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!