Institute Pre-Work

I thought it might be cool to include one of my pre-institute writings on this blog. You can see the prompt for the final lesson and my response below:

Imagine that it is the end of your first year of teaching, and all of your students and their families write you a letter expressing their opinions, reflections, and feelings about the experiences they (or their children) have had with your class.

·       What do you hope your students and their families will say? Why?

·       What could they say that would tell you that you had been successful?

Helping students to love learning will be the most important theme of my classroom. Plutarch, a Greek philosopher, offered one of the most brilliant and well-known analogies about the mind. He said, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.” I want my student to be set ablaze with the power of words and numbers and stories and the potential of their own dreams. Education is not a perfect silver bullet, but it is a major ingredient in the most meaningful success stories. My students will face numerous obstacles, but I don’t want a poor education to be one of them.

Of course, igniting a love for learning is an end that requires many, many means. I want my students and their families to say that I cared deeply for the people inside my class, inside my school, and throughout the community. The best lesson I learned from a Kindergarten teacher that I worked with near Miami University is that you must always show you care. She explained that everything stems from that.

If my students’ minds are to be on fire with the knowledge they learned in my classroom, my mind must also be on fire! I want people around me to see me as a life-long learner. I recognize that my growth is a function of my desire to grow. My friends and professors from college could see my passion for knowledge acquisition. I want people to see that college was not the high point of my learning, but simply a ramp leading up the biggest and best jumps I will make with respect to my understanding of how the world works.

I want my students, their parents, my fellow teachers, and the school administration to see me as a humble, high performer. I want people to recognize my efforts, but they will find out that my hard work and toil are focused toward the most important part of the educational equation, student achievement. Connecting with students’ influencers will require my most sincere humility, but I know that these connections will be important to get help in order to reach my students’ big goals.

Finally, I hope my students honor our year together with more learning in their next school year and the year after that, and the year after that. High performance begets high performance. If I can help my students to know excellence in their learning and teach them how to replicate that excellence in a sustainable way, I have done my job very well. My students deserve the best teacher that I have inside of me. When the year is done I want them to believe I gave it too them.

In Houston!

I arrived in Houston on Thursday and have been enjoying my time so far. After landing in the George H. Bush International Airport, I joined up with about 6 other Houston Teach For America Corps members to board a SuperShuttle. The van dropped us off at the Crowne Plaza hotel where we registered for our three-day Induction.

Induction consisted of several workshops that helped us to familiarise ourselves with the organizational structure of the Houston Corps as well as a few outings to help us get to know one another. I continue to be inspired by the stories of past corps members including several Houston '07 teachers who shared their stories at our opening dinner. Everyone has been very kind.

Today we moved into Moody Towers at the University of Houston to begin the TFA Houston Institute. Since our region was already in Houston, we moved from the hotel to the university early this morning. Other groups will be arriving throughout the day.

Tomorrow will be my first day at Gallegos Elementary School where I will be teaching throughout the summer and next school year. I was hired to teach second grade, which I am very excited about. (I've heard from current corps members at Gallegos that my classroom isn't the best, but I'm sure that'll be a small challenge compared to those coming my way.)

I guess that's all for today. I hope I will be able to keep up this blogging better than I have thus far. I'm sure my students will provide a great deal of inspiration (and frustration) going forward. The trouble will be finding time to type it up!

Friday Update

It's certainly been a while since my last post. Schoolwork has been relatively under control, but it seems like everything else is flying along. The weeks after Spring Break passed by before I knew what was happening. Last weekend we pledged in a new class of members to Delta Tau Delta, and I was fortunate to get to perform the Courage portion again. We also had the first round of elections for Phi Sigma Pi, and Angie will be replacing me as Parliamentarian in the coming weeks.

Teach For America is also moving forward. This past Monday I had a conference call with Kristin, Caroline, along with several incoming corps members about school placement. I felt up-to-date going into the call because I had read all of the TFA materials that I had been sent thus far. Even more so, I was head of the game because I had already had a phone interview with SHINE, a KIPP elementary school in Houston. Although I was not selected to be part of the SHINE school, I was given the interview opportunity, which many corp members were not.

On Tuesday, I received an email from Caroline notifying me of another phone interview, which excited me very much. I felt very fortunate to be given another opportunity to interview over the phone before arriving in Houston. About half of the 2008 corps will have their first interview on June 6 after arriving, and many others will have their first interviews even later. Shortly, I opened an email from the principal of Gallegos Elementary.

After exchanging emails the principal, we set up a time to speak about a second grade position. I was blown away. This principal was frank and honest. She was active and visionary. She seemed to truly wrestle with the issues facing her school and invited me to wrestle with the ideas too. We've agreed that I should talk to the TFA corps member who has the second grade position we were discussing. The teacher's name is Emily and I'm scheduled to talk to her today at 5pm.

The school sounds like it is moving in the right direction, but there are many snags and hiccups along the way. The challenge seems immense, but I am excited by the prospects of finding a school in Houston. Whether this potion works out or another one comes later in the process, I am confident that I will have a teaching home by the time school starts in the fall.

Great TFA Article

I came across this today: http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695260491,00.html.

This article by Megan Morton tells of her Teach for America experience in Houston, TX where I will be next year. It truly speaks for itself. God Bless her and her work.

Spring Break Toledo

After a full-throttle Green Beer Day in Oxford, which included a big class presentation in MGT 414, I slowly but surly slipped into a lulling Spring Break mode. I stayed Friday to work 11-1 and was able to go out to eat with Amy, Emily, Kate and her dad. We had some tasty grub at Mac and Joe's then headed to BW3's for a drink and the trivia games. (For the record: Kate, Emily, and I beat Kate's dad and Amy.)

On Saturday I cleaned up my room, did some laundry, wasted a lot of time, and eventually left Oxford for Sylvania and the start of "Spring Break Toledo." I met Kate's family at "The Bunker" where I nibbled at the left-overs from a few meals. Both the Hawaiian Barbecue and Taryaki wings served in aluminum pales were very good.) We all left "The Bunker" for another drink at a Mexican restaurant and bar. Eventually we landed at Kate's house where she and I put together our AT-ST Star Wars lego kit. Lego kits are one of our hobbies.

After I attended Palm Sunday services at Kate's church, I met Rob at his new house. It was beautiful. I hung out there for the rest of the night, reading, watching Fox News, and taking in 3:10 to Yuma (which I hardily recommend). The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur. Kate and her mom took me to the Toledo Art Museum and Rob introduced me to Tony Paco's food and Anderson's market.

On Wednesday I left Toledo to pick up my sister at her horse riding lesson just north of Columbus and meet my brother at his house (also in C-bus). We had some tasty Pizza Hut and hung out for the night before Melissa and I ventured the rest of the way home Thursday.

This whole while I've been making progress on my Pre-Institute work for TFA. I have the first lesson reading done and am well into the second. I'll have to catch up on the reflective essays once back at school. Also, I picked up another book as part of my personal preparation. It's called Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith, and although I'm only a little less than 50 pages in, I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

Guess those are the main highlights.

Missing Kate today...

Long Week

Being that it's Tuesday, I'm sure one would find this hard to believe, but this is already turning into a very long week. I spent my weekend beginning my "Pre-Institute Work" for Teach For America. The box of spiral-bound books arrived last week and, although I haven't completed an official tally, it must contain over 1500 pages. This of course seems fine until you add that to a sixteen credit hour school load and a ten-hour-a-week part-time job.

I worked four hours of that job yesterday, as I do every Monday from 8:30am-1pm. Washing dishes for a campus dining hall may not be the most glamorous work, but the full-time staff members are very nice. It also doesn't hurt that I've spent portions of three summers washing dishes (and mowing) at a 4-H camp back home. (I never would have expected that experience to pay off.)

Today, my MGT professor returned a two-part paper that I turned in with my partner last week. The prompt for the assignment required that we work in duos, and I had the awkward displeasure of working with my EX-GIRLFRIEND! (Ah!) Fortunately, the experience of writing the paper was not completely dreadful, but we didn't pull off the best grade. The first part received a B-, but the second part remained ungraded. When asked, the professor provided a confusing rationale for the missing mark and offered us the chance to re-do the second essay by Friday. Didn't he know I had a busy week already!?!?

Ramble, ramble. Back to work.

First Blog

I'll be graduating college in two months (+ one day), and here I am opening up my first blog. I wish I would have started this my first day on campus. Still, I believe this blog will be fun during my transition out of my undergraduate career and into my first professional career.

I have chosen to join the Teach For America corps in Houston, TX where I will be teaching elementary school. The past few months have been full of email updates (called email blasts) as well as FedEx-ed transition packets. The UPS man brought the most recent box filled with my "pre-institute" assignments. It's exciting to think that all of this is materializing so quickly.

I envision this blog as a series of snapshots about my transition from a business school undergraduate experience (mgt major, eco minor) into the world of education. I will soon be a struggling first-year teacher in an already struggling school. At this point, I have more questions than answer, but I hope you will ask the questions with me.

Until next time...