Thoughts on the eve of my last real day of teaching summer school

As the title of this entry suggests, tomorrow is the last real day of teaching I have left of training this summer.

Wednesday we are going on a field trip to the Prospect Park Zoo, which I am more excited about than my kids are. Then Thursday all we are doing is administering our end-of-summer assessments for math and reading, and, of course, having a pizza party. (Our rad class won the perfect-attendance pepperoni party! yeah what!)

In between debriefing with my adviser, making posters for tomorrow's math lesson, trying to sort out last-minute apartment details (who needs electricity, anyway?) and trying to stay un-sick, I've done a bit of reflecting of what I've learned the past several weeks.

I think my biggest take-away is, still, something a speaker said on the first day of training: You have to forgive yourself every night and recommit every morning.

After days like today, it's harder than it seems to forgive yourself. But after a month like the past one, I think it's even harder not to recommit.

A New NYC First!

I saw my first rat in the subway yesterday, waiting for the E train on 51st and Lex.

I can't wait to tell Rinaldy.

The sweaty, sleep-deprived, partially terrifying adventures of Miss Brite

I am very sorry that I promised I would post at least once a week, yet it has been two weeks since I have posted anything at all. But, as it turns out, TFA training is quite time-consuming. Who'd have thought?

My last two weeks have been spent waking up every morning between 4:30 and 5, taking a heat-stroke-inducing school bus from Queens on a very slow and agonizing drive along the BQE to southern Brooklyn to P.S. 001. That's when the day really starts.

The next 9.5-10 hours are the best of my day. That's when I get to eat breakfast and spend time in the classroom with Abel, Abiel, Gabriela, Anthony, Jonathan and Rinaldy, my six ESL 3rd and 4th graders. They are so far behind in math and reading, but they are also extremely astute and perceptive ... Like when I talked to Jonathan on the first week about how we have huge goals to accomplish by the end of the summer and he asks me for a detailed plan about how we're going to do all of these things at once. It's awesome, because they get it. They know they're behind and they know they have a lot of work to do to catch up. But that doesn't get them down. That only makes them want to work harder. Which makes me want to work harder.

So that's basically why I haven't posted like I promised. I've been up at 5, in bed at midnight, with no rest in between (except for the afternoon nap I attempt every day on the bumpy, sweat-soaked bus ride back to queens) just so I have a slight chance of not messing up those six incredible little people too badly the next day.

Work hard. Get smart.

I'm almost finished with my first week of TFA Institute. These past four days of waking up at 4 a.m. and going to bed between 12 and 1 have been insane. I've never worked so hard in my life. But at the same time, I don't know if I've ever had more fun.

Here are this week's highlights. Unfortunately, I don't have any picture yet.

Monday: My first 6 a.m. bus ride to the school in south Brooklyn where I'm teaching summer school 3rd and 4th grade ESL. My first impression? This place is incredible. From my classroom I have a clear view of the Statue of Liberty. With a little leaning, I can see the Manhattan skyline. I wish they were hiring for the school year.

Tuesday: The work is really starting to get tough. I took a seminar on administering reading assessments. It's not just theoretical knowledge. I have to administer them to my new students tomorrow. I took another seminar on backwards planning. Not theoretical either. I have to create a plan of all the summer's objectives now, so I can start lesson planning later this week. Thank god for my collaboration group, the three other new TFA teachers who I am working with this summer. I really lucked out getting them (Allison, Patrick and Chana) as teammates. I think we'll work really well together.

Wednesday: We learned how to write lesson plans today. I have to write two tonight for next Monday and Tuesday's writing lessons. I have no idea what I'm doing, but at least I don't have to teach math ... yet.

Thursday: Even though this week has seemed like two months, the work I am doing feels so rewarding already. I was in the resource lab in my dorm at St. John's, where TFA has provided thousands of books that we can check out and utilize in our classroom, and I came across so many of the books that I loved when I was in the third and fourth grades. A Wrinkle in Time. Matilda. Shiloh. Then I realized that there's no way, based on my students' reading diagnostics, that they would be able to get through even a chapter of one of those books. The most advanced of them (some of whom are entering the fifth grade in the fall) are reading at best on a third grade reading level. But most of them are barely on a first or second grade level.

We have so much work to do.