I'm a Survivor

I made it through the 5 week Teach for America Institute!  It was madness.  I was cramming with one of my students until one minute before grades were due, but the final result was wonderful.  100% of my students passed the class.  After a mid-semester assessment that every student failed I was seriously concerned, but we did it!  And I think they actually kind of liked me.  Bonus!  It just about brought tears to my eyes when one of the really quiet students came up to me on the last day and gave me the tightest hug and said, "thank you so much for helping me."  The first time he took algebra II he didn't pass.  This time he got an A.  The week after institute I had orientation where we learned about unit plans and had more specific training that focused on our content area, like mathematics.  Next Thursday I start my district training and I can't wait for that.  Each step I am getting more focused on my content area, my school, and my students and it is all so exciting.  I also can't wait for some free time to explore the new place I live!

Love my collab - Katie, Javier, and Allie (and me)

Institution

I can think of 1,000,000 other things I could be doing right now.  Institute is crazy.  I'm finally beginning to understand why my teachers said there was not enough time in a day.  Even though institute is absolutely insane and I'm always grading papers, writing lesson plans, printing copies, attending classes myself, and lucky if I get 5 hours of sleep at night, I am loving this.  The average day at institue looks something like this:

4:45 wake up
5:45 - 6:30 ride the bus to go to Westview High School
6:30 - 7:00 handing back papers and student trackers and getting ready for class
7:00 - 7:15 monitoring the hall
7:15 - 8:00 working on lesson plans
8:00 - 11:00 attending curriculum and literacy sessions/lesson planning
11:00 - 12:30 teach math
12:30 - 1:30 lunch
1:30 - 3:30 more curriculum and literacy sessions
4:00 - 4:45 ride the bus back to ASU

Then my night continues with planning lessons, printing homework, grading quizzes, writing/grading quizzes, attending evening sessions, and hopefully going to sleep by midnight.  There was an hour and a half of sleep in there one night last week.  It is hard, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.  I'm learning so much about being a teacher.  The best part of my day is definitely when I'm teaching class.  My students are great.  They have a hard time with simple mathematic operations, like adding and subtracting, which can be extremely frustrating, but I'm really enjoying getting to know them and watching them learn the material.

I've heard life after institute is easier, but I'm wondering how that can possibly be true.  How can it get easier when I have 6 classes of 30 + students rather than 1 class of 20?  And taking masters classes at ASU on Thursday nights.  I can't even think about that right now.

I've finished my first week of teaching and two more weeks to go, then final assessments.  As much as I love this, I am really looking forward to July 6 when institute ends!

We're attempting to stay sane in our classroom....it's not working very well

PHX

I made it!  I arrived in Phoenix Monday night for Induction into Teach for America.  I was so nervous for this week and it has been great.  We've spent time in groups talking about different things like diversity, leadership, and how we can manage our classroom and become transformational teachers.  Wednesday afternoon we spent 3 hours "in the community."  Basically me and one other girl walked around downtown Phoenix looking for people to talk to and learn more about the city and the people.  Well in case you didn't know, Phoenix is hot.  No one in there right mind is strolling around downtown Phoenix in the afternoon, except for TFA.  The only person I talked to worked at a doll museum.  The dolls were slightly freaky.  Although I wasn't able to talk to many people about Phoenix, I was able to visit the downtown ASU campus where I'll be going to school and find a lot of places that I'm excited to visit and check out later on.

The definite highlight of my week has been the email I received last night.  This morning people were going out to schools to interview for their specific positions.  Last nights email said that I didn't need to be anywhere until lunch because I had been placed at a school.  Well, this was news to me!  I met our director of placement at breakfast and he informed me that I'd been hired at Tolleson High School.  I could not be happier with that placement.  My number one subject/grade preference on my TFA application was high school math and that's exactly where I'll be.

Next week will be tough.  And the next 4 weeks after that, but I'm looking forward to how much I'm going to learn.  There are so many institute horror stories, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will be a positive experience for me.

Dreams of a Crazy Person

I think a decent percentage of my posts are about weird dreams I have.  Here's another one of those posts. I just had a dream that I was getting chased around this mansion by all these different spooky characters.  At one point I was running with Eddie Murphy and we were running from a ghost ( Haunted Mansion, anyone?)  After what felt like hours of running I found myself in a large open basement with a jungle gym in the middle of it.  The giant ghoulish figure was on one side and I was on the other.  I decided the only way I was going to survive was if I bargained with the creature.  I yelled to him to stop and we both got down on our knees.  I was asking what he wanted from me and he slowly started transforming to a high school boy.  He was one of my (future) students and all he wanted was to go to college.  I gave him my motivational speech that I've been practicing in my mind about how all of my students can go to college and he will go to college and the big goal we are going to set to get him there.  This is just a thought that I'm going to throw out there, but I'm thinking that the anxiety of Teach for America is sneaking up on me.  Six days until the big move!

Oh ya, and my best friend gets married today!  Congratulations Stacie and Patrick!!!!

A Really Good Day

I finally feel like I can breathe again.  Yesterday was January 17, which was kind of a big deal.  I was told I would be getting an e-mail at 6 PM that said whether or not I had been accepted to Teach for America.

I got it :)

I'll be moving to Phoenix, Arizona to teach secondary math.  Can I get a whoot?