Institute allows a lot of time for reflection. Now that I am done with Institute, I find myself continuing on this reflection about this past summer. I never realized how all encompassing my classroom would become so quickly. Despite the fact that I was only teaching 9 students for on average 45 minutes per day,…

I am pretty sure it’s normal to have a love-hate relationship with Institute, but I am going to lay out my thoughts here for the record. In true TFA fashion, there will be a survey coming tomorrow, and I am sure there will be some copying and pasting going on here as I don’t want…

For the past four years of my life, including running a State Representative campaign, my life has been based primarily on two types of communication, in-person and through e-mail. In a typical day, I would go through 50 or so “important” e-mails followed up by a series of in-person meetings. In many professional jobs, what…

After three weeks at the LA Institute, I have learned more about teaching than I thought was possible in this amount of time. I had to admit that I was leery (and still am leery) that I would be prepared to be a teacher in five, short weeks, but I am amazed at how much…

I try to live most of my life on a very balanced path somewhat along the lines of al-Razi. This Medieval philosopher based in Baghdad focused on living a life in between the excesses of hedonism and the solitude of the monastery life. While my upper and lower limits may be defined a bit differently,…

Yesterday, I found out that one of my fellow LVV corps members is updating his blog everyday. Since I am a super competitive person, I am briefly going to try to do the same by writing two posts in two days. The reason I am able to write these posts is because I spent most…

I know it’s been over a week since I last wrote a post, but it took working 5 hours already on the 4th of July to be in a position where I could actually afford the time to write a post. That’s the story of Institute. There is simply so much work to do that…

After everyone had built up Institute to be the hardest five weeks of my life, I expected the “torture” to start from the first second. But that hasn’t been the case so far. Moving in yesterday was a breeze. It only took a few minutes to check at Loyola Marymount University, and getting settled in…

For most regions in TFA, induction seems to be a pretty standard affair. You stay at a local university where you learn a bunch about TFA, and you get to interact a bit with the local community. In essence, that is what induction in the Las Vegas Valley is like, but the differences are worth…