It's August

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8654106662991044564&hl=en -- click here to see the closing ceremonies video that I promised.

It's August 1st. I'll repeat that: it's August 1st. It hit me about an hour ago when I looked down at my watch and the top right-hand corner read "8-01." Since 4:58 p.m. on November 6th of last year (the moment I received notification of my acceptance to TFA), I have been counting down the months, weeks, and now days to when I step foot in my St. Louis classroom full of students who up to this point have not received the opportunities they deserve. Last winter, I remember wishing that I could just skip the upcoming 7-8 months and be transported to August 18th. I remember thinking that the start of the school year felt like it was so far away and that I had so much to learn and that it all just wasn't real. I wanted it to be real...fast. As I read my pre-Institute curriculum, as I visited classrooms, as I thought about my sister and all she has had to overcome, I became restless.


Then came Institute and my own students. I never thought I would become so attached. I never thought I would lose sleep worrying about the direction their lives would take. Every day I think about my Houston kids, and every day I feel a little guilty for just getting up and leaving them after only a month. It's a helpless feeling not knowing who their next teacher will be, not knowing if Matt has enough credits to graduate on time, not knowing if Rosendo is staying out of trouble, not knowing if Jose is keeping his confidence up in the face of doubters, not knowing if Yesenia is still sticking up for herself like a prize-fighter, not knowing if Gustavo plans on going back to school in the Fall. All these uncertainties and all these fears are what keep me so driven and so inspired for August 18th. This time, I will have 90+ kids who are counting on me to believe in them. This time, I will have them for nine months instead of four weeks. This time, I'm not leaving them. This time, I can't leave them.


About an hour ago, I finished my initial long-term plan for the school year. During closing ceremonies in Houston, I talked about how previous to this summer this whole thing was just an intangible vision -- something that I believed in strongly but felt like I was tackling from afar. Those days are over. I now have my Houston kids to think about, I have sketches of my St. Louis kids in my mind, I have drafted a Big Goal and a Long-Term Plan for the entire school year. I get to see my classroom in a week and my kids in 17 days. I have met so many people who share the same goals as me, so many people who want their kids to be successful, so many people who want to change St. Louis.


It's August. It's real.

17 days.

And that's a wrap!

Institute is over, and I've been home for three days already. Let me tell you -- it has been very, very nice to sleep in until 11:00 every day. A couple more weeks of this and I may catch up on sleep :).

Institute ended up really well. My kids -- the same group who scored an average of 18% on our diagnostic -- scored an average of 78% on the final exam. We absolutely demolished our summer achievement goal. I am so proud of my kids; it is mind-boggling what can be achieved with hard work. Their success made it that much harder to leave them last week. I gave them every conceivable way to contact me, so hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch with many of them. Their final homework assignment was two-fold. First, they are supposed to call me on their high school graduation day. Second, they are supposed to call me on their college graduation day. Nothing would make me happier than to receive lots of phone calls on these very important dates.

Closing Ceremonies were awesome. TFA is going to post the video on Google Video soon ... I'll post the link on here as soon as I get it. It was really cool how they did the ceremonies, but it's hard to explain until you actually see it.

I'll be home until Sunday, and then it's back to St. Louis. We have a TFA Welcome Dinner at the St. Louis Science Center on Monday evening, and then I'll be at a writing conference for three days. We begin TFA-STL orientation on July 28th, followed by a week of St. Louis Public Schools orientation, and then a week of teacher in-service days before school begins. One month away, and lots to do before then.

In other news: Peyton needs to get healthy...fast. McCain's campaign is stagnant. I still think Obama has vulnerabilities even though he is a transformational candidate. I like what the Pacers did in the draft. Indianapolis is hot, but not as hot as Houston or St. Louis. Brooklyn is talking a lot more. It's weird not to be getting ready for the cross country season. Maybe I'll wake up before 11:00 tomorrow.

Getting Into A Rhythm

[Student Quotes of the Week]
1. "Is this gonna be on TV?" (after I informed my students that class was going to be videotaped)
2. "How do you know that we are really the best class in Houston?"
3. Me: "What do we want to do with our last 15 minutes?"
Student: "Let's watch Japanese game shows!"
4. "You mean we're never gonna see you again?"
5. "Can I do this for homework too?"
6. Girl: "Boy - you're lucky I don't beat you up." (a girl in my class referring to a boy in my class)
Me: "Now you know we don't talk like that in class."
Girl: "He knows I'm just playin."
Boy: "No she ain't!"

Happy belated Fourth of July! I just got back into Houston about an hour ago after spending the weekend in New Orleans. Matt Amantea (a college track teammate) and I went to visit another track teammate who is living in New Orleans for the summer. I have never been to the French Quarter and other New Orleans landmarks before, so this weekend was a lot of fun. Much of the city is still trying to make its way back, but the French Quarter/Bourbon Street are very vibrant.

Last week was the best week so far at Institute. My students were awesome. They really hit their stride last week, and we accomplished great things. The story that sticks out in my mind is easily the one thing that I will take away from Institute forever. On Tuesday, we were practicing "writing with voice." During the middle of class, I set aside 20 minutes for the kids to just sit down and write about anything they wished as long as they showed me something about who they are (we had been talking about how "voice equals personality" for the previous two days). After the 20 minutes were over, I asked if a volunteer wanted to read what they wrote to the class. A girl in my class raised her hand, proudly stood up, and began reading. Without getting into details, her story was an extremely well written and very personal narrative about something that had affected her life in a serious way. Knowing my kids well and knowing how sophomore boys are in high school (I once was one), I prayed while she was reading that nobody would make fun of her. When she finished, however, two students began clapping. A couple seconds later, the entire class gave her a standing ovation. I have never felt more proud of a group of people in my entire life. This entire episode -- from great writing, to the courage to read aloud something so personal to the class, to the standing ovation -- was student-driven and nothing was solicited by me. I had to wipe a couple tears from my eye before we were able to move on with class. I was so proud.

Last week I also found out that I have been selected to speak at Closing Ceremonies (which are on Thursday evening). I will be talking about my experiences at Institute, as well as the amazing things that my kids have accomplished. I am so honored and humbled to be chosen to speak, and it will be a great opportunity to tell close to 1,000 people how my students have profoundly impacted me this summer. It will definitely be nerve wracking, but I am excited for the opportunity.

Our last day of class is on Thursday, and I will be able to leave for home on Friday night. So, most likely the next time you will hear from me I will either be in St. Louis or Indy. Unless, however, I feel compelled to sneak in a blog entry before then! Thanks for reading, and please feel free to contact me!!

In the trenches...

[Student Quotes of the Week]
1. Student: "Why do we always learn more in the summer than in the regular school year?"
Me: "I don't know - what do you think?"
Student: "I think it's because we have Teach For America teachers in the summer who make us work hard."
2. "Mister, we learned good today."
3. "Mister, is this really my grade??" (Grinning) "I've never got an 80 in a class before."
4. "I hate cheesebugers because of the cheese, but I LOVE double cheeseburgers."
Another Student: "That doesn't make any sense at all."
5. "Can you put colors in your beard if we get our goals on the final exam?" (I am growing out my beard until we reach our class goal on the final exam)
6. "That was your boss? I hope we don't get you fired!"

Another week down. We covered a lot of material this week, and the kids hung in there pretty well. I am seeing a lot of growth out of everyone - so much so out of a couple of them that I'm going to have to start challenging 3 or 4 students more because they keep acing my assignments. There is still such a wide range of levels in my class that it is challenging to meet the needs of every student, but this is something that will be a challenge for as long as I teach. I am continually trying new things in class that will help me meet the needs of each kid. I truly believe that a couple of my students are ready for college, and I need to start pushing them to think about different schools, applications, campus visits, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, I need to keep pushing my students who struggle with English in order to get their confidence up. I think the #1 thing holding back a couple students is that they just don't have any confidence in their English abilities which affects their ability to get as much out of class as possible.

My school director observed my classroom on Wednesday. I didn't know beforehand that he was coming, but he walked in during the first couple minutes when I was performing a mock "closing argument" from a made-up murder case in order to introduce our topic for the day (using evidence from text to back up an argument). For the first 25 minutes, class went really well, the kids were getting the material, and I was on top of my game. 25:41 into class, two of my kids walked in late. As they walked in, they were talking to each other and were generally disruptive. I decided I would sternly tell them that they were too late to be counted tardy, that they would be counted absent for the day, that they were taking learning time away from others in the class, and that they needed to quickly sit down in the first row. They continued to be mildly disruptive for the next five minutes -- each time, I would give them a "teacher look" or use proximity to get them back on task. I thought to myself that all days to have a minor problem in my class that has run so smoothly up to this point, this was not the day.

After class I saw my school director and was nervous to hear what he had to say. He told me that the way I handled the situation was exactly how he would have, and that he was really impressed with the personal relationships I had built with my students. He said that he has observed the two kids who walked in late in other classes and that they do much more work in my class than in the others. He said that telling a kid to leave your class should always be the last resort. So, that made me feel better about things (although it is absolutely unnacceptable to walk into my class 25 minutes late...I just won't tolerate it).

We have turned in the majority of our lesson plans already, there are only four school days next week, and only three school days the week after that before final exams. So there aren't a lot more days to push my kids even further forward, but we're going to work like crazy to get them ready for their final. I passed out midterm grades on Friday - 2 A's, 5 B's, and 4 C's. Everyone is passing right now, but I challenged the kids to raise their grades even higher during the next two weeks. It's going to be hard to just get up and leave them on July 10. I pray that I'll be able to stay in contact and follow their progress while I am teaching in St. Louis. All of them deserve nothing but the best.

Teaching

[Student Quotes of the Week]
-"Mr. Brown, since you're from St. Louis, do you know Nelly?"
-"Oh, so you're from the hood??" (after I answer that I live a few blocks from where Nelly grew up)
-"An example of a conflict is between a husband and a wife. Husbands just wanna pay the bills, and wives wanna waste money on shoes and things."
-"Oh, so it's like buying a car?" (after I answered a question on whether it costs a lot of money to adopt a girl from China)
-"St. Louis - that's in Texas, right?"
-"Class was actually kinda fun today."
-"My favorite sport is texting with my boyfriend."
-"Mister, you wanna go clubbin with us this weekend?"

My first full week of teaching is in the books. Easily the best part of this week was getting to know my kids. Spending 80 minutes a day with Fernando, Jose F, Sandi, Gustavo, Yesenia, Jose H, Ana, Rosendo, Matthew, Christopher, and Monica is what I look forward to the most when I wake up every morning. It's all just an idealistic vision until you step foot into your own classroom. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I graded the diagnostic that I gave my kids on the first day of class. Our class average was 18%. Half of the class didn't even attempt to complete the writing section, and several kids had trouble writing in complete sentences. I knew the stats of the achievement gap before, but statistics are just statistics until you have your own kids with their own names and their own stories. I love going to class every day, and I love seeing the effort that my kids put forth. They are bright, and they CAN learn. The week was capped off quite nicely yesterday when our class average on our "conflict in literature" assignment was a 97.

As for Institute in general, last week was a challenging week for everybody. A fair amount of people have decided that the workload is just too much and have quit. A lot of people are under a great deal of stress, which leads to a lot of emotions running high. Last Wednesday night was the toughest night so far at Insitute, as three lesson plans were due the next morning and a lot of people didn't sleep at all. But, I think I have handled everything pretty well. I am trying to use my weekends to get a little ahead so there isn't as much work during the week. The latest I got to bed last week was 1:30 (I probably averaged about midnight), and I actually got to sleep at 9:30 on Thursday night!! The 5:25 wakeup calls aren't too awfully bad after you get used to them, and my 30+ ounces of coffee usually help keep me awake throughout the day.

The most challenging part of the daily routine is how often we have to "switch modes." We will go straight from a session learning different aspects of teaching, straight into actual teaching, straight back into another session. It is very, very difficult to change your mindset from student, to teacher, and back to student again. But this is what has to happen in order for us to maximize our five week experience here. Being able to remain positive has been the biggest help for me so far, and I have found that I love helping other people on their lesson plans and teaching strategies when they ask for it.

Last week my class learned about similes, metaphors, personification, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, analogies, main ideas, and the different types of conflict. This week we will be focusing on summary, supporting detail, using evidence to defend an argument, thesis statements, and organization in writing. As you can see, we are scaffolding our way up to more complex concepts. The next week, we will embark on a week where we set out ample time to practice our writing skills. During the last week, we will tie up some loose ends and review for the end of the summer final exam. Next weekend I hope to have an SAT prep session at a local McDonald's near Davis High School if I can get enough student interest.

But until all that can happen, I need to finalize Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday's lesson plans and begin working on Thursday and Friday. Please leave a comment if you would like, and I'll try to respond when I get the time. Until next time, Adios from Houston!

One Week Down, Four to Go

Well, the first week of Teacher Boot Camp is over, and I'm still alive. A typical day has been like this:

5:25 ... wake up
6:00 ... breakfast
6:45 ... depart for Davis High School
7:00 - 4:00 ... Sessions, sessions, sessions, sessions, and sessions on learning how to teach
4:30-6:00 ... take a nap or start on some work
6:00-6:30 ... dinner
6:30-11:30 pm/1:00 am ... sessions and/or work

As you can see, they keep us pretty busy here :). But I can honestly say that I am 100% positive I have learned more this week than any week prior. I would even venture to say that I haven't learned more in a month than I did last week. As the week went on, people became more and more sleep deprived, and coffee became more and more of a hot comodity. But it was definitely worth it because the amount of information I was able to take in last week was absolutely enormous. My Corps Member Advisor (CMA), Genya, has been hugely helpful and extremely encouraging this week. We pretty much see our CMA all day every day, so it's nice to have one who really cares about the well-being of her advisees. Our Curriculum Specialist (CS) at Davis High School, Arriana, is one of the best teachers I have ever been around. She is a Wash U grad, so it's nice to be able to talk about the best college in the world with her every day. Our School Director (SD), Shannon, is an awesome guy as well - he is a former Division I national champion sprinter. Shannon is one of the most captivating speakers I have ever seen, and I am sure he is an unbelievable AP US History teacher.

Monday is my first day in the classroom, and I can't wait. I got my class roster last Thursday -- 13 students, who are mostly re-taking Sophomore English so they can move onto the next grade. I actually got to observe my actual class of students last week, and they left me with a really good impression. Davis High School is almost fully composed of Hispanic students - and my entire class is Hispanic - so I'm excited to learn about their stories and heritage as well as share my story a little bit with them. Monday's lesson plan is centered around Brooklyn and why she inpsired me to teach. I will then transition into my definition of success (actually, Coach Stiles' definition of success) that will be the cornerstone of our classroom for the next four weeks and the cornerstone of my permanent classroom beginning in the Fall. I'm giving a diagnostic test on Monday as well in order to get a baseline of my students' knowledge and to set growth-oriented achievement goals for the summer. (And, oh yeah, I'm not shaving until we reach those goals as a class.)

One last thing before I wait in line for an hour to make copies. Several of us went to a Methodist Church that was close by this morning for services. I have never felt more welcome at a new place in my life. I have always wanted to go to a mostly African American church service, and the experience didn't disappoint. The music was great, they gave us all goody-bags full of stuff, and the sermon was tremendous. The pastor gave a Father's Day sermon challenging fathers to become more invested in the lives of their families. She gave some unbelievable statistics about how much better life prospects are for children who come from a two-parent home. Her refrain was: "We need more courageous men." She closed by saying that we need more full-service fathers instead of the millions of reservist fathers that we have out there -- we need "a few good men" she pleaded. I thought it was refreshing to hear that. I also thought to myself that I'm pretty lucky to have a good man as my father. I wish every kid in my classroom on Monday had the same.

Houston

Well, I'm writing to you from my dorm room at the University of Houston. I arrived yesterday afternoon, and today was the first official day of Institute. The day began with a 5:25 alarm, and it's been full of actitivities ever since. I am excited for tomorrow, as it is the first day we go to our school site where we will be teaching for the summer. I'll be teaching English at Davis High School with 3 other corps members - I can't wait to actually get in the classroom!

Last week's Induction in St. Louis was a lot of fun. They wined and dined us the entire week, and they tried their best to prepare us for Houston. Tonight's activities include dinner (after I finish typing this) and the opening ceremony where I think Wendy Kopp (TFA founder, one of TIME Magazine's 50 most influential people) will speak. Tomorrow will begin with another 5:30 wake-up call, and I'll spend the day at Davis High observing classes, attending sessions, and meeting with my collaborative teaching group.

I'll try to update the blog with more specifics once I begin actually teaching in the classroom. We have about 1.5 hours right after we get back from school that serves as our free time (which really is just dinner time), so I'll try to write some blog entries then.

1 day down, and a whole lot more to go.