Megalopolis

I have discovered, in my week and a half in LV, that the most important trait i can possess is patience. I am a relatively impatient person when it comes to things I look forward to, most notably the cubs winning the world series, but a close second right now would be starting to teach in my classroom. These bigger things cause me great angst and upheaval while waiting for them to arrive, if they ever will. The smaller, more normally recognized as irritating details of life haven’t bothered me at all! This is interesting to me because I realized my patience with little things MUST transfer into the classroom or i will go absolutely stark raving lunatic crazy face insane. Recently, this has come in handy, and I want to remember that no matter how stressed I am, I always need to be patient.

I know that what I am waiting for will eventually occur. I know that starting August 18, I will begin teaching in my classroom. Soon, I can stop doing work I find tedious (sorry TFA) and start doing work I find exciting and practical (like searching catalogs for 130 dollar A/C-controlled pencil sharpeners!). I know that what I’m waiting for will happen. I know I’ll start teaching. I know the cubs will win the world series. And I am going to do my absolutely best to not allow myself to become impatient with the smaller things that stand in between me and whatever I am waiting on the most. You hear that, cubs?

So that when the upstairs air conditioning unit breaks down (we think), leaving the second floor thermostat’s red line eternally max’d out at 90+ degrees, i am learning to be patient and pray for rain.
And so that when the rain causes a leak in the roof, it gives me a chance to get to know the landlord. And at least the second floor is cooler.
And when i find thirty desks in my classroom, even though i (for now) only have 22 students, it means i can choose the best quality desk for each row of four.
When shopping, it means I can take all the time i want to debate between the three vegetarian morningstar options available to me in the local grocery store.
So that when the exhaust pipe falls out of my muffler and the seatbelt of my 18 year old car falls into 4 pieces on the same day, I can stop in the middle of the road and pick up the pipe off the ground and laugh because i know that no other cars will come along the road and see me. And if they did, they’d stop and help.

All these things could be complaints, but I’m genuinely enjoying myself. I see everything here as an opportunity, since I know so little about the area that surrounds me. Even bending down gives me a chance to see a new bug (and then run away from it.) Bugs, too, are something else with which i’m learning to be patient.

I am feeling slightly more in place (as opposed to out of place) in the Delta, but by no means do i feel comfortable. I think this is good, because it’s giving me something to work towards. I could not be more excited about my classroom, working with and for my students, and getting to know and appreciate the community. I want to get the race underway, but i feel like i barely know how to turn the engine on. For this reason, i dug up a quote from my book about buddhism that makes me breath deeper and, thats right, be patient.

“If you are facing in the right direction, all you have to do is keep on walking.”

I’m still working on finding my walking shoes in the closet, but at least I know they’re in there somewhere. I’m ready to go, and I’m doing my best to be patient.

yes yes yes.

to be thought through and put into coherent sentences at a later date.

I’m going to have to do something about my mood. Currently, I smile almost everywhere I go. I am too eager to talk to anyone I meet. I shriek at random times. I get excited at my inability to identify crops, and then I smile at my excitement, and then I shriek at the whole situation. But all that is going to have to change if I’m going to sing the blues, or even bluegrass. I’ve got a banjo and when I was younger I did a relatively spot-on impression of bessie smith, so I know it is possible, but currently my mood is getting in the way of my achievement. I know better than to wish for a negative, so I guess I’ll just have to dig deeper for soulful inspiration….

This brings me to my biggest update- I’VE ARRIVED! And thank goodness! As one friend said, “getting there is all you’ve wanted.” Now I can finally stop bothering people with my sentiment that as fun and interesting as everything else is, all I want to do is go to the Delta. I have arrived, and with my obscenely energetic personality which I’m sure scares away some of the other, more subdued corps members. And I say that after being here for only 24 hours. It has that kind of effect on you when you dream about it for 6 months…

I know this entry is not about the end of institute, about which I did a miserable job of referring. Here are the highlights:
-Thursday we dubbed “Prove It Day.” It was the day we administered all our summative assessments, and I began my science class by having them state everything they had learned during the month. We wrote it on the board, and they thought of as many things as possible. Once they exhausted their science memory, I erased them. Amidst the protest, one girl asked a question, “Miss, why did you erase them all?”
“You know all these things!” I said. “Prove it!” I handed out the assessments, and there was overall improvement enough so to make me spill over with pride.
-During the week, we had the kids rehearse a reader’s theater and prepare props. On Friday, they performed it for the 4th grade class next door, and it was the most serious I have ever seen them take something the entire summer.
-I did not get cmip’d, even though I slept until 9:15 on my last Wednesday of institute. That is not how late you are supposed to sleep, by the way.

The drive to orientation was long and necessary in order to allow the excitement to build to an unnatural level so that I would literally have to jump up and down in order to relieve my joy upon arrival. We drove through Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas-including my soon to be new home of LA.V.AR.!!!!!!!!! (The acronyms probably won’t die, even though I’m not at institute anymore) It was dark, but that did not stop me from screaming during the 10 seconds it took me to drive past my school, as well as while we drove down the highway in my town of 2800 where the Sonic, Subway, and gas stations are. The town is a metropolis. I’m in love.

And then there’s the lake. Observe- Sigh and be jealous, please. Even in the dark, it was breathtaking. I am so happy to be in the Delta. Crossing into Mississippi, you see the state sign which says “Welcome to Mississippi- It’s Like Coming Home.” I live in la.v.ar., but it holds true. I honestly think anywhere you can anticipate for 6 months, read about (the good and the bad), and still smile ear to ear upon driving through, deserves to feel like home upon entrance.

Even after institute and all its toils and strife, I cannot think of a time in which I felt more comfortable with learning, with the people whom with I was sharing my experiences, and the environment in which all of it took place.

I feel good. And that’s why I can’t sing the blues.

I have less than a week left before I am in the Delta, and I have not been more excited about something in a long LONGGGGG time. I was nervous about college, nervous about graduating from college, horrified to come to institute, and now i honestly feel… excited? It is more a matter of me focusing on one emotion to overshadow the other ones lurking in the distance: terror, fear, and anxiety. TF and A. I went from Deltamusement to Deltanxiety.

This weekend was a 3 day weekend, thanks to the Fourth of July, which I celebrated in true Texas fashion by attending Chevy’s Freedom Over Texas (with fireworks sponsored by Shell). There were nascar cars there and 6 dollar beers and it was a wonderful escape from institute, and yet the first thought someone voiced once we finally made it through the line into the muddy stage area was, “what if one of our kids is here?!”

Is this what it’s like to be a teacher? If so, I’m going to need to seriously update my casual wardrobe…

We also had game night last night, affirming my belief that if given the opportunity, ALL people will play the game of Life and enjoy it. Or, in the case of Mr. K, he will draw the “Teacher” career after being the only one to go to college. He will then choose a different career, only to draw “Teacher” again. Some things are inevitable, I guess…

Tomorrow is my last Monday of institute, and the sighs of relief from the 700+ CM’s in Moody Towers have been audible all weekend. We have a lighter workload, and on Thursday we administer our end of the summer diagnostic to see how much growth our students have made. The big goal of the summer is for all our students to achieve 100%, and though I would imagine I did not invest thoroughly enough for them to even remember this as our goal, I think there will be inklings of progress. In writing, every one of our students has made positive progress towards their growth goal! This makes up for the fact that in math, according to the assessment data, we have some students with things like -283% growth. That’s fun to explain…

In summary, I am happy I’m at institute, but happier that in a week I will not be. I am closer and closer to calling a new location my home, and if it is possible to be homesick for somewhere you’ve never lived, I am.

I know the majority of my posts, even the stressed-beyond-panic ones, tend to be firmly rooted in humor. However, tonight I find myself unable to find laughter in a criticism I received from my CMA, or corps member advisor… how long do I have to keep defining these terms? Anyway, this stands as a warning. This is not that funny. At all, really. Sorry.

After being observed today for half an hour during my writing lesson, we sat down for a debriefing. My lesson focused on prepositions and prepositional phrases, and I was confident that they understood. The parts of my lesson that my CMA observed were the GP (Guided Practice) and IP (Independent Practice) portions. I had the students work in groups on the first page of a worksheet, re-writing sentences to include prepositions. This led into IP in which they were to write their own sentences with prepositions/prep. phrases.

18 of my 23 students did this well. 3 of those that didn’t complete the assignment were pulled out for testing. The problem that we focused in on during the debriefing were the two students who didn’t master the assessment, and why. What started as a narrow question as to why these two students were not focusing soon became a question posed to me, “What teacher actions are responsible for these students not understanding and staying on task?”

It fell on me. While I always felt responsible for the student’s successes in the classroom, for monitoring and improving their behavior, and even for tracking their grades, I hadn’t until this point directly met with being responsible for their failures. These failures, instead of just being labled “failures” or even the broader TFA term “achievement gap” were now my students. It was only two students, and yet I could not pinpoint the reason why they had gotten off task, what specifically had led them to not complete the assignment. It’s not like my student’s have always mastered my assessments before this point; far from it! Up until now, it was my responsibility to understand and differentiate the student’s independent practice, and I hadn’t done so, and furthermore I didn’t know how.

With a little more than a week left, I understand how much I have to learn, and I am that much more fearful. It is not that I doubt my ability to positively affect the majority of the students in my class every day. It is simply the fact that I think one or two students at a time, every other day for an extended period of time, failing to live up to their potential, could prove disastrous for their educational improvement.

And that falls on me. And I don’t know how to fix it yet.

I have so much to learn.