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So this week, in perspective, has not been that bad at all! It might have to do with a ton of factors that have everything to do with Teach for America and nothing to do with Glen Oaks High School.

It also might have to do with the fact that this was only a 4-day week for me. Tuesday I went to New Orleans for a TFA "excellent school visit." I visited two K-8 schools that are extremely high performing, but still serve very low-income students.
The first... I have no words at how awesome this school was. It was like lovechild of the best of TFA and a Nazi youth group. Students actually were flapping their arm-wings in the morning announcements/ confidence buidling session to remind themselves to soar to great heights every day. Yes, 8th graders were doing this. I don't even want to think of what would come out of y 8th graders' mouths if someone even suggested they do this.
The second was a KIPP school, and it made me totally bitter I did not get placed in NOLA. I mean I knew KIPP schools were awesome, and consequently I am obliged to resent any corps members that are placed there, but WOW. 80% of the middle school is either a current corps member or an alum corps member! It looked like the school had hired a bunch of jcrew models to come to the school for the day. But hey, that's TFA. We don't just strive for excellence in the classroom, but we must look flawless doing it.

My NOLA visit was made even better because I went up the Monday night before to stay with Ian (a very wise decision because everyone else got stuck in traffic coming in Tuesday morning). After school on Tuesday, I also got to go out to eat with Ian for dinner. It was definitely a great addition to my week.

Last night, I had the oppoortunity to have dinner with the chair of TFA/SLA's board of directors. Yeah, being a corps member you get to meet some pretty awesome people (did I mention how I met the owner of all of the Waffle Houses in SLA once at a TFA event?). It was INCREDIBLE. Despite the fact that I didn't get home until 9:45 (wayyy past my bed time), it was just an incredibly enjoyable evening. I've learned the people that support TFA totally kick ass. We talked about the root social injustices our students face and near-death wildlife encounters all night. It rocked.

My classroom is starting to look up... I've been able to get some rotations in place in my class with my program. It's still a work in progress, but I guess it's better late than never. My MTLD got me in contact with an alumni from his corps that taught Read 180 during her commitment, and I'm going to meet up with her next week. She faced a lot of the same issues I did during her two years, and ended up producing incredible results and saw great growth in her classroom. I'm very excited to finally talk to someone who's really in the same boat as me, and can give me some productive support for my classroom.

This week wasn't horrid, but I am welcoming in the weekend with extremely open arms.

Oh weekend, where did you go?

I did not get hardly anything done that I wanted to this weekend regarding my big goal and vision. I did get my week almost all planned out though, which is a first of the year (now that I actually have Read 180 half up-and-running.) The weekend is just not nearly long enough to have time for me to unwind and forget about school, as well as revamp my entire classroom for the week.

The book I'm reading for my TFA book club (also the book I bought myself as a present when I was finally hired), Teach Like a Champion, gave me a few really good ideas that I can start implementing tomorrow. I'm going to go re-read the chapter on "positive framing" before bed because one of the big no-nos of this technique is asking students rhetorical questions like "I'm sorry Kenan, am I interrupting your conversation with my lesson or may I continue?" Apparently it makes a charade out of the student's behavior, and creates a negative attitude toward the student. Who knew? Well, there goes my main form of corrective action towards student talking. Sometimes I'm sure I'm way too sarcastic for my students' sensitive adolescent egos.

Ending on a good note

Today I told my last block class that they were my favorite. Not because they were the most well-behaved, but because their misbehavior amused me the most. They got a kick out of that. They also got a kick out of my lack of knowledge of "local Baton Rouge rap wanna-bes" as one of my students put it. I have never heard so many nonsense made-up names as when they were listing off artists to see if I knew any.

Who names a city after a red stick anyway?

Baton Rouge traffic SUCKS, just in case anyone had the pressing question "I wonder what traffic is like in the capital of Louisiana" on their mind recently.

Repairs - FINALLY

I have been bugging my school since mid-late August to fix my leaky air conditioning and fix my computers so I can start teaching my program. They finally got someone in my class to do both of these... on the same day.

Oh, and I think they expected me to still teach today... although my students couldn't stop being captivated by the men fixing the AC unit (and making all sorts of comments about why they have to be in here, and how bad it smells), the constant random students walking in and out with random computers for my room coming from I don't even know where, and the computer guy crawling around on my floor.

Despite all of this, my worst class of the day didn't even have these distractions. The only thing that was distracting them was their big mouths and lack of any self-discipline what-so-ever.

Things I hear in my classroom

"My hair ain't nappy - that's just how black, African American hair is."

"That bug ain't gonna sting you, it's gonna fart on you!"

Just some pleasurable moments from my last block class. They may lack the ability to keep quiet for more than one minute, but they sure don't lack personality.

Still alive and kicking-ish

Right now I'm looking out at a class of silent, mainly on-task students. I have a few sleeping in the back, but awake they would be nothing but trouble, so I'm not complaining. (Note: whenever my students go to sleep it usually comes after complaints that it is too cold in the room, which makes them sleepy. I have never heard of such a thing - going to sleep because it's too cold. Warm is supposed to make you sleepy. It's a strange phenomenon going on in my class).

This week so far has been touch-and-go. I have a week-long assignment for them they seem to be getting into a little. It's just that I'm so out of ideas to stall time until I can actually start Read 180. Yes you heard it, I still haven't started. I'm not really going to talk about it because I am beyond frustration and literally no longer have any words for it.

I had a wonderful weekend in New Orleans. I, of course, immensly enjoy the company I go there for, but I really realized how much I love that city. It has everything wonderful that I love about a city. I always long to get back there at the end of every week.

There really hasn't been anything new going on in the wonderful world of Glen Oaks. I do love my LPTP classes on Monday nights. It gives me a little dose of being a student that I miss so much. Other than that, I still have a dripping AC (at least my floor is dry now), students in my class that shouldn't be there, and only half working computers. Such is the life here, i guess.

Lessons from a rabbit

I'm going to write about last week at school because I have nothing good to say thus far about school this week, and I heard from a little rabbit named Thumper that if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all (note to self: show that clip in class sometime soon because it is a lesson my students are currently unable to grasp).

Read 180 is still not up and working. Because I got real tired to sitting around and waiting for the program to be ready for me to teach, I just decided to teach what I want. I got together with my MTLD and we came up with a week-long plan. I taught the short story "The Lottery," and did a compare/contrast lesson between the text of the story and a short movie I found. I was very hesitant going into the week because nothing seemed to interest my students, and I wasn't sure how they would be interested in a story that seemingly had nothing to do with their lives, and an extremely outdated movie. Let me just say, it was the best week thus far.

It took a few days to get them interested, but I think just the fact that they had structure and a consistent topic to work on for the whole week - it transformed (most of) my classes. By the end of the week, my students were discussing and debating the ending (some of them just really didn't want to believe that the stoning actually killed Tessie), and making connections to our society today. My first class has risen to become the most enjoyable part of my day.

We spent three days reading the story (I broke it into three parts for them), and watching the corresponding part of the movie. Then, we filled out a compare/contrast chart, focusing on the setting, characters, and plot (with a mini-lesson on plot). Thursday they split into groups and created one big compare/ contrast chart for the week. I was amazed by how many groups were on-task for the whole group time. Friday, they had a creative writing assignment where they had to choose to write a diary entry, newspaper article or monologue about the story. Once again, my first block blew me out of the water with the amount of creativity I got from them. I'm actually thinking of just pretending I only teach my first block because it would make getting up in the morning (still at 5 am, let me remind you) a whole lot easier.

It gave me a hopeful glance at what my class might be like once I actually have week-long lessons to teach. Of course, the rest of my classes completely shattered this hope this week, but I'll stop there because I'm getting into the dangerous realm Thumper once warned me about.

I'm going to enjoy my last few minutes of internet here at Starbucks before heading home to sleep off this horrid day (someone please start bugging me until I call the Cox guy to get me some internet).