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!