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.