Long overdue update...

I haven't posted anything in a while because I never have any time! Institute is so busy, I barely have time to eat or sneak in a few hours of sleep each night. But this weekend I am taking a break from working because Ben came to visit! Yay!

As far as last week goes, it had some high points and some low points, but mostly low points. I'm getting into harder math concepts so my students aren't understanding as quickly, which makes my lessons run too long and we don't get everything in that we need to. I haven't been getting to their "exit ticket" which is absolutely crucial to seeing if they have mastered the objective I taught that day. The room is about 500 degrees everyday and the students are getting really sick of being there, and aren't afraid to show it. It's frustrating because I can empathize with them, but at the same time, being on the other side, I can see how important it is that we push past that they are hot and tired and work hard on the material. My more serious topic that I didn't post about before: my school has a gang problem and one of my students has a drug problem. This KILLS me. They are in the 8th grade! I have found out that gang/drug activity starts in late elementary school for a lot of these kids! They are so young, they don't realize that they are throwing away their futures, and that the life they are getting themselves into has no future. I can see right through my student though. It all stems from serious issues with insecurity. But even if it annoys the heck out of him at first I'm going to be his biggest cheerleader. He just doesn't have a choice in the matter. lol.

Last week was frustrating outside of school too. My car and my laptop decided not to work within 24 hours. During a stressful time like Institute that nonsense will send a person into nervous breakdown mode. But 3.5 hours in the shop and $180 later, my car is fixed up and my computer will turn on, but still takes about 30 minutes to load a website and freezes up alll the time. A new car is in my near future (as long as I passed my certification exam that I took last Saturday), maybe at some point I'll be able to find a deal on a laptop. Mine is too old to have serviced, which is really lame.

But this weekend has been good, and I'm going to go enjoy my Sunday before I have to get to serious work. :)

What a Rollercoaster Ride!

Ok so my first few days of teaching were really great... until yesterday. I was being formally observed yesterday by my advisor. And you see, the problem is that 13 year olds are old enough to know exactly why that person is sitting at the back of the room and exactly how to push your buttons and act obnoxious just because they know you are already flustered. And oh boy they did. They saw right through what I was doing just to look good in front of my advisor and called my bluff. Little punks. Haha. I'm over it today, but my lousy observation on top of my insane workload and lack of food and sleep brought me to meltdown state last night. I finally got to sleep around 2am... until the fire alarm went off at 3:30am and we had to evacuate... and I had to wake up at 5am. But despite my exhaustion today was a better day and my kids were back to their normal attitudey, chatty, but overall well behaved selves. Thank God. I also warned them that based on my lack of sleep, I wouldn't recommend trying to test me today. haha. Well I have a more serious matter I was going to post about, but I'll save that for another time because I need to get to sleep. I have an interview fair with APS principals tomorrow! Wish me luck!

2 days down!

So I've taught for two days now and it's going so well! My kids are between 13 and 15 so there are little issues of chatting and the occasional disinterested attitude, things typical of teenagers, but I've heard of some teachers with some really serious issues in their classroom. I am so blessed and thankful for my kids! I hope they don't go and change on me. I think they like me and they show me respect (as much as you'll get out of a 13 year-old). I've been trying really hard to get to know them on a more personal level when we have some free time and I think the investment in them is really paying off. To them I'm totally legit because I'm from Baltimore and I've seen Lil' Wayne in concert. haha. Hopefully I'll have more good things to write later, but for now it's time for bed.

Oh ps: I have interviews with principals on Friday! Woop woop!

Call me Diven... Ms. Diven

Just a real quick post before work... I start teaching today! AH! I'm so nervous! I haven't had time to practice my lesson enough... ahh!! But I'm really excited to get to know the kids! Gotta run!

This made me cry...

Click here: Why I "Teach for America"

Two weeks down!

Well, it's the end of my second week in Atlanta! My first week of institute is finished! Woop woop! I start teaching on Monday! Ahhh! I had to sign my name Ms. Diven today.

Ok, so ADD moment done. This week was really tough, but I know it will be worth it when I get to know my kids. I got to observe their class yesterday (I'm too tired to remember if I wrote about that yesterday.) and they seem really respectful and well behaved, which was honestly a pleasant surprise. I'm really nervous and get overwhelmed a lot, but my wonderful boyfriend gave me a great perspective on it the other night. :) People that we read about in the Bible who were asked to take on great challenges questioned themselves and doubted their ability. Just like me they were like "You must be crazy, this is ridiculous, I can't do this. I'm not doing this." But eventually everyone comes around. :) What great advice! :P

But I'm soooo tired after this loooong week, so I think I'm about to pass out. I should be studying for the GACE (my certification exam) more, but I might just need to sleep.

<3

"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."

I found the title quote on the cover of a calendar at the beginning of the year. It really inspired me and summed up my life's ambition (plus, it's black and white so it matched my room :P) so I had to buy it. It has an inspirational quote for each month. Well the other day when I was feeling really frustrated and overwhelmed and honestly felt like giving up I noticed that I had to change my calculator to June. Well what quote pops up for the month of June? That's right, the quote in the title. The one that inspired me in January... and now, the one that I wrote all of my personal statements for grad school about, the one that I will look to to keep me going during institute and my two plus years with Teach for America. It really does encompass my experiences here. We work really hard (like, really really hard) to do well in our planning and create progress and results in our students' test scores, but we can never lose track of what we are really there for, the reason for the movement. We are here to do good. We are doing what we have to do to put children's lives on a different path through education.
So I started Institute on Monday and my first week is already over. It's been hard work learning how to lesson plan, manage classroom behavior, create assessments, teach content and motivate learning in a week before we start our version of student teaching. Oh, and did I mention that I'm teaching 8th grade math... yeah, which is really fun considering I don't understand 8th grade math. Oh and did I mention that my bus leaves at 6:25am and doesn't get back until 5pm-ish? But I'm going to try not to complain too much. It's just something we have to do for the kids. This is a high stakes class. They failed a state assessment that they must pass in order to move on to high school. They have one more shot or they have to repeat the 8th grade, which would be a killer for esteem and motivation at such a critical age. The difference between kids and teenagers, middle schoolers and high schoolers. Our work is going to be really challenging, but it is also very important and hopefully in the end very rewarding for our students and ourselves.
I have more work than I ever expected. It's all due at 5am each day, which just shows they don't expect us to sleep... ever. But we all know that I just can't do that. So I better go finish up my plan for getting students invested in my class and get to bed. Good night to all! :)

Your life is not about you. (& a lot of info about the achievement gap!)

Wow, so much for writing every day. I had NO IDEA how insanely busy I would be during induction week and apparently it only gets worse from here. Tomorrow starts the 5 weeks called institute. The first week will be spent in orientation sessions for our school, lectures on lesson plans and classroom management and knowing TFA, a lot more. Then the following week we will get our students that we will be student teaching. We will be teaching summer school for kids who didn't pass their grade yet. (At the end of the summer schools will pass most students regardless of how prepared they are for the next grade because the pass/fail rates get reported to authorities and reflect upon the school's effectiveness and success. This means it is our job to catch them up to standards or else they may never get on track and keep falling further and further behind their peers. Big task for student teachers, huh?) I'm teaching at Harper-Archer Middle School, but I don't know what subject yet. I thought induction required early mornings and late nights... not even close. My bus leaves for Harper-Archer at 6:25am, and most people say they didn't get to go to sleep until the wee hours of the morning. I'm really nervous, but also really excited to get to student teach and actually see the faces of some of the kids whose lives TFA can change. I'm sure that will boost my drive and my "sipping of the Kool-Aid" times a million!

One cool thing is that a bunch of other corps (Hawaii, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville and some others) just moved into GA Tech today because, although everyone goes to induction week in their own placement city, there are only a few summer institute locations and Atlanta is one of them. We really lucked out there. We have already become acclimated to our host campus, and to the city somewhat and we didn't have to travel twice (and then they have to travel back). There are hundreds and hundreds of TFA corps members here now!!

Another update, my content placement got changed. I'm no longer teaching special education students, I'm teaching elementary school. I'm pretty excited about the switch because this means I will definitely have the younger children (where I was more likely to have high schoolers as a special ed. teacher) and I'll definitely have my own classroom (where I could have co-taught students in someone else's class room as a special ed. teacher). Some lucky room in some lucky school will be Miss Diven's room... Yay! :)

I won't give all the loooooong details about induction week and everything I learned, but here are some not-so-fun facts that I learned, food for thought about the very REAL achievement gap and disadvantages students of minorities and low income households face, specifically in Atlanta.

1) Many states, including Georgia, decide how many additional jail cells to build each year based on how many third graders can't read. (This is one thing we learned that hit me the hardest. Third graders are essentially, statistically being damned to prison in their futures based on their literacy level as an 8 year old! Their schools, their teachers and "the system" are failing them beyond belief! Someone has to interfere and stop the trend, the vicious cycle that keeps people from achieving. That's where a TFA corps member can completely change lives.)

2.) Nobody cared enough to hold Clayton County school officials accountable for their decisions and let them fly under the radar for so long that the county recently lost accreditation as a school system. High school seniors who worked 12 years to graduate did not receive a high school diploma. Through no fault of their own they will have very very few opportunities for college or even jobs. (This one is probably tied with my previous fact for how sad it made me. It's a largely black, largely poor school system and authorities were apathetic to implement expectations and just plain didn't care.) Many of the school system officials were fired and others worked very hard to gain the county's accreditation back and this year TFA will be placing teachers there for the first time to turn some of those classrooms around.

3.) SAT scores: (And these reflect the highest achieving students in the disadvantaged groups mentioned and a much broader range of students from affluent schools considering who takes the SAT as it is optional.)
3a.) On the 2009 SAT in the US private school students scored an average of 185 points better than their public school peers. Let's do some calculations. I went to a public school and scored a 1290 (pretty good when compared to other students at my high school, but not so hot compared to other kids at Clemson). Had I gone to private school that score (based on averages) could have been a 1475, which is really high and I guarantee I would've gotten a scholarship and not be in debt right now. Wealthy families means more academically advantaged students.
3b.) The average difference between white and black students: 305 points!! More math: If I was an African-American student statistically I would have scored a 985. Latino and hispanic students score an average of 219 points lower than white students. That would not have even gotten me into college... any college.
3c.) But this isn't just about race. You can't "blame" it on something natural like race. Money matters. Students whose families make $100,000-120,000 score 258 points less.
3d.) Educational privilege is real and the cycle is vicious. On the 2009 SAT the difference between students whose parents who graduate from grad school and those whose parents did not graduate high school was 402 points!!!!!! This means that, on average, if your parents succeeded academically at a graduate level you would get the scores to get the scholarships to go to college and those who need the education and the scholarships most don't have nearly as much of a chance.

If you think the difference is easy to fix and make up with hard work, it's not. These students have less resources, less qualified and motivated teachers and often more social challenges and responsibilities outside of school. How can you stay after school for help when your parents don't own a car? How as a child can you improve your literacy when you don't have any books at home? You need motivated, caring and helpful teachers to help.

This isn't meant to make any people of privilege feel guilty and go into defense mode, which I think it often does. It's meant to make people realize how blessed we are and how many advantages many of us have had before we judge others and dismiss the achievement gap.

As for my title, it's a little something that I need to keep reminding myself. At the beginning of this week I honestly had a really bad attitude. I thought the TFA staff expected way too much of us and that this work was just too hard. But the truth is, they hold high expectations for us so that we rise to the occasion and they demand a lot of us because they care about these children more than anything in the world, more than themselves. And by committing to TFA we committed to doing the same... and I'm going to do it. Our lives aren't always about us. Sometimes God calls on us to do greater things. The next two years are about my students.

Well it's time for bed, early morning tomorrow!!

PS: One more thing. I signed a lease for an apartment in Atlanta. I got a fantastic deal on a 2br/2ba apartment in a really nice area just outside of Midtown in Buckhead. PRIME location!!! There are multi-million dollar mansions just down the street, and it's a little greener than the urban environment of Midtown, but still right in the middle of everything. We have HUGE walk-in closets, a patio, a pool, outdoor kitchen and picnic area, dog park, outdoor fireplace and 24 hour gym. It's a fairly new building and I'm living with and near some really awesome fellow TFA corps members. I'm so excited! I move in July 10th! :) Check out my new home!

I can't even think of a title right now...

Today was the first day of induction and I am ready to pull my hair out. I'm not as afraid of teaching as I am afraid of the Teach for America process. I'll write in more detail later. Right now I need to go to sleep because I've been running myself ragged all day and have to be up at the crack of dawn. Send some prayers my way, I'm going to need some extra strength.