At the beginning, middle, and end of each year, Teach For America sends a survey to its corps members and asks us to rate a number of areas with regard to our performance as teachers and the staff’s performance as guides to our professional development. While some of the questions change from survey to survey,…
read more »I don’t update this blog often. A recent post on here questioning the relative silence of the 2012 corps and suggesting perhaps there is a rather insidious explanation (such as widespread mental breakdown) for this silence inspired me to write on here. I may be a 2011, not a 2012, but for posterity’s sake, I…
read more »I’m from a small county in Virginia and that’s where I went for the holidays this year. Despite it’s size, it’s one of the wealthiest counties for it’s size in the nation and the public schools are amazing. I think I’ve mentioned before how lucky I am to have lived where I lived, and attended…
read more »I’ve been ignoring this blog for awhile, for no other reason than I’ve been up to my eyeballs in red tape and assessments and long-term plans, short term plans, visions, and observations. Is that a good enough excuse? Anyways, I’m not doing well, in fact I’m doing pretty shitty. I’m sure sometimes everyone feels like…
read more »Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.
read more »How do you have a conversation about gangs with a six-year-old?
read more »Every now and then I’ll be talking about the teachers strike with someone and they’ll say something along the lines of “I understand why they’re doing this, but why do they need a contract?” or “Why do they need a union?” It is something I haven’t asked myself since taking U.S. History in high school,…
read more »Two weeks ago, on the eve of my second first day as a teacher, I was a different kind of nervous. Last year I was worried about my classroom not being ready for my students and I was worried about whether or not I would be able to handle the responsibility of my role. This…
read more »It’s bad enough how much trouble the general public seems to have in grasping all the things that can be functioning poorly in a school district. The anti-union–actually, anti-teacher–rhetoric that virtually all major media outlets are outputting with regard to the current strike in Chicago is utterly despicable. But what is actually unfathomable to me is…
read more »I’m having trouble motivating my kids. I’m getting so exhausted repeating myself all the time. Repeating instructions, repeating rules, repeating expectations and constantly expecting a different result…isn’t that the definition of insanity? I guess it’s only the 2nd week…
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