Teach for America Institute Weeks 1-4

For the past 4 weeks Chad and I have been in Philadelphia doing a very intense 5 week training program to teach us how to be teachers (we will be teachers in Washington D.C. for two years starting in the fall - see previous post). It has been the hardest thing by far that either of us has ever done. It has been very mentally, emotionally, and physically draining, especially the first part. We get up every morning by 5:30 a.m., quickly get ready to go, and then walk to the dining hall to get breakfast and make sack lunches. Then we get on the buses by 6:45 to go to our different schools. Chad is a high school Spanish teacher for the summer and I am a 4th grade teacher, so we go to different schools. We stay at our schools until 4:30 every day. At school, we each have a class that we teach with 1 or 2 other people. I have 2 other teachers in my group and the 3 of us rotate weekly teaching reading, writing, and math. Chad just teaches 1 hour of Spanish every day. Other than the hour or two when we are actually teaching our students, we are in back to back classes learning how to be teachers: manage classrooms, communicate with families, plan and execute lessons...We get home from school around 5:00 and go to the dining hall to eat dinner. Then we come back to the dorms and type up lesson plans, investment and classroom management plans, make copies, get supplies ready for the next day, finalize the next day's lesson plans... for the next 5 hours. We also sometimes have classes that we have to go to at night. We have absolutely no time to do anything other than teaching stuff all week long. We do have the weekends where we have a little bit of our own time, but we usually have to plan a lot on the weekend as well. It's been very tiring. The first 2 weeks we were getting about 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Teach for America has this program calculated very strategically to push you to your breaking point, but not quite over it (actually, a lot of people have quit, so I guess they didn't figure out everyone's breaking point). This is definitely not a sustainable life style, but we only have one week left so we can do it. As we have gotten better at learning how to plan lessons and manage our time we have been able to get to sleep earlier and things have gotten a little easier. This week has been a lot better and we have found time to work out and even relax (a little). It is still a lot of stress and pressure though to write and teach really good lessons. I think sometimes Teach for America forgets that as of today I have only taught in a classroom for 19 hours - that's about 4 days worth.

As hard as this is, we are both really enjoying teaching and we are learning a ton! My favorite part of the day is when I am teaching my students. There are 10 students in my 4th grade class. There are some behavioral problems, but for the most part they are pretty well behaved and classroom management has gone well. I love to teach them and see how excited they get when they learn how to do something. They all really want to learn. They are already progressing a lot. One of the big struggles I do have with them is building their confidence in themselves. The majority of them are in my class because they failed a subject in 4th grade and now they think they can't do it, but I know that they can if they work hard. They are all very bright. Sometimes it is frustrating and stressful when they are not understanding something and I can't figure out how to teach it differently so that they do understand and do well. If they are not understanding, it is my fault.

Here's some highlights from the first 4 week:

• They took a math test last week and then took the same one again this week and improved the class average by 20%.
  
• A girl in my class got a 0% on that same math test last week and 100% this week. Another student got a 25% and then a 75%
• One student wants so badly to learn and come to school that one morning she told me she almost couldn't make it because her mom wouldn't wake up, but then she kept splashing water on her face until she did wake up so her mom could take her to school. It's exciting to me to see her take so much initiative and have such a strong desire to do what she needs to do to get to school.
• The first week I taught reading and spelling and everyone in my class (except 1 student) got 100% on the spelling test. The girl that didn't get 100 doesn't know English well and hasn't learned to write at all. However, she did get 4 correct and even understood the difference between short and long a.
• My class has started to ask me to help them with math at lunch and before school and they have wanted me to read to them at lunch also. They are getting excited about what they are learning and really want to work hard.
• There is a student in my class who has hard a really hard time focusing and staying awake. It was a big struggle for the first 3 weeks, but this past week we came up with an individualized behavior plan for him and he is doing so much better and focusing almost all day long!
• My whole class got their "behavior clips" up to super superstar status yesterday and we did not have to give even 1 kid a warning.

Anyway, the past 4 weeks have been incredibly hard and stressful, but fun and rewarding as well. I hope that next week when we do all of the testing that my class is able to meet the goals we have set for each of them in reading, writing, and math.