I was told to check off when I wanted to tutor and enrich my students. Once a week for each group. I could either do forty-five minutes in the morning or thirty minutes if in the afternoon. (Really? … Really? And what about the students at grade level?) Cory* forgot his homework. Ben*, who has…
read more »Every day I walk into my classroom, I am deathly terrified and immensely hopeful. I am terrified of not succeeding. Terrified of not teaching my kids the right stuff. Terrified of not being planned enough. Terrified, ultimately, of how they could turn out if they don’t master the material. As this fear consumes me, it is this…
read more »On Monday, August 27th, I walked into a classroom of nineteen students. They were all Hispanic. And their English proficiency? All over the place. No one could write their numbers and I mean no one. None of my students could write the number three, for example. All I kept getting were “trees.” Five was “fife,” “eight…
read more »The night before the first day of the school year reminded me of the night before my first soccer game when I was in 2nd grade. I was really excited and got no sleep, and planned a lot. I drove to school exhausted, but meeting my kids gave me the energy I needed to make…
read more »I will post a “Night Before First Day of School” post later tonight, God willing, but right now as I am freaking out and preparing to be ready to teach tomorrow, I wanted to take some time to list ten things I am thankful for: 1. Making it out of the accident with minimal injuries,…
read more »So, I’m sitting here in my living room four days out from teaching my very first class…I have AC certification things due (about 8 hours of video worth and a chapter of homework), my classroom isn’t quite finished, I’m missing important training for my school, I have a fever and I’m not quite sure what…
read more »I apologize for not updating in quite a while. My computer broke in the middle of our first few days of training in Dallas, and it’s taken forever to get it fixed. My parents mailed me an old netbook of mine, which I am now using as the other one gets fixed. I was counting…
read more »Here’s a quick read on the Huffington Post that sums up all of the counter-arguments I try to give: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alyssa-granacki/in-defense-of-teach-for-a_b_1749879.html?fb_action_ids=578040926146&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%22578040926146%22%3A10151067650107346}&action_type_map={%22578040926146%22%3A%22og.likes%22}&action_ref_map=[]&utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
read more »but you can’t take the Scav Hunt out of the girl. One of the things that I realized at Institute is that I really have to start liking living in Dallas in order for me to be able to invest 100% in my students and my role here. It’s been a rough adjustment, but last…
read more »Hello everyone. Sorry for the very long lapse in blogging. I got swamped in things to do with the end of Institute, the move to Dallas, my visit to Chicago, and the beginning of “First Eight Weeks” training that I haven’t gotten around to publishing an update. I had a very long post backed up…
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