"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! :)