TFA = totally free afternoon

TODAY IS THE HALFWAY MARK FOR INSTITUTE!

We were supposed to have sessions until 4:30 today, but after the students' dismissal, we went to session and they told us that there was a party waiting for us back on campus to celebrate us finishing half of institute so we got to go home! What a treat! I have to start teaching reading next week, and those lesson plans start tonight, so I am so happy I get this extra time to work ahead!

Before we left go back, we watched this really inspiring video I think everyone should watch. Believe me, it's worth your time.

A few highs, and one low

Some fantastic things about yesterday and today:

+ SLA IS HERE. I love my regional staff and it feels like some sort of family week at summer camp with them coming to visit us this week. It's just wonderful to see familiar faces on campus and in my school.

+ I GOT MY PACKAGE. It was only two weeks late and the packaging was a bit worse for the wear, but it was worth the wait. And I guess now I only have half of institute left, so I think it'll keep me going.

+My students all passed their end of lesson assessment today! This is the first time this has happened in my class all of institute. Not only are my students learning, I think they're starting to make the connection that when they act right, they can learn, and when they don't act right, they don't learn. Let's at least hope they're making that connection. We'll see tomorrow. Maintaining high expectations, though, I know they can do it!

+Happy 25th anniversary to my parents! The big 2-5, as my mom said, they've gone 25 years without killing each other :P

- It's 9:30 and I'm not yet half way done with my lesson plan for tomorrow. However, I guess on the plus side, this is the only night thus far I've not been hyper-productive since the moment I step off that bus. And I still think I'm going to be in bed before at least of the CMs here at institute.

Tomorrow's the half way mark! I cannot even believe it!!

It's been one hell of a week

My first week of teaching is complete! Oh my goodness, I don't even know where to begin. It went by fast, but Monday seems so long ago. I guess I'll just start there.

Monday was a little rough. Mostly because I had no idea what to expect. They keep telling us to remember what is was like for us to be in the grade we are teaching, but honestly, can you remember anything about the summer between 3rd and 4th grade? I was probably chilling by the Old Mill pool, living the dream of a 9 year old. I only taught during the first hour of the day on Monday, and that was only rules and procedures of the class. We gave a math assessment during their normal math block later in the day. My class average? a 26%. Pretty daunting knowing that is what you have to work with for the summer. Some of my students have trouble with basic subtraction, let alone subtraction with regrouping. I know I don't remember much from elementary school, but I know I could do 4 digit subtracting by 3rd grade.

Tuesday I taught my first real math lesson. I tanked. And tanked big time. Trying to manage a class of 17 9-10 year olds, after lunch, at the end of the day, while trying to teach them how to write the inverse of an equation? It was not working. I felt like I was giving out warnings and consequences left and right, but I could only go so far because otherwise half the class would have been in the focus corner. I left school holding back tears and feeling pretty low about my abilities to teach these kids anything. I got together that night with another girl in the SLA corps, teaching the same grade level and same math block as me, who had had a similar first lesson experience. We tore through our lesson plan for the next day and came up with some really good ideas.

My lesson plan for Wednesday, needless to say, went worlds better. I could confidently say about half the class mastered the objective of writing an equality problem using pictures. And the half that didn't were still just making simple and identifiable mistakes on their end of lesson assessment that could easily be fixed. Feeling pretty good about my abilities as a teacher leaving the classroom Wednesday, TFA had other ideas about my confidence level. I felt like Wednesday was by far the most stressful day of the week. In our sessions after school, I felt like we were dumped with an entire load of things they wanted us to do for Thursday: two more lesson plan rough drafts (it takes about 1-2 hours for me to write a lesson plan), to make the calendar for the rest of the summer for all the lesson objectives we're teaching in math, and to separate our class into math skill level groups and reading skill level groups and to come up with mini-lesson plans for our academic intervention hour (AIH - the hour we have in the morning for learning support for our students). This is not to mention that we still had a lesson plan to finalize for Thursday, I was supposed to meet with my CMA (corps member advisor) for 1/2 hour, and have a 2 hour special ed learning session that evening. I was at the point of breaking. I got back to campus and just unwound for about 1/2 hour, talking everything through with my best friend (who by the way, I think is the only thing that keeps me sane here most of the time). After I got off the phone, I had a text from my CMA asking if I would like to reschedule because of how overwhelming that night was going to be. It's like she read my mind. Also, when I got to my SPED session, the person in charge informed us that it was not mandatory and the only thing we would be going over that night was an introduction to SPED and the types of things we would probably encounter as SPED teachers. Basically, everything SLA talked to us about at induction. She told us to leave if we were too overwhelmed with other things, and I high-tailed it out of there. I came back, met up with Ericka, who I had worked with the night before on lesson plans, and we got our lesson plan finalized for the next day. It was still my second latest night that week, but I can only imagine how much later it would have been if I hadn't have had all that extra time free up (and just for reference, when I say late I'm talking around 11:00-11:30 bed time).

Thursday was tough to get through because of the lack of sleep, but AIH went well and I really began to understand the importance that this session is going to have for my students this summer. I'm working with the 'low' group for math and it's really allowing me to see the points that learning is breaking down for these students. Like I said, I have students that have a hard time with basic subtraction, and it was in this session that I figured that out. Without it, I would have never been able to accommodate Shantrecia in math class that day. Because I knew she was still drawing pictures to figure out subtraction, she wasn't going to grasp the concept of 4-digit subtraction with regrouping. I was able to spend extra time during independent work time just taking the problem slowly and repeating the steps over and over again. I know she still hasn't mastered it, but I now know what she needs in order to master it. I also got some great feedback from my FA (faculty adviser) on my lesson. She made me feel so confident in my teaching. She told me it was a pleasure to be in my class watching me teach, and she could really tell the students were engaged in what I was teaching because they could see and respond to my excitement.

Friday seemed to take so long to get here. I know it was only yesterday, but it seems like it was weeks ago. Coming in on Friday, our collab (collaborative teaching team) was named collab of the week! It was pretty exciting. I don't really know why because there are so many times we don't have our shit together at all, but I think it was good for us. It gave us more confidence and allowed us to come together as a team a bit more. Although, I experienced another tanked lesson, but this time it wasn't due to my students' misbehavior, but to my inability to explain rounding to a place value correctly. (Thank goodness for that AIH time!).

I am really enjoying this experience though. Just getting to know my students makes me so excited to have a class of my own this fall. I'm really getting to know the ins and outs of my students. Like I know Melvin loves Math. He's one of my biggest behavior problems, but I know just what to say to encourage him to act right. I rarely discipline him because I just have to positively reinforce his good behavior a few times, and he's respectful, participatory, and kind the rest of class. However much he loves math, he's on a second grade reading level and hardly ever does well on his assessments because he doesn't know what the problem is asking him. So I'm learning just the right way to help him read the question without having him admit he doesn't know what it says. He's constantly look over at me during the math block before mine for recognition that he's doing what he's supposed to. I just need to get him to translate this into not just doing well to please me, but because he understands that learning, in all subjects, is essential to his success.

I'm thinking about maybe trying to feature a new student a few times a week on here, just to give a peek into my classroom and what my students are like. Every day is so interesting with them, and the things they say and do. They surprise me with something new and wonderful every day. Like one student, Cameron. He's in my mid-level reading group for AIH. I administered the reading test for him at the beginning of summer school, and nothing really stuck out to me. But we were talking about making predictions and inferences, especially focusing on using pictures, during AIH on Friday. He turns to me at the end of the hour and says, "Ms. Gauthier, it's cool that this is based on a real story." I asked him, "how do you know that Cameron?" and he replied, "On the front cover of this book, they have a real picture of an event from this story next to the drawing." I was blown away because I didn't even pick up on that, and here's a 4th grader, about a grade level behind in reading, and he just got that on his own.

One week down already!

I have learned two things today: one, living in Cleveland, Mississippi is in fact worse than living in Loretto. Cleveland makes Ebensburg look like a wealth of resources (and for those that I went to school with, yes, it really is that bad). I went to Wal-Mart with my roommate today looking for a few specific items: make-up, make-up sponges, a black blazer, and a wide black belt. I came out of the store with a 6-pack of blue moon and the make-up sponges. My roommate bought two bags of trail mix so we wouldn’t look so pathetic. I don’t know where people work here in the summer, but it’s obviously not in a professional environment because even when we tried the random clothing stores we came across, no blazers suitable for teaching children were to be found. We also decided to “explore” Cleveland after our unsuccessful shopping excursion. Well if you go past the Wal-Mart, there’s a pizza place… No, really, that’s it. Oh, and the super sketch-looking roller skating rink. At least in Loretto, the landscape made up for the lack of anything but my university, but here it’s just nothingness for miles. I guess I don’t feel so bad anymore that I won’t really have much of a chance of spending time in the town this summer.

Second thing I learned today, no matter how short of a distance I am walking outside, wear bug spray! OK, I don’t know how many times the 2010 SLA CMs told us this, but for some reason the mosquitoes were put on standby the first week, allowing us to think previous CMs had simply overreacted to the severity of mosquitoes here, and when we finally decided it was safe to stop wearing copious amounts of bug spray, BAM, they strike. All I know is that when I left for dinner this evening, my feet did not resemble a small mountain range, and now they do.

As for the rest of my first week – well I’m hoping it’s downhill from here. Which, actually I think it will be, or at least I keep telling myself it will for the sake of my sanity. It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just I’m so busy. And not like college-ah-I’m-so-busy-but-I-really-could-make-time-if-I-cut-out-Facebook busy, but legit, I come back from school and have about 3-4 hours of work time, all of which I desperately need, before I crawl into bed at 10 p.m., because once again, I have to wake up at 4:30. The middle of the week, we started to learn about lesson planning, and consequently started cranking out lessons like little TFA-driven lesson planning machines. I’m actually pretty excited to teach elementary math (who knew – but I am still desperately praying I get a job teaching English) – it’s pretty easy to break down and I actually know how to do these problems.

On Friday, we got to meet our students! It was such an exciting day. It felt like we had been working up to this moment for so long, yet it had only been four days. We only administered a Diagnostic Reading Assessment to the students’ on Friday, so we weren’t actually teaching a lesson, but it was pretty cool to get to interact with my students before I have to go into “super teacher mode.” All my students that I tested are on at least a 3^rd grade reading level, and they will be entering 4^th grade in the fall (I don’t think any of my students have been retained – they are in summer school because they either just barely passed and need more instruction time to catch up, or they’re just want learning enrichment). One of our students even tested on a 5^th grade reading level! My class overall seems like a great group of kids and I’m so excited to teach them (check back in with me at the end of next week, and I’ll let you know if I’m still feeling the same).

While everyone else was busy celebrating their livers out Friday night, I was closed up in my room studying for my last two praxis exams (did I mention I had to take 4!?) that were yesterday morning. They were for high school English, so I was very familiar with most of the content. I was able to take some time out Friday night to go to a catfish fry Delta State held for us. I was surprised at how many people were just so unsure of how to perceive the eating of catfish and hush puppies. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that all families in the country just grew up eating fried catfish and hush puppies like I did. It was certainly strange to see the culture shock some people were going through. I am extremely exhausted tonight and most of me just wants to crawl into bed and curl up with non-TFA reading material. As Ian put it, “welcome to the life of a teacher.” Hey, if that’s what teachers get to do on Saturday nights, I have a feeling I’m going to love this teacher thing.

My time as a corps member thus far

Greetings from the middle of nowhere, Mississippi! No, actually it's not that bad. When they told us the next five weeks would be spent in a "really really small town" I was picturing the Loretto of Mississippi. This town has a population of about 12,000 and a Wal-Mart! Yeah, after spending the past four years in a town of 1,000 with the nearest Wal-mart 15 miles away, this is not small.

But let me back track... my official Teach For America experience started last week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The 2011 SLA (South Louisiana - get used to the acronyms because TFA cannot stop using them) corps started Induction last Monday night. It was just a week of attending sessions at the hotel we stayed at, on various introductions to aspects of TFA. We had a huge hiring fair on Wednesday, and despite the 5 interviews I had before that day and the 4 interviews I had that day, I still don't have a job. However, current corps members insist that I should not worry because most people don't get hired until at least institute. Most of the corps did get hired though, so that just leaves more jobs open to me! I met some great people and met lots of current and alumni corps members that gave some great advice and the next two years. I know I'm going to love living in SLA no matter where I get a job.

Saturday I spent all day taking the Praxis exams and then Sunday I was off to Mississippi for Institute. Basically institute is TFA cramming all the information of a 4-year education degree into 5 weeks of training. I'm learning some wonderful things such as apparently the achievement gap is one of those problems that can only be solved in the early hours of the morning. 4:30 a.m. Yes, that is the time I wake up every morning. And the time I get back to the university campus we're housed in? 6:00 pm. Oh, except for what I have officially deemed at the best day of the week: no, not Friday, but Tuesday. We come back to campus at 2:00 and then just have one more session on teaching literacy until 4:00 and are free the rest of the day. It's like heaven.

All this week we're just in sessions all day learning how to be "highly effective teachers." Starting Friday, we'll be teaching summer school for the next month. I'll be teaching incoming 4th graders math and reading, alternating week to week. Yes, so after 4 days of preparation somehow we're qualified to have a class of our very own. Sometimes I wonder if the parents of these students know that their children's teachers will have had all of 4 days of training to teach their child. I'm sure it's better that they don't know.

I know this has been a very disjointed first post, but I just wanted to get something written down so I could at least get into the swing of writing a blog again. I've been motivated by all this talk of setting big goals and working relentlessly to achieve them. I'll try to update this frequently with actually coherent information on the happenings of institute and into the next two years!