At 8:30pm I seriously considered crawling into bed and sleeping until 10am tomorrow. I found motivation to write this post after some free writing. So the purpose of this blog (maybe this should go in the About Me section, whatever) 1. Keep my family and friends updated 2. Reflect on my experiences 3. Share with…

First post! For those of you who don’t know me, I will try to work on an “About Me” section when I have time. For now, just know that I’m a 2012 Mississippi Delta Corps Member, placed to teach high school Spanish in south central Arkansas. It’s been a crazy few days. Induction started on…

Sitting in Delta State’s auditorium 1 day shy of the 1 year anniversary of me moving to the Delta, I had a lot of emotions. Current CMs got an email a few months ago about bringing community members to Induction and to the dinner after to speak with incoming CMs.  It would be a lie…

In just one week I will be sitting in the DSU auditorium among the energy and enthusiasm of the new 2012 Delta CMs!  I can not believe that was already a year ago and that I am half way through my corps commitment.  I am very excited to be volunteering at Induction for many reasons,…

School ended one week ago. In the past week I have done nothing but read for leisure, take day trips to Memphis, and lay by the pool.  I have had 1 week to not speak about teaching, my students and been able to consistently sleep past 5:45 am.  I don’t think that it has quite…

We were practicing softball inside. We were closing up, in the same circle we start and end practice with. One of my girls, Amanda* said, “I think my Aunt has cancer”. The gym was completely silent. I had this awful knot in my chest. I know it’s my job to say something like that when…

There is rarely a day that has gone by during this school year that hasn’t left me completely shocked by SOMETHING. Sometimes it is a student’s misbehavior. Sometimes it is something an administrator says or does. But, sometimes it just the greatness that is teaching. We took our summative assessment on Tuesday and Wednesday –…

Teaching in rural Mississippi has many challenges, and one of them is the Exposure Gap.  The town that I teach in is just over an hour from Memphis, 2+ from Jackson and Little Rock and over 6 from the coast.  Some may call the town that I work in even “big” when compared to some…

It seems crazy, my entire first year of teaching is almost over. My summative is on Tuesday and Wednesday. Since I teach foreign language, we did the speaking portion of the summative last week. One of my classes scored above 90%. The lowest was around 78%. So, we are on track to do pretty well!…

They did it!  100% of the students in my class WILL be heading to 1st grade   So overjoyed and humbled.  When my principal brought in the test scores, I was down with the 4th graders helping with MCT2 prep, and she stopped class and announced that they had all passed.  Rumors had been spreading for…