OK, so my first post was about why I’m joining TFA. This one is going to be about all of the reasons that have nothing to do with why I joined TFA. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about TFA Corps Members and why we join. I’m sure some of them apply to…
read more »I have officially accepted my offer to join Teach For America in the South Louisiana region. It was a difficult decision, but I am so happy with the outcome and can’t wait to get to Baton Rouge in June. So why did I join TFA? That’s kind of a complicated question, but I’m going to…
read more »“You’ll thank me someday.” My mom and dad would say those words to me every day while I was toiling away at some extra-curricular activity that I hated. Those moments in my home were filled with anger and hostility, heavy with the feeling of oppressive dictators, my parents, coming down on the little, innocent citizen,…
read more »Teaching is learning. Teaching is enriching. Teaching is challenging, it’s trying in unimaginable ways. Teaching is caring. Teaching is exhilarating, it’s exciting every day. Teaching is motivating, it’s inspiring. Teaching is frustrating, it’s frightening. Teaching is energizing. Teaching is draining. Teaching is collaborating. Teaching is growing. Teaching is dividing. Teaching is equalizing. Teaching is loving.…
read more »The last 84 days of my life are a blur. Once upon a time in early June, I arrived in my new home state, Louisiana, to embark on the most transformational journey of my young life. I spent the second week of June living at the beautiful Crowne Plaza hotel in Baton Rouge–a city I’ve…
read more »On Tuesday, as promised, I launched Teach Like a Champion Technique #22, Cold Calling, in my college class. And it was awesome! I didn’t do a very good job with my questioning technique, so things looked a little (well, a lot) sloppier than they do on the sample videos — but everyone was awake and…
read more »I am in love. With my birthday gift card, I bought a copy of Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion. I’m most of the way through, and I’m so excited. I love these techniques, and I love how explicit the book is about what to do and how to do it. I’ve been teaching college…
read more »Thursday was the due date for my (first? last?) round of hiring materials: shiny new TFA-templated resume, professional photograph, and the dreaded VIDEO. The good news: I’m not as truamatized by seeing myself on video as I expected to be. The bad news: It took over eight hours to produce, upload, and email these three…
read more »One that’s sort of reminiscent of pirates. Also one that I’d never heard before TFA started onboarding me (that just cannot be the correct usage, but you know what I mean), but that I’ve heard in multiple places since then. Vocab words are funny like that. I’m certain that when TFA talks about onboarding, they’re…
read more »This shouldn’t come as a surprise, I suppose, because math is also not really my thing. But I took physics in high school and liked it, and I took chemistry and AP bio in high school and really didn’t. So I’ve been trundling merrily through life thinking of myself as not really a bio person…
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