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.