weekends are amazing.
I know most of my writing about institute has been complaining, and I still think there’s a lot of problems with institute. The one positive I am trying to focus on is that I get to teach in the fall. TFA has the benefit of a convicting mission – teaching kids who otherwise wouldn’t be learning; and it’s that opportunity that has helped me get through institute.
I know most of my writing about institute has been complaining, and I still think there’s a lot of problems with institute. The one positive I am trying to focus on is that I get to teach in the fall. TFA has the benefit of a convicting mission – teaching kids who otherwise wouldn’t be learning; and it’s that opportunity that has helped me get through institute.
3 July 2008, Thursday
Last night was fairly miserable. I got off the bus and went for my run but it was all downhill from there. The Charlotte regional meeting was pretty boring and didn’t tell me that much – but took close to an hour an a half. Rob predicted that every person who talked would spend a while telling us (again) how thrilled to they were to have us and on and on. He was right. Towards the end of the meeting, we broke up into smaller groups based on our school placements. I was in a group with the one other person placed at my school and the other twenty-six schools that are having TFA members placed there for the first time this year. The first thing we were asked was what was going to be challenging and what opportunities we’d have. I’m thinking it’s a pretty bad sign when all but one of the challenges were based on spreading the TFA gospel. I mean, at least the last one was about getting to reach new students… TFA is a freaking cult. I was pretty certain of it before, that put the nails in the coffin. I’m sure people in TFA have good intentions but it’s a cult and – to use TFA jargon – I am NOT invested in it. As I write this (at least this section) our CMA group is working on a cheer for our school to do at closing ceremonies. Shoot me.
Anyway, back to last night, after the regional meeting, I had a debrief with my CMA. It was better than the last one in that she actually was willing to give me some feedback but I really felt like it was misdirected. I think part of it is she can only observe for half an hour a week, but she doesn’t understand my class’s dynamics. I’ve got one girl who really struggles but since she’s sitting next to another girl who does well, she’s less of a management problem AND she does much better academically so my CMA only sees her as a management issue. However, I really think that if I take her away from Gloria, she’s going to be more of a management issue and still an academic issue.
Anyway, back to last night, after the regional meeting, I had a debrief with my CMA. It was better than the last one in that she actually was willing to give me some feedback but I really felt like it was misdirected. I think part of it is she can only observe for half an hour a week, but she doesn’t understand my class’s dynamics. I’ve got one girl who really struggles but since she’s sitting next to another girl who does well, she’s less of a management problem AND she does much better academically so my CMA only sees her as a management issue. However, I really think that if I take her away from Gloria, she’s going to be more of a management issue and still an academic issue.
2 July 2008, Wednesday
Seven and a half hours of sleep! I haven’t been this happy about that much (or, as I would usually look at it, that little) sleep in a long time. Last night we had an hour and a half session about teaching social studies which was good. It was probably one of the best sessions yet because it was focused on what I’ll actually be teaching in the fall, I didn’t have a lot of work left to do that was hanging over my head, and I’ve actually gotten some sleep (not a plethora but enough) to pay attention.
At midnight an email was sent out with out placements for Charlotte. Thankfully I wasn’t awake to get it, but I was able to check my email this morning and I have a placement! I’ll be at Coulwood Middle School. While I’m very happy to be placed, I also don’t know anything about the school. I quickly did a google map and it appears to be north of Charlotte, other than that, I’ll have to wait and see. Knowing this should make finding a place to live a little bit easier.
In the mornings the students are sent to the gym as soon as they get in and, even though Math-Lit hour is supposed to start at 8:00, the students are usually not dismissed until around 8:20. This morning I was going to work with Ashley because she was struggling with yesterday’s assessment. So I came up to her and told her we were going to work on the assessment. Her friends, one girl in particular, told me that it was talk time, not school time. It took a bit of a debate – first the friend bet me that it wasn’t 8:00 yet, then she told me it didn’t matter because they didn’t have paper and pencil, then she just told me it didn’t matter anyway – but we got through the assessment. Once I got between the girls, I think the work with Ashley was productive. Math-Lit hour was good. We broke the students up into small groups and I had Dewaun, Erica, Andrew, and Sean. Only Dewaun and Sean were there (buses tend to run late) but they made it through most of the problems and were finally starting to remember to bring down negatives and variables and not just the numbers.
At midnight an email was sent out with out placements for Charlotte. Thankfully I wasn’t awake to get it, but I was able to check my email this morning and I have a placement! I’ll be at Coulwood Middle School. While I’m very happy to be placed, I also don’t know anything about the school. I quickly did a google map and it appears to be north of Charlotte, other than that, I’ll have to wait and see. Knowing this should make finding a place to live a little bit easier.
In the mornings the students are sent to the gym as soon as they get in and, even though Math-Lit hour is supposed to start at 8:00, the students are usually not dismissed until around 8:20. This morning I was going to work with Ashley because she was struggling with yesterday’s assessment. So I came up to her and told her we were going to work on the assessment. Her friends, one girl in particular, told me that it was talk time, not school time. It took a bit of a debate – first the friend bet me that it wasn’t 8:00 yet, then she told me it didn’t matter because they didn’t have paper and pencil, then she just told me it didn’t matter anyway – but we got through the assessment. Once I got between the girls, I think the work with Ashley was productive. Math-Lit hour was good. We broke the students up into small groups and I had Dewaun, Erica, Andrew, and Sean. Only Dewaun and Sean were there (buses tend to run late) but they made it through most of the problems and were finally starting to remember to bring down negatives and variables and not just the numbers.
1 July 2008, Tuesday
Yesterday evening was a rollercoaster. We got back earlier than usual – 4:50 instead of the typical 5:10/5:15ish. I played soccer with a bunch of the ENC (eastern North Carolina) corps for about an hour and a half. Soccer has been so much fun, especially because I haven’t played much in a long time. After dinner I tried to squeeze in a run to the post office. Since we leave at 6:30 in the morning and don’t get back until 5 (or later), I had to find a post office downtown which took a lot longer than expected and then I got lost trying to make the Charlotte regional team meeting so I ended up being probably 25-30 minutes late. Thankfully the meeting wasn’t that important so I didn’t get in trouble.
Another thing to be thankful for – all I had to do last night was print what was due today. It was all done before I got back. However, the servers were down so when I went to print it just didn’t work. I couldn’t even log in. So after fiddling with my computer I got it to print from mine rather than having to go on a lab computer. This is after we were told in sessions about how TFA was responding to our mid-institute surveys and making sure all the printers in the labs printed… When I got back, Rob was overjoyed (note: much sarcasm) that there was one measly 8th grade math binder for the ENTIRE INSTITUTE when probably a third of the people here are teaching it. Needless to say, Rob never got to use that binder because the line was too long. I told him it didn’t matter – there wasn’t much that is useful in there anyway.
Today we found out the final exam we are giving is the EXACT SAME TEST that as was given as the pre-test. I can understand having TFA write the final exam so that it is consistent, but using the exact same test? The rational we’ve been given is that it’s a control so we know exactly how the students have improved because it’s not only the exact same material, but also the exact same questions. To make things worse, we weren’t told this in the beginning so I’ve used the exact questions off the exam in class, sometimes as examples that I’ve walked through. If I wasn’t already convinced the “data” TFA is going to parade around as us being successful this summer was a joke, this would do it. While I do think the testing is a joke, I do think they have improved at least somewhat during the summer session.
Another thing to be thankful for – all I had to do last night was print what was due today. It was all done before I got back. However, the servers were down so when I went to print it just didn’t work. I couldn’t even log in. So after fiddling with my computer I got it to print from mine rather than having to go on a lab computer. This is after we were told in sessions about how TFA was responding to our mid-institute surveys and making sure all the printers in the labs printed… When I got back, Rob was overjoyed (note: much sarcasm) that there was one measly 8th grade math binder for the ENTIRE INSTITUTE when probably a third of the people here are teaching it. Needless to say, Rob never got to use that binder because the line was too long. I told him it didn’t matter – there wasn’t much that is useful in there anyway.
Today we found out the final exam we are giving is the EXACT SAME TEST that as was given as the pre-test. I can understand having TFA write the final exam so that it is consistent, but using the exact same test? The rational we’ve been given is that it’s a control so we know exactly how the students have improved because it’s not only the exact same material, but also the exact same questions. To make things worse, we weren’t told this in the beginning so I’ve used the exact questions off the exam in class, sometimes as examples that I’ve walked through. If I wasn’t already convinced the “data” TFA is going to parade around as us being successful this summer was a joke, this would do it. While I do think the testing is a joke, I do think they have improved at least somewhat during the summer session.
30 June 2008, Monday
Aside from not making it to the housing search in Charlotte, the weekend wasn’t too bad. Friday night I was worrying quite a bit because my battery was dead and I had no idea where in Charlotte I was going to live. I had intended to get to know people and research housing in Charlotte while at institute, but I just haven’t had time. Tanesha’s (our CS specialist) 25th birthday so she had a party at Strip (no, not a strip club – it was one of those semi-awkward mixes between a restaurant and a club. Afterwards, a few friends and I went to several bars in downtown Atlanta. It wasn’t bad by any means but it’s not my ideal night. There’s a lot of smoking at the bars that I’m just not used to and it’s so loud you practically have to shout to have a conversation.
Sunday morning I had to get a new battery for my car. I did not expect to have to get a new battery this soon, but at least I think I can feel confident that the next time I need to go somewhere my car will start – and not die on the way to wherever I’m going. I should be fine on money, but unexpected expenses are one more reason I’m looking forward to getting a paycheck. Sunday evening I played soccer with the Eastern North Carolina corps at the turf field. Right after we started it began to pour rain but we played through. It was a blast, but wearing indoor shoes on a soaking wet turf leads to much slipping and sliding.
Class today was quieter than usual. Several students were having trouble staying awake even when I woke them up as I was walking around. In the future, if a student falls asleep or has his or her head down, they will stand next to their desk to ensure that they stay awake. I was talking to Ms. Jones afterward and she was really helpful in giving me that idea.
Sunday morning I had to get a new battery for my car. I did not expect to have to get a new battery this soon, but at least I think I can feel confident that the next time I need to go somewhere my car will start – and not die on the way to wherever I’m going. I should be fine on money, but unexpected expenses are one more reason I’m looking forward to getting a paycheck. Sunday evening I played soccer with the Eastern North Carolina corps at the turf field. Right after we started it began to pour rain but we played through. It was a blast, but wearing indoor shoes on a soaking wet turf leads to much slipping and sliding.
Class today was quieter than usual. Several students were having trouble staying awake even when I woke them up as I was walking around. In the future, if a student falls asleep or has his or her head down, they will stand next to their desk to ensure that they stay awake. I was talking to Ms. Jones afterward and she was really helpful in giving me that idea.
27 June 2008, Friday
Wednesday our CMA came up with a great plan – if we get our assignments to her by 9:30, we only have to email it to her rather than printing out a hard copy. Seeing as TFA has probably not given us enough copies for the institute (and I’ve tried to be very careful with the copies I’ve used), it’s nice to be able to save 5-10 prints per night. And it gives me a great incentive to finish quickly. The only catch is the last two nights I’ve gotten right to work and haven’t run until 9:00. While it is cooler, I’m sure some of the areas I run through probably aren’t the best to be cruising around at 9 or 10 at night, but so far nothing’s happened.
Yesterday morning I had my debrief with my CMA. While I understand that it is important for us to start learning to self-critique, almost the entire time was her asking me what I thought I did, and what I thought I should change to do better. If I knew I would be doing it! At the end when she asked how helpful the session was I told her how I was frustrated that I did all the talking. Finally when I said that she started giving me some feedback on what she saw.
While I was debriefing, my colab members rearranged the students’ desks in the classroom. It worked wonders. Granted one of the biggest troublemakers wasn’t in school that day, but I think the desks being put in rows really helped. I got through my lesson really fast and even had time to review some inequalities. Because we went to lunch only 5-10 minutes late we got back five minutes before Chris’s class was to start and he looked at me in shock and said “you brought them back early?” I think sticking by my word and taking away lunch that one day was also helpful because they’ve been much better going to and from lunch after they learned I was serious.
I’m really starting to worry about finding housing. I thought I was going to have time to meet people and figure out where I want to live and stuff while I was at institute but I haven’t had any time. The housing weekend is THIS WEEKEND and I don’t know where I want to live or who I want to live with or anything even close.
Class today started off really rough. I’m not sure what precipitated it other than it being Friday, but they were really rowdy. After I kicked one of the girls out (again), things got better.
At this point, TFA has fairly successfully burnt me out. I know part of it is Friday and it’s been a long week and stuff, but I really just don’t feel like doing work. I’ve sat through so many sessions and gotten so little sleep I don’t care too much about the sessions anymore. Obviously, I’m not going to blow them off but I’m just not having the energy to go into them excited about learning.
Yesterday morning I had my debrief with my CMA. While I understand that it is important for us to start learning to self-critique, almost the entire time was her asking me what I thought I did, and what I thought I should change to do better. If I knew I would be doing it! At the end when she asked how helpful the session was I told her how I was frustrated that I did all the talking. Finally when I said that she started giving me some feedback on what she saw.
While I was debriefing, my colab members rearranged the students’ desks in the classroom. It worked wonders. Granted one of the biggest troublemakers wasn’t in school that day, but I think the desks being put in rows really helped. I got through my lesson really fast and even had time to review some inequalities. Because we went to lunch only 5-10 minutes late we got back five minutes before Chris’s class was to start and he looked at me in shock and said “you brought them back early?” I think sticking by my word and taking away lunch that one day was also helpful because they’ve been much better going to and from lunch after they learned I was serious.
I’m really starting to worry about finding housing. I thought I was going to have time to meet people and figure out where I want to live and stuff while I was at institute but I haven’t had any time. The housing weekend is THIS WEEKEND and I don’t know where I want to live or who I want to live with or anything even close.
Class today started off really rough. I’m not sure what precipitated it other than it being Friday, but they were really rowdy. After I kicked one of the girls out (again), things got better.
At this point, TFA has fairly successfully burnt me out. I know part of it is Friday and it’s been a long week and stuff, but I really just don’t feel like doing work. I’ve sat through so many sessions and gotten so little sleep I don’t care too much about the sessions anymore. Obviously, I’m not going to blow them off but I’m just not having the energy to go into them excited about learning.
25 June 2008, Wednesday
Finally a bright spot to write about. Yesterday after classes, the principal called an emergency meeting for all TFA staff and corps (pronounced “corpse” on the announcement) members needed to go to the auditorium. At the meeting, the staff informed us that the legal team has reviewed the No Child Left Behind Act and Georgia law and had informed them that we were not “highly qualified” yet to teach so the FAs and CMAs would take over the teaching. We would still write the lesson plans, we’d just have to have them in much earlier so they could review them and know what they were teaching. At that point, I was more thinking how it was just another example of TFA incompetence than how bad it would be. Then they told us it was a joke and said we had the afternoon off. It was great to play volleyball, soccer, and basketball, but I didn’t get ahead at all in my work.
Class yesterday was also much quieter. Granted, this is was because the two troublemakers just put their heads down and ignored the lesson. It was frustrating to see them zone out, but at least it allowed me to work with other students who were really trying on the material. The downside, the problem was that only three students did the homework even though I was very clear that if people did their homework, they would play a game. So instead, I told them I would get them a snack of their choice. This turned out to be a problem because my car battery was dead – AGAIN – last night. So I walked a close to a mile down the road to get them the snacks.
Class today was less of a disaster. I had to kick two student out but after that it was much smoother. It’s nice not to be working on word problems and inequalities because now they don’t need to read (at least as much as before) to be able to understand the concept. Some are still struggling but its not nearly as bad as before. After lunch, I was walking back to class and noticed several students wandering the halls, so I started escorting them back to class. When I was talking one student, he muttered “you want five niggers to beat you down?” at me. I just ignored the comment.
Back in our CMA room, two of the other two CMs asked me how it went and I said it was a bit of a disaster because I had to kick two kids out. Our CMA seemed to think it wasn’t that bad because once I kicked them out the rest were good. I think my problem is that they’ve set the standard so high – all the videos we see are kids acting PERFECTLY – that I don’t see what I’m doing as even remotely successful. I had a rough transition from the prior class, had to kick people out, etc. We were talking about this at lunch and one of my collab members mentioned how the specific video (of Justin Melli in particular) is at a KIPP school. While these schools are the same demographic – low-income, usually minority – these schools SELECT who they want and who they don’t. Their parents have to help the kids apply (or they apply for them at the lower grade levels), the kids have to take a test, and the KIPP schools get to choose which of those students they want. The school we’re at now and the schools will be at in the fall don’t/won’t be selecting their students – they get what they’re given no matter how good and how bad.
Class yesterday was also much quieter. Granted, this is was because the two troublemakers just put their heads down and ignored the lesson. It was frustrating to see them zone out, but at least it allowed me to work with other students who were really trying on the material. The downside, the problem was that only three students did the homework even though I was very clear that if people did their homework, they would play a game. So instead, I told them I would get them a snack of their choice. This turned out to be a problem because my car battery was dead – AGAIN – last night. So I walked a close to a mile down the road to get them the snacks.
Class today was less of a disaster. I had to kick two student out but after that it was much smoother. It’s nice not to be working on word problems and inequalities because now they don’t need to read (at least as much as before) to be able to understand the concept. Some are still struggling but its not nearly as bad as before. After lunch, I was walking back to class and noticed several students wandering the halls, so I started escorting them back to class. When I was talking one student, he muttered “you want five niggers to beat you down?” at me. I just ignored the comment.
Back in our CMA room, two of the other two CMs asked me how it went and I said it was a bit of a disaster because I had to kick two kids out. Our CMA seemed to think it wasn’t that bad because once I kicked them out the rest were good. I think my problem is that they’ve set the standard so high – all the videos we see are kids acting PERFECTLY – that I don’t see what I’m doing as even remotely successful. I had a rough transition from the prior class, had to kick people out, etc. We were talking about this at lunch and one of my collab members mentioned how the specific video (of Justin Melli in particular) is at a KIPP school. While these schools are the same demographic – low-income, usually minority – these schools SELECT who they want and who they don’t. Their parents have to help the kids apply (or they apply for them at the lower grade levels), the kids have to take a test, and the KIPP schools get to choose which of those students they want. The school we’re at now and the schools will be at in the fall don’t/won’t be selecting their students – they get what they’re given no matter how good and how bad.
24 June 2008, Tuesday
Another night of frustration. I was supposed to be in bed last night by 9:30 but it was more like 11:45. I met with Ben at 7:00, which meant I had to scarf down dinner. By luck (or lack thereof), the lesson I worked with him on was the easiest lesson I’ve had to plan yet – just teaching the vertical line test and its applications. Yes, we knocked out a rough draft in ~45. However, his idea of a rough draft is a lot different that mine. His rough draft basically includes just the assessment, guided practice, and key points – and the guided practice isn’t laid out nearly as much as I want. So yes, I “finished” faster but I didn’t get nearly as much done so I’ve got more work left to do before the final draft.
The other rough draft took a lot longer because it was a more complicated lesson to teach. How do you explain how to find the pattern from a table of values? Well, it would be easier if I knew if it was always just add or subtract, but the objective is so vague that it could potentially include multiplication or division. So I made a flowchart handout that will hopefully make it clear how students can solve the problems which took a while.
Bright side: Tanesha is great. I feel bad about how exhausted I am during her sessions because I know she’s worked hard to put them together but given the situation, I feel like I need to focus the energy on my class.
The other rough draft took a lot longer because it was a more complicated lesson to teach. How do you explain how to find the pattern from a table of values? Well, it would be easier if I knew if it was always just add or subtract, but the objective is so vague that it could potentially include multiplication or division. So I made a flowchart handout that will hopefully make it clear how students can solve the problems which took a while.
Bright side: Tanesha is great. I feel bad about how exhausted I am during her sessions because I know she’s worked hard to put them together but given the situation, I feel like I need to focus the energy on my class.
23 June 2008, Monday
I thought Friday was a disaster until I talked to Ms. Jones after class. I was up much later than I wanted to be , planning a game for the students to play to learn solving inequalities that involved Lebron James, Tiger Woods, and 50 Cent. However, only about 2 students did their homework so we didn’t play the game. I REALLY wanted to play that game. The rest of class was so-so. I was trying to work with students in small groups so they could start to understand the material, problem being, while I working with a few students I could tell other students weren’t working. We didn’t get to lunch until 11:45 instead of 11:30. At lunch I found out lunch it truly optional here so today students will know that we might not go to lunch.
The weekend was a great break from TFA. Friday night we hung out in Jake and Zondawayo’s room. Saturday night I went to a club for the first time. And the Cubs swept the Sox. Glorious.
Anyways. This morning I had a really long chat with Ben (the SOM – school operations manager) about my frustrations with the institute thus far. I think my biggest frustration from the conversation is that he was trying to downplay the importance of how much time is spent on the lesson plans. If this were simply an enrichment class, I can understand it not being a big deal if lesson plans weren’t great. However, TFA has put us into a situation where if these kids don’t pass the exam, they don’t get to go to high school. I’m sorry but its really hard for me to slack off on a lesson plan when I know how much is riding on it. I know that other sessions are valuable but you can’t expect me to think that I can decide a lesson plan is “good enough”. We ended by setting goals for what I would get done during the work time.
Well, I had high hopes that I would get that done, but during work time, my CMA called me over to talk with her and one of my collaborative partners. Turns out we we’ve been accidentally screwing our kids over. We are both teaching our objectives in the order we’re require by TFA to teach them in, and as it turns out, I’m teaching them inequalities and word problems associated with inequalities while my collaborative partner is teaching them words and phrases that indicate the different operations (i.e. recognize that “the sum of 15 and a number is 20” needs to be written as “15 + x = 20”) and turning verbal phrases (not even completely doing word problems) into equations. I know I don’t have much experience teaching, but it just seems like you need to know the basics before you learn the hard stuff. As if this weren’t bad enough, we realized we were teaching them conflicting methods. He has the kids circle numbers, underline operational phrases, and double underline “is” (since it represents the sign); I’ve been having them underline quantities and circle the words that represent the sign. If the kids were doing really well and were fully literate they might be ok – even though that wouldn’t be ideal. We’ve got kids who – though my CMA tells me “they don’t have a literacy problem because they all passed the reading test” – have reading comprehension problems and have a very, very hard time interpreting the passages in the first place. I had one student today try to bet me that there was only one inequality in the problem even though it was a SYSTEMS (yes, plural form of “system”) of equations questions.
Class felt like a disaster again. I told the kids at the start of the class that if they were disruptive and/or weren’t doing their work, we wouldn’t take a break to each lunch. Lunch during summer school is not required – they get out at 1:00 p.m. and they are not paying for lunch – so I don’t have to take them. Well, the class was pretty miserable today. Most of the class wasn’t behaving and none of them were doing the work, even when I sat with them in small groups they wouldn’t work nor would they tell me what they didn’t understand. So we didn’t go to lunch. Actually there was one girl who completed her work so she had the opportunity to go but she chose not to. Afterwards I talked to Ms. Jones again and she was ok with what went on. She obviously wasn’t thrilled to death, but she told me it wasn’t that bad and was happy that I didn’t give in and let them go to lunch. Hopefully the kids will recognize that I’m serious about my threats and behave better tomorrow. They’ve been promised the chance to play a game if they do their homework, but even with that promise some of the students crumpled up the paper and tossed it. So we’ll see. On the bright side, Ms. Jones has agreed to take anyone who doesn’t do the homework and do the problem set with them out in the pod area.
The weekend was a great break from TFA. Friday night we hung out in Jake and Zondawayo’s room. Saturday night I went to a club for the first time. And the Cubs swept the Sox. Glorious.
Anyways. This morning I had a really long chat with Ben (the SOM – school operations manager) about my frustrations with the institute thus far. I think my biggest frustration from the conversation is that he was trying to downplay the importance of how much time is spent on the lesson plans. If this were simply an enrichment class, I can understand it not being a big deal if lesson plans weren’t great. However, TFA has put us into a situation where if these kids don’t pass the exam, they don’t get to go to high school. I’m sorry but its really hard for me to slack off on a lesson plan when I know how much is riding on it. I know that other sessions are valuable but you can’t expect me to think that I can decide a lesson plan is “good enough”. We ended by setting goals for what I would get done during the work time.
Well, I had high hopes that I would get that done, but during work time, my CMA called me over to talk with her and one of my collaborative partners. Turns out we we’ve been accidentally screwing our kids over. We are both teaching our objectives in the order we’re require by TFA to teach them in, and as it turns out, I’m teaching them inequalities and word problems associated with inequalities while my collaborative partner is teaching them words and phrases that indicate the different operations (i.e. recognize that “the sum of 15 and a number is 20” needs to be written as “15 + x = 20”) and turning verbal phrases (not even completely doing word problems) into equations. I know I don’t have much experience teaching, but it just seems like you need to know the basics before you learn the hard stuff. As if this weren’t bad enough, we realized we were teaching them conflicting methods. He has the kids circle numbers, underline operational phrases, and double underline “is” (since it represents the sign); I’ve been having them underline quantities and circle the words that represent the sign. If the kids were doing really well and were fully literate they might be ok – even though that wouldn’t be ideal. We’ve got kids who – though my CMA tells me “they don’t have a literacy problem because they all passed the reading test” – have reading comprehension problems and have a very, very hard time interpreting the passages in the first place. I had one student today try to bet me that there was only one inequality in the problem even though it was a SYSTEMS (yes, plural form of “system”) of equations questions.
Class felt like a disaster again. I told the kids at the start of the class that if they were disruptive and/or weren’t doing their work, we wouldn’t take a break to each lunch. Lunch during summer school is not required – they get out at 1:00 p.m. and they are not paying for lunch – so I don’t have to take them. Well, the class was pretty miserable today. Most of the class wasn’t behaving and none of them were doing the work, even when I sat with them in small groups they wouldn’t work nor would they tell me what they didn’t understand. So we didn’t go to lunch. Actually there was one girl who completed her work so she had the opportunity to go but she chose not to. Afterwards I talked to Ms. Jones again and she was ok with what went on. She obviously wasn’t thrilled to death, but she told me it wasn’t that bad and was happy that I didn’t give in and let them go to lunch. Hopefully the kids will recognize that I’m serious about my threats and behave better tomorrow. They’ve been promised the chance to play a game if they do their homework, but even with that promise some of the students crumpled up the paper and tossed it. So we’ll see. On the bright side, Ms. Jones has agreed to take anyone who doesn’t do the homework and do the problem set with them out in the pod area.
19 June 2008, Thursday
Another miserable beginning to the day. Something is really wrong when I wake up and the thing I’m looking forward to the most is going back to bed. It has been that way the last two days. I’m not even thinking about running as being enjoyable. It still is, but I’m so exhausted when I wake up in the morning its just “when can I get back to bed?”
Yesterday evening running was the highlight of the day. I tried mapping out a new route but managed to get lost. Perhaps I should just stick with my downtown route? Anyway, it ended up ok because I eventually found my way back to North Ave. (one of the first streets of my downtown run) and then to the Georgia Tech football stadium. For some reason, the gate was open so I jogged in and decided to do stadiums. As I was running I was just waiting for some security guard to come yell at me but they never came so I just made my way from field level to press box across one side of the field and back.
It was another late night. I got in bed at midnight and then realized that I hadn’t printed my independent assessment. Of course when I go to print the computer lab is full because the print/copy center closes at 11:45 even though TFA knows full well most people are working well beyond that point. The guided notes worked pretty well in class today though. Granted, it gave me a reason to kick a girl out of class, though it was more she chose to leave. I made it very clear that I expected students to be taking notes on the guided notes sheet and its very clear what needs to be written down. She was ignore my talk and refused to take notes so I told her if she needed to take notes and she refused. So I told her if she wasn’t taking notes, she wasn’t learning and didn’t need to be here. After receiving a blank stare, I said she could either take notes or she could leave and she responded “I’ll leave.”
I think one thing that helped was I was walking around the class as I was talking rather than just writing on the board. The hard part is that the students have literacy problems so if I don’t write it on they board they can’t write it down. The class behavior got better as the class went along. Eventually some of the students were correcting others about their behavior. At the end, I had two of the students who mastered the concept working with small groups and it had several benefits – academically and otherwise.
Our CMA gave us another lecture about how, as a group, our rough drafts need to be a lot better. Stark contrast to her telling us yesterday we needed to get sleep.
Yesterday evening running was the highlight of the day. I tried mapping out a new route but managed to get lost. Perhaps I should just stick with my downtown route? Anyway, it ended up ok because I eventually found my way back to North Ave. (one of the first streets of my downtown run) and then to the Georgia Tech football stadium. For some reason, the gate was open so I jogged in and decided to do stadiums. As I was running I was just waiting for some security guard to come yell at me but they never came so I just made my way from field level to press box across one side of the field and back.
It was another late night. I got in bed at midnight and then realized that I hadn’t printed my independent assessment. Of course when I go to print the computer lab is full because the print/copy center closes at 11:45 even though TFA knows full well most people are working well beyond that point. The guided notes worked pretty well in class today though. Granted, it gave me a reason to kick a girl out of class, though it was more she chose to leave. I made it very clear that I expected students to be taking notes on the guided notes sheet and its very clear what needs to be written down. She was ignore my talk and refused to take notes so I told her if she needed to take notes and she refused. So I told her if she wasn’t taking notes, she wasn’t learning and didn’t need to be here. After receiving a blank stare, I said she could either take notes or she could leave and she responded “I’ll leave.”
I think one thing that helped was I was walking around the class as I was talking rather than just writing on the board. The hard part is that the students have literacy problems so if I don’t write it on they board they can’t write it down. The class behavior got better as the class went along. Eventually some of the students were correcting others about their behavior. At the end, I had two of the students who mastered the concept working with small groups and it had several benefits – academically and otherwise.
Our CMA gave us another lecture about how, as a group, our rough drafts need to be a lot better. Stark contrast to her telling us yesterday we needed to get sleep.
June 18, 2008, Wednesday
I’m getting very disillusioned with Teach for America. The ideals are great and all, but the summer institute details are miserable. I’m thinking I would have been better off taking a job at a private middle school or high school or trying to find a job at an underperforming school because this summer is just miserable. If I wanted 70-80 hour work weeks I would have taken a job with an I-bank and made a heck of a lot more money.
One of my friends mentioned how it would be interesting to know the amount of alcohol consumed by TFA members the first weekend. It’s insane. I thought the Charlotte corps was different than W&L because people we being reasonable with alcohol over induction week, but this weekend was nuts. One friend spent $83 (yes, $83!) on alcohol on Saturday night. I know of some people who have even started drinking – not heavily, but still drinking – during the week because it’s so stressful. And these are people who supposedly handle stress well.
Another conversation I had with my roommates this weekend was about how TFA is a cult. It quite possibly could be. During induction week we got speeches about how it was very important to always represent our experience positively and if we didn’t we were basically betraying the movement. Oops, I guess I’m a traitor now for some of the things I’ve written… I’m not just trying to find that negatives but I’m not going to ignore them either.
I had a chat with my CMA this morning about how institute it going and she’s telling me how I should get more sleep. Her suggestion was to set a bedtime tonight. I’m thinking “Are you kidding me?” Seriously – if I set a bedtime and my work isn’t done, do I just get to go to bed? It’s not like I’m wasting time and waiting until midnight to start my work. There’s just so much that TFA tries to cram in that it just isn’t working. I’m participating in the session a lot (partly to make sure I stayed awake) but I can’t tell you what I learned yesterday. It’s not that the information isn’t worthwhile – it definitely is – but I’d like to learn it when I’m able to remember it.
Quote of the day: “Erica definitely has a plan for me.” – Jeremy
One of my friends mentioned how it would be interesting to know the amount of alcohol consumed by TFA members the first weekend. It’s insane. I thought the Charlotte corps was different than W&L because people we being reasonable with alcohol over induction week, but this weekend was nuts. One friend spent $83 (yes, $83!) on alcohol on Saturday night. I know of some people who have even started drinking – not heavily, but still drinking – during the week because it’s so stressful. And these are people who supposedly handle stress well.
Another conversation I had with my roommates this weekend was about how TFA is a cult. It quite possibly could be. During induction week we got speeches about how it was very important to always represent our experience positively and if we didn’t we were basically betraying the movement. Oops, I guess I’m a traitor now for some of the things I’ve written… I’m not just trying to find that negatives but I’m not going to ignore them either.
I had a chat with my CMA this morning about how institute it going and she’s telling me how I should get more sleep. Her suggestion was to set a bedtime tonight. I’m thinking “Are you kidding me?” Seriously – if I set a bedtime and my work isn’t done, do I just get to go to bed? It’s not like I’m wasting time and waiting until midnight to start my work. There’s just so much that TFA tries to cram in that it just isn’t working. I’m participating in the session a lot (partly to make sure I stayed awake) but I can’t tell you what I learned yesterday. It’s not that the information isn’t worthwhile – it definitely is – but I’d like to learn it when I’m able to remember it.
Quote of the day: “Erica definitely has a plan for me.” – Jeremy
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
First the bad news: Last night was absolutely miserable. I was up until about 12:45 finishing all of my work that I had to do. The amount of work they’ve put on us is insane. I’m up at 5:45 to catch the bus to go to school, we don’t get back until 5 or 5:15. I run and then get dinner which usually gets done in an hour and a half – total – and that’s all the free time I have because the rest of the night I’m working my butt off trying to get everything done. This isn’t sitting on the internet reading for fun or playing games with a word document open. This is serious work time I’m talking about. And there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything TFA wants and still get enough sleep – much less have a social life. I had every intention of being social here and now all I can really do is work in the computer lab so at least I’m around other people during parts of the day. This institute could be so much more effective if it were just a little bit more spaced out because then people could sleep and still do the learning
The start of this morning wasn’t much better. Our faculty advisor probably thinks we’re nuts. There’s a MAJOR communication gap between TFA and the Atlanta teachers. Our FA today told us that our pre-test was worthless – why I already suspected – for a number of reasons. Our CMA (core member advisor) tried to defend it saying that it was based on the previous however many years of previous test data and the objectives. The FA reminded the CMA that the CRCT (Georgia’s NEW exam this year) is brand new and hasn’t even had an official copy released yet. The TFA pre-test was based on the old test which was much easier. AND the proportions are wrong. Just because addition and subtraction are mentioned as part of the exam doesn’t mean they carry the same weight as graphing inequalities.
Then came math lit hour. When our FA gave us the problems of the day that the students were supposed to do as a warmup. However, she told us straight up the students didn’t know how to do it so we would have to teach it to them. So we figured we’d give our order of operations/positive and negative numbers assessment at the start and then teach the problems and still have time to do our procedures. The students of course didn’t arrive – well the ones who has buses that were on time (relatively) – until 8:30. What followed I will remember as my first “teacher” moment. The third problem gave the numbers “7, 10, 13, 16, 19…” and asked them to find the linear equation. Out of the blue I got the inspiration to create a lesson on finding those patterns on the fly because I realized it would be worthless to tell them the answer without teaching it to the in a manner that they would remember. So I had them take notes on a step-by-step procedure for understanding the process and then walked created a few other similar problems for them to retain it.
As I was walking around the class when they were trying to do one on their own, I noticed it was 8:55 and I still had to wrap up and get to my next session by 9:00. I decided the students’ learning was more important and wrapped up quickly but effectively and was five minutes late. When I wrote my reason for being late, I ended it by noting that it was well worth it. If TFA wants to put me on a core member improvement plan for being tardy to a session, so be it.
Class was equally wonderful. I knocked out transforming sentences into inequalities at the start and the class seemed to understand much better than the day before – we’ll see when I get to graded my assessments. Then they really seemed to be interacting with the material much more effectively today than yesterday. Brandon moved them from pods to a big circle and they seemed to like it so I let them stay in the big circle for my class and it seemed to work really well. Before I knew it I checked the time and it was 11:25 (lunch is at 11:30) and I hadn’t even gotten to my independent assessment. So I handed out the assessment and they worked until 11:35 without a complaint. Granted their lunch is silent so they don’t have that much to look forward to, but they were still really well behaved during the assessment.
Lunch at Harper-Archer is silent during the summer session because kids come from a number of schools so they don’t want any trouble to start and then get out of hand on the buses after school. I guess in the past they’ve had some incidents – of what nature I don’t know – so it’s understandable, but its hard to watch all the students being told to be quiet the entire lunch period because that’s their only real break from learning all day. I feel bad for the last teach who gets them after lunch, right before they leave, because they’re ready to leave.
However, the rest of today has been pretty miserable. Our CMA is – understandably – really stressed and its spilling over more and more each day. Like I said, I understand she’s got plenty of work to do as well but every day she seems to be getting more harsh with us. When everyone was sitting in the room today – there’s 12 of us and its not a giant room – and she yelled (!) at us to come together to meet. She’s got to be under a lot of stress but it’s really getting crazy. It’s really starting to rub off on me. I know part of it is I’m not getting enough sleep, which is a problem in and of itself, but when she gets so harsh with us I can see it rubbing off on me and other CMs.
TFA also loves to preach that we should love being flexible, but, in the words of our CMA, “TFA has scheduled the institute down to the minute so they can’t be flexible with us when it comes to transitioning from various tasks. For example, some of the CMs are assigned to bus duty – which in theory ends at 1:10 but the busses are often not ready to go at that time so it runs over – and the CMA expects them to be back. In theory, the FAs are still there so the CMs don’t have to be present so they should know to leave at 1:10. If they don’t need to be there, why do they even need to go in the first place?
The ride back turned into a glorious gripe session. The girl I was sitting next to asked me for some help on her objectives because her CMA was saying they weren’t clear enough step-by-step directions. I know I’m not a key points master, but she seemed like she was pretty close. The a girl across the aisle told me how she loved how I talked in sessions. If it weren’t for my morning miracle session, that would have been the high-point of the day. We then proceeded to talk about how so many of us were frustrated with how things were going. I think about 15 people already dropped out in the first week. I’m taking a guess here but I’d think there’s probably around 600 corps members here (150 from charlotte, a few more than 150 from Atlanta, and then much smaller corps like Jacksonville that only has 50), so that’s over 2% that are already gone. It doesn’t sound like that much but that’s only one week in to institute (not even on the job yet) and its people who are specifically selected because they have persevered through difficulty in the past (yes, we were told this was part of the selection criteria that was very important).
We got back just after 5:00 p.m. and we had a mandatory meeting from 5:30 – 7:00. So I grabbed a quick dinner and went off to the meeting. I’m going to try to squeeze in a run now and then finish all the lesson planning and data entry I have to do. Did I mention TFA gave us a data entry tool for 50 objectives when we’ve got like 130 total. So we’ve got bits and pieces on three volumes. Now TFA got their act together and we have to transfer ALL OF THE DATA (20 kids, 127 objectives per kid, 127 objectives, etc.).
If the tenses of this entry seems a little screwy, a) I’m exhausted and b) I’ve written it throughout the day so I started it at lunch and now I’m finishing it after dinner just because I’m writing when I can.
The start of this morning wasn’t much better. Our faculty advisor probably thinks we’re nuts. There’s a MAJOR communication gap between TFA and the Atlanta teachers. Our FA today told us that our pre-test was worthless – why I already suspected – for a number of reasons. Our CMA (core member advisor) tried to defend it saying that it was based on the previous however many years of previous test data and the objectives. The FA reminded the CMA that the CRCT (Georgia’s NEW exam this year) is brand new and hasn’t even had an official copy released yet. The TFA pre-test was based on the old test which was much easier. AND the proportions are wrong. Just because addition and subtraction are mentioned as part of the exam doesn’t mean they carry the same weight as graphing inequalities.
Then came math lit hour. When our FA gave us the problems of the day that the students were supposed to do as a warmup. However, she told us straight up the students didn’t know how to do it so we would have to teach it to them. So we figured we’d give our order of operations/positive and negative numbers assessment at the start and then teach the problems and still have time to do our procedures. The students of course didn’t arrive – well the ones who has buses that were on time (relatively) – until 8:30. What followed I will remember as my first “teacher” moment. The third problem gave the numbers “7, 10, 13, 16, 19…” and asked them to find the linear equation. Out of the blue I got the inspiration to create a lesson on finding those patterns on the fly because I realized it would be worthless to tell them the answer without teaching it to the in a manner that they would remember. So I had them take notes on a step-by-step procedure for understanding the process and then walked created a few other similar problems for them to retain it.
As I was walking around the class when they were trying to do one on their own, I noticed it was 8:55 and I still had to wrap up and get to my next session by 9:00. I decided the students’ learning was more important and wrapped up quickly but effectively and was five minutes late. When I wrote my reason for being late, I ended it by noting that it was well worth it. If TFA wants to put me on a core member improvement plan for being tardy to a session, so be it.
Class was equally wonderful. I knocked out transforming sentences into inequalities at the start and the class seemed to understand much better than the day before – we’ll see when I get to graded my assessments. Then they really seemed to be interacting with the material much more effectively today than yesterday. Brandon moved them from pods to a big circle and they seemed to like it so I let them stay in the big circle for my class and it seemed to work really well. Before I knew it I checked the time and it was 11:25 (lunch is at 11:30) and I hadn’t even gotten to my independent assessment. So I handed out the assessment and they worked until 11:35 without a complaint. Granted their lunch is silent so they don’t have that much to look forward to, but they were still really well behaved during the assessment.
Lunch at Harper-Archer is silent during the summer session because kids come from a number of schools so they don’t want any trouble to start and then get out of hand on the buses after school. I guess in the past they’ve had some incidents – of what nature I don’t know – so it’s understandable, but its hard to watch all the students being told to be quiet the entire lunch period because that’s their only real break from learning all day. I feel bad for the last teach who gets them after lunch, right before they leave, because they’re ready to leave.
However, the rest of today has been pretty miserable. Our CMA is – understandably – really stressed and its spilling over more and more each day. Like I said, I understand she’s got plenty of work to do as well but every day she seems to be getting more harsh with us. When everyone was sitting in the room today – there’s 12 of us and its not a giant room – and she yelled (!) at us to come together to meet. She’s got to be under a lot of stress but it’s really getting crazy. It’s really starting to rub off on me. I know part of it is I’m not getting enough sleep, which is a problem in and of itself, but when she gets so harsh with us I can see it rubbing off on me and other CMs.
TFA also loves to preach that we should love being flexible, but, in the words of our CMA, “TFA has scheduled the institute down to the minute so they can’t be flexible with us when it comes to transitioning from various tasks. For example, some of the CMs are assigned to bus duty – which in theory ends at 1:10 but the busses are often not ready to go at that time so it runs over – and the CMA expects them to be back. In theory, the FAs are still there so the CMs don’t have to be present so they should know to leave at 1:10. If they don’t need to be there, why do they even need to go in the first place?
The ride back turned into a glorious gripe session. The girl I was sitting next to asked me for some help on her objectives because her CMA was saying they weren’t clear enough step-by-step directions. I know I’m not a key points master, but she seemed like she was pretty close. The a girl across the aisle told me how she loved how I talked in sessions. If it weren’t for my morning miracle session, that would have been the high-point of the day. We then proceeded to talk about how so many of us were frustrated with how things were going. I think about 15 people already dropped out in the first week. I’m taking a guess here but I’d think there’s probably around 600 corps members here (150 from charlotte, a few more than 150 from Atlanta, and then much smaller corps like Jacksonville that only has 50), so that’s over 2% that are already gone. It doesn’t sound like that much but that’s only one week in to institute (not even on the job yet) and its people who are specifically selected because they have persevered through difficulty in the past (yes, we were told this was part of the selection criteria that was very important).
We got back just after 5:00 p.m. and we had a mandatory meeting from 5:30 – 7:00. So I grabbed a quick dinner and went off to the meeting. I’m going to try to squeeze in a run now and then finish all the lesson planning and data entry I have to do. Did I mention TFA gave us a data entry tool for 50 objectives when we’ve got like 130 total. So we’ve got bits and pieces on three volumes. Now TFA got their act together and we have to transfer ALL OF THE DATA (20 kids, 127 objectives per kid, 127 objectives, etc.).
If the tenses of this entry seems a little screwy, a) I’m exhausted and b) I’ve written it throughout the day so I started it at lunch and now I’m finishing it after dinner just because I’m writing when I can.
Monday, June 16, 2008
So I just finished teaching my first class. It could have been worse, but it certainly wasn’t great. I need to get a watch. I thought I could just check my cell phone but the battery was dead…and the timer we had for the class reset itself. I think I ended the class about three minutes early but I guess it could have been worse. It’s hard to tell how many of them are really even paying attention. Our final – at least for now – roster has 20 students on it. It’s certainly a lot better than having 30 or more students, but its still hard to go around and make sure all the students are working effectively with that many students.
It’s a pain to try to discipline kids. I don’t know the kids voices yet so its hard for me to pick out who is talking and I wasn’t exactly strict with the verbal warnings. The faculty advisory put someone in the penalty box on her own. I guess I need to give the students a bit shorter of a leash. I’ll see what my CMA (core member advisor) tonight when we debrief.
Later in the day, we found out that since our faculty advisor had all of her students pass the CRCT and that she was the only one in the Atlanta district to have a 100% pass rate, she was being given the kids who were struggling the most. It’s going to be a heck of a challenge to take the lowest performing students in Atlanta and get them to pass in 16 days.
It’s a pain to try to discipline kids. I don’t know the kids voices yet so its hard for me to pick out who is talking and I wasn’t exactly strict with the verbal warnings. The faculty advisory put someone in the penalty box on her own. I guess I need to give the students a bit shorter of a leash. I’ll see what my CMA (core member advisor) tonight when we debrief.
Later in the day, we found out that since our faculty advisor had all of her students pass the CRCT and that she was the only one in the Atlanta district to have a 100% pass rate, she was being given the kids who were struggling the most. It’s going to be a heck of a challenge to take the lowest performing students in Atlanta and get them to pass in 16 days.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Today we met with out faculty advisory. She seems like a good teacher – she teaches at an alternative school for older students who are too old for middle school but don’t have the skills/knowledge for high school and had all of her students pass the CRCT. She doesn’t have any rules for her class because she can simply command respect. It will be interesting to see how her class reacts to our group having a more formal set of rules. Oh, and she mentioned we’ve currently got 26 students enrolled and we’ll probably get four more, maybe six.
I’m really starting to wonder about whether or not TFA’s summer tracking based on the diagnostic test means anything for the summer. While I can’t say I’ve got a better method, I don’t think most of the summer school teachers had the students take the diagnostic seriously so the data we’ve got is seriously flawed. The teacher told us the students knew a lot more than they showed on the test – she said some of the students were up to about 80% mastery and the struggling students were at 45% - 55% mastery. The highest score on a diagnostic test was about 40% so somewhere something’s not right.
The other thing that’s bothering me right now is how strictly we are supposed to adhere to the state objectives. I understand the purpose of teaching what the objective says and not expecting so much more without first laying the foundation, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we’re being too strict with the objective. For example, one objective I’m supposed to be teaching is to “identify” a graph on a number line of an inequality. Since it’s only “identify” and not “draw,” I’m limited to multiple choice questions where I give them four graphs and they pick the right one. What tangible benefit do these students get from learning that if they can’t at some point draw it themselves? Real life isn’t multiple choice.
I’m really starting to wonder about whether or not TFA’s summer tracking based on the diagnostic test means anything for the summer. While I can’t say I’ve got a better method, I don’t think most of the summer school teachers had the students take the diagnostic seriously so the data we’ve got is seriously flawed. The teacher told us the students knew a lot more than they showed on the test – she said some of the students were up to about 80% mastery and the struggling students were at 45% - 55% mastery. The highest score on a diagnostic test was about 40% so somewhere something’s not right.
The other thing that’s bothering me right now is how strictly we are supposed to adhere to the state objectives. I understand the purpose of teaching what the objective says and not expecting so much more without first laying the foundation, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we’re being too strict with the objective. For example, one objective I’m supposed to be teaching is to “identify” a graph on a number line of an inequality. Since it’s only “identify” and not “draw,” I’m limited to multiple choice questions where I give them four graphs and they pick the right one. What tangible benefit do these students get from learning that if they can’t at some point draw it themselves? Real life isn’t multiple choice.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Today we met with out faculty advisory. She seems like a good teacher – she teaches at an alternative school for older students who are too old for middle school but don’t have the skills/knowledge for high school and had all of her students pass the CRCT. She doesn’t have any rules for her class because she can simply command respect. It will be interesting to see how her class reacts to our group having a more formal set of rules. Oh, and she mentioned we’ve currently got 26 students enrolled and we’ll probably get four more, maybe six.
I’m really starting to wonder about whether or not TFA’s summer tracking based on the diagnostic test means anything for the summer. While I can’t say I’ve got a better method, I don’t think most of the summer school teachers had the students take the diagnostic seriously so the data we’ve got is seriously flawed. The teacher told us the students knew a lot more than they showed on the test – she said some of the students were up to about 80% mastery and the struggling students were at 45% - 55% mastery. The highest score on a diagnostic test was about 40% so somewhere something’s not right.
The other thing that’s bothering me right now is how strictly we are supposed to adhere to the state objectives. I understand the purpose of teaching what the objective says and not expecting so much more without first laying the foundation, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we’re being too strict with the objective. For example, one objective I’m supposed to be teaching is to “identify” a graph on a number line of an inequality. Since it’s only “identify” and not “draw,” I’m limited to multiple choice questions where I give them four graphs and they pick the right one. What tangible benefit do these students get from learning that if they can’t at some point draw it themselves? Real life isn’t multiple choice.
I’m really starting to wonder about whether or not TFA’s summer tracking based on the diagnostic test means anything for the summer. While I can’t say I’ve got a better method, I don’t think most of the summer school teachers had the students take the diagnostic seriously so the data we’ve got is seriously flawed. The teacher told us the students knew a lot more than they showed on the test – she said some of the students were up to about 80% mastery and the struggling students were at 45% - 55% mastery. The highest score on a diagnostic test was about 40% so somewhere something’s not right.
The other thing that’s bothering me right now is how strictly we are supposed to adhere to the state objectives. I understand the purpose of teaching what the objective says and not expecting so much more without first laying the foundation, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we’re being too strict with the objective. For example, one objective I’m supposed to be teaching is to “identify” a graph on a number line of an inequality. Since it’s only “identify” and not “draw,” I’m limited to multiple choice questions where I give them four graphs and they pick the right one. What tangible benefit do these students get from learning that if they can’t at some point draw it themselves? Real life isn’t multiple choice.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Sunday morning after church I began the drive down to Atlanta. I knew what I was in for, but was still optimistic is wouldn’t be that bad. The drive down was easier than expected. Along the way, Kevin happened to be driving back to Lexington from Atlanta and we realized we were about two miles apart so we waved when we passed. I was a bit worried about getting there because in the morning they told us there was construction and the exits were changed. However, the wonderful GPS that finally came in the mail got me there with no problems. Check-in wasn’t too bad – considering how many people were coming from different corps around the region. The Atlanta Institute includes corps members from Atlanta, Charlotte, Eastern North Carolina, Miami-Dade, Jacksonville, Memphis, maybe a few others?
Monday morning was a very rude awakening. My bus leaves at 6:30 (others vary between 6:15 and 6:40) to get us to the schools. Of course the first session was in a darkened auditorium for most of the morning. The days have been really long. We don’t really have a break – except a working lunch – until we leave at 4:30. Every night we’ve got a plethora of work to do and some nights have extra sessions when we get back. Not going to lie – it’s rough.
I’m assigned to teach 8th grade math in summer school to students who failed the CRCT – Georgia’s high stakes test that determines if students can continue on to the next grade. The diagnostic test results were miserable. Out of the 25 objectives, there were only two questions that 44% (8 of the 18 students) got correct. Most of the questions had about 20% of student get the correct answer. Keep in mind the questions are multiple choice with four possible answers. Just chance would dictate that 25% of the students would get the answer correct. The students don’t have textbooks, as teachers we don’t get much more from the school. TFA has given us a bunch of objectives and tracking tools.
Monday evening was easy because since I’m teaching math I didn’t have to go to the DRM (literacy testing) session, so I got horrible lost on my run instead. I looked at a map and measured out a nice 5 mile run. However, being very new to Atlanta, I took off in the wrong direction. When I finally got turned around, I found that the roads I had chose didn’t always have sidewalks along them. I thought by picking main roads they would, but I guess not, and since I don’t know Atlanta that well I didn’t have much choice but to keep running and hope for the best. The heat certainly didn’t help. I ended up finding my way back eventually – after about 6+ miles.
Tuesday night was busier. We had to finish up group work when we got back and then we had opening ceremonies at 7:00 so I didn’t think I was going to be able to run. Opening ceremonies was fairly interesting. A few TFA alums spoke and then Wendy Kopp gave a speech as well. A lot of the speeches focused on race as almost a bigger issue than socio-economic status. One of the speakers, a TFA alum, spoke on how, after fulfilling his commitment, he founded a foundation to help minorities travel abroad. While I don’t doubt there are many minorities who want to travel abroad and don’t get to, I feel like the bigger problem is the lack of fund – so why make it only blacks? Or Hispanics? Or minorities in general? The most amusing part for me was that before we left our school, we were specifically instructed that we were not allowed to chant because several years ago the chanting go so rowdy at opening ceremonies that some of the big donors who were that were turned off. Somehow the ceremonies lasted just over an hour so I decided to go for another run. This time I managed to stay on track as I made my way through downtown Atlanta. It’s not smooth sailing like running in Lexington or along Lake Michigan but its not too bad. And running later in the evening is a lot cooler.
Last night we had a small group meeting which was actually a good discussion but I think should have been done on a night that we didn’t have our first two activities due. Those of you who know me know that I need my sleep and so far I haven’t been getting enough if it. Even if I’m in bed by 10:15 – which means I’ve basically spent all my waking hours working – that still only gets me seven and a half hours if I’m lucky. Last night, lesson planning took a long time so I wasn’t in bed until close to midnight.
Monday morning was a very rude awakening. My bus leaves at 6:30 (others vary between 6:15 and 6:40) to get us to the schools. Of course the first session was in a darkened auditorium for most of the morning. The days have been really long. We don’t really have a break – except a working lunch – until we leave at 4:30. Every night we’ve got a plethora of work to do and some nights have extra sessions when we get back. Not going to lie – it’s rough.
I’m assigned to teach 8th grade math in summer school to students who failed the CRCT – Georgia’s high stakes test that determines if students can continue on to the next grade. The diagnostic test results were miserable. Out of the 25 objectives, there were only two questions that 44% (8 of the 18 students) got correct. Most of the questions had about 20% of student get the correct answer. Keep in mind the questions are multiple choice with four possible answers. Just chance would dictate that 25% of the students would get the answer correct. The students don’t have textbooks, as teachers we don’t get much more from the school. TFA has given us a bunch of objectives and tracking tools.
Monday evening was easy because since I’m teaching math I didn’t have to go to the DRM (literacy testing) session, so I got horrible lost on my run instead. I looked at a map and measured out a nice 5 mile run. However, being very new to Atlanta, I took off in the wrong direction. When I finally got turned around, I found that the roads I had chose didn’t always have sidewalks along them. I thought by picking main roads they would, but I guess not, and since I don’t know Atlanta that well I didn’t have much choice but to keep running and hope for the best. The heat certainly didn’t help. I ended up finding my way back eventually – after about 6+ miles.
Tuesday night was busier. We had to finish up group work when we got back and then we had opening ceremonies at 7:00 so I didn’t think I was going to be able to run. Opening ceremonies was fairly interesting. A few TFA alums spoke and then Wendy Kopp gave a speech as well. A lot of the speeches focused on race as almost a bigger issue than socio-economic status. One of the speakers, a TFA alum, spoke on how, after fulfilling his commitment, he founded a foundation to help minorities travel abroad. While I don’t doubt there are many minorities who want to travel abroad and don’t get to, I feel like the bigger problem is the lack of fund – so why make it only blacks? Or Hispanics? Or minorities in general? The most amusing part for me was that before we left our school, we were specifically instructed that we were not allowed to chant because several years ago the chanting go so rowdy at opening ceremonies that some of the big donors who were that were turned off. Somehow the ceremonies lasted just over an hour so I decided to go for another run. This time I managed to stay on track as I made my way through downtown Atlanta. It’s not smooth sailing like running in Lexington or along Lake Michigan but its not too bad. And running later in the evening is a lot cooler.
Last night we had a small group meeting which was actually a good discussion but I think should have been done on a night that we didn’t have our first two activities due. Those of you who know me know that I need my sleep and so far I haven’t been getting enough if it. Even if I’m in bed by 10:15 – which means I’ve basically spent all my waking hours working – that still only gets me seven and a half hours if I’m lucky. Last night, lesson planning took a long time so I wasn’t in bed until close to midnight.
Starting the Summer Entries
So I'm starting the blog with my own entries from this summer before I started the journal on blogger so these posts will be titled with the date when I first wrote them. Without further ado, here they come...
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