Recent Posts Across Teach For Us

Jun 17 2013

How our students fail to make the grade

Time and time again I will say that my Grosse Pointe education is what makes me an eloquent individual. During my four years at Grosse Pointe South High School I had four rigorous English courses that emphasized the importance of grammar (thanks Veronica Ajavon and Brian McDonald), word choice (thanks Rose Ann Roarty), and analysis…

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Jun 17 2013

A New Direction

On June 1st I was hired to a new job at a bilingual French/English private school as a third grade teacher.  Although I was happy at the charter school where I was working and proud of the work that I did this past school year, the fact that I was only a long term sub…

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Throughout my teaching career, one thing has remained constant: what I’m trying to accomplish.  Back in the early 1990s there was no focus on test scores, thankfully.  My goal back then, as it is now, was for my students to like math more when they complete my class than they did when they began the…

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Jun 17 2013

Lesson planning up the Wha-zoo

Wow my brain is tired. After a long day of planning I have completed 3 mini-lesson plans on class culture, a final draft for my math objective 1, a rough draft of math objective 3, numerous class decorations/posters, our final outline of our groups class culture plan, and…. idk what else!? I’m done for the…

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Jun 16 2013

One Last Shout-Fest

Day 175: As I’ve explained before, I have my students do a call and response chant before every quiz and test. I yell “work hard” and they respond “get smart.” I wonder if they actually remember this is supposed to remind them about the value of persistence and growth mindset, or if they just like yelling…

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This quote, courtesy of Cornel West, was shared in one of our final sessions of Induction. The session – entitled A Vision for Teaching As Leadership – was one of the more tangible, specific sessions we’re had throughout the past few days. I loved it. But more on that later. The end of Induction has…

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Jun 16 2013

Biking and building and… teaching?

Last summer, I rode a bike from Charleston, SC to Santa Cruz, CA for affordable housing through a program called Bike and Build. It was one of the hardest and most amazing experiences of my life, and I am finding that my summer spent with Teach for America is quite similar to it in a…

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Jun 16 2013

this is what I do all day

So, from the last post you know that I’m taking classes here in Tulsa. But what is this summer really all about? We go to lots and lots of “sessions” where we learn everything that we can in a short time about education and leadership in the classroom. It is insanity, but we earn 9…

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Jun 15 2013

Institute Week 1: The Ups

It has been such a week- a long week, an interesting week, an exhausting week, and a difficult week. It is easy to focus on the negatives, I realized last night as I was talking to Corey that there have been some really wonderful aspects to this week. First of all, I am surrounded by…

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Jun 15 2013

Miss Lora’s Story

Miss Lora’s Story Prior to coming to institute, we were given quite a bit of pre-work to complete. Some people did it and some people didn’t. I eventually finished all of it, if a couple of weeks late. Some of it was interesting, some of it was boring, and some of it was outdated. The…

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Recent comments

  • Love your relentlessness, Michael Fiorillo.… read more »
  • I have this issue all the time! My office berated me for asking for more pencils too frequ… read more »
  • Because we're really looking for eloquent, critical thinkers. Yes, assessments provide ver… read more »

Random post

  • First off: Ignore the title.  In no way am I referring to my former company (Fred for short) as some sort of Grisham- like firm, or with any bad connotation that that term might possess.  I just tho… read more »
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