Most new teachers, at some point in their training, get a chance to watch skilled teachers teach.  Although providing few opportunities during institute itself, TFA does mandate that its inductees log a certain number of hours of classroom observation.  Once I switched from TFA to a traditional credentialing program, observing the master teacher prior to…

In August of last year I returned to California from Japan after completing two years on the JET Program.  The transition was anything but easy.  First, I returned to the same moribund economy that had caused me to take my job in Japan in the first place.  As September approached and I had already sent…

Wow, it’s been about half a year since my last blog post, and since I’ve joined Teach For America. And no kidding: I’ve really been that busy with teaching. Swamped. I am thoroughly convinced that teachers have the hardest job in the world. And not just because of the insane long hours (which is reason…

Teaching is hard.  I have so much mad respect for all my past teachers…there is so much endless, underappreciated, behind-the-scenes work that goes into good teaching. I wanted to take a minute to reflect on 3 things I’ve come to realize from these last few weeks that I personally need to do in order to…

Teach for America loves to sugarcoat the first year.  Rather than a realistic portrayal of the challenges that face new corps members, TFA has consistently opted for positive propaganda over reality.  Since reading the blog posts of new corps members entering the corps this year, it has become clear to me that this hasn’t yet…

Five years ago was the beginning of my strange teaching career that started at the Los Angeles TFA institute and has brought me here to Kobe, Japan.  In that time I’ve read dozens and dozens of books about teaching.  Since starting this blog though, I developed a keen interest in revisiting one of the first…

Just set my wakeup alarm (and some backup alarms) for ~5:20am.  Wow, they weren’t kidding about this summer.  Teaching boot camp.  Granted, I’m viewing life through some dark-colored lenses right now considering I’ve been majorly, majorly sleep-deprived for the last week and a half…so everything seems much worse than it is.  But what good will…

I’ve been teaching English in Japan for the past two years.  My time here is ending soon, and I’m hoping to make my return to teaching in the US in the fall.  I have a team teaching role in Japan, so I’m looking forward to having my own classroom.  There are a lot of surface…

During my year teaching with TFA, I taught my group of about twenty-five students for the entire day.  I taught them every subject. For the duration of their fifth grade year, my ability to teach those subjects determined how well my students would learn them.  If I was an incompetent teacher, my incompetence would affect…

After leaving TFA at the end of the 2007-2008 school year, I chose to remain hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District and become a substitute teacher.  Although I had failed to make significant gains with my students as a corps member, I resolved that as a substitute I could at least perform the…