SO Crazy!

Hello everyone! It's been a little while since I have posted, but that's because my summer teaching Institute is CRAZY! For those of you just tuning into my life right now, last week I finished Teach For America's Induction in Los Angeles. Our week was a series of content sessions, talks, guest speakers, and programmed social events. An example schedule of a typical Induction day looked like this:

7:30-8:00 Breakfast
8:00-10:15 Content Session: What is the Achievement Gap in America?
10:15-10:30 Break
10:30-12:00 Content Session: Stewardship in the Movement
12:00-1:00 Lunch with your Content Session Group
1:00-4:15 Diversity Session: Culture and Cultural Schisms
4:15-4:30 Break
4:30-5:30 Corps Value Club #5: Integrity
5:30-6:30 Dinner with your Corps Value Club Members
6:30-7:30 Guest Speaker: Los Angeles Culture
7:30-10:00 Social: Lucky Strike Bowling

Doesn't it sound like every day was very planned? You have no idea. Induction was nothing compared to Institute. Let me back up a little. Some important things about Induction need to be addressed. First of all, the people. I have never in my life met so many accomplished, intelligent, genuinely nice, compassionate and well-rounded people. Everyone here (for the most part) seems to have their heart in the right place. Although there are definitely discussions and debates around every corner, people really want to get to the bottom of deep issues, particularly involving education, policy, and achievement. I get along with just about everyone I meet, and it's amazing to be somewhere going through something so specific with others. It would be like college if you were taking all the same classes with the same people all day and it was for a specific profession where many of you would be working together. "Tight knit" doesn't even come close to describing it.

Ok, now let's talk about Institute. Institute started this past Monday. This is what the schedule for Insitute looks like:

4:30-5:30 Go for a morning run (if you're me)
5:30-6:00 Get up, shower, run and eat breakfast if you have time (not if you're me)
6:00-6:30 Grab a "to-go" lunch (or two, if you're me and did not eat breakfast) and get on a bus
6:30-7:00 Bus ride to the school at which you will be teaching during the summer
7:00-7:15 Sign-in at your school and find the room you are supposed to be in
7:15-7:35 Corps Member Advisor Meeting: Discuss your learning objectives for the day
7:35-7:40 Transition time
7:45-9:15 Curriculum Session: Five-Step Lesson Planning
9:15-9:20 Transition time
9:20-10:50 Literacy Session: Literacy and the Achievement Gap
10:50-10:55 Transition time
11:00-12:30 Curriculum Session: Rules and Consequences in the Classroom
12:30-1:00 Lunch (but actually work with your collaborative group on lesson plans for the upcoming week)
1:00-2:30 Collaborative Group Session: Basic Planning Principles
2:30-2:35 Transition time
2:35-4:05 Curriculum Session: Classroom Management
4:05-4:20 Message from School Director
4:20-5:00 Bus ride back to school
5:00-5:30 Personal time
5:30-6:30 Dinner
7:00-9:00 Resource room time/random activity to encourage us to work together to plan lessons and collaborate

Micromanagement, anyone? It's a crazy schedule. But I am learning so much! I start teaching with the other three members of my "collab" or Collaborative Group next Monday. Basically what that means is that the four of us are teaching a summer school class by ourselves. Each of us "lead teach" for one hour a day. We're teaching Algebra 1 to a class of mainly eighth graders who are hoping to move along to the ninth grade. Many of them have already taken Algebra and failed, so we have our work cut out for us. We will have a faculty advisor who will sit in on every class we teach and observe us, but will not be allowed to speak during any classes. They'll help by providing us with reviews and feedback. I heard that sometimes the criticism gets pretty intense. Well, I should probably go and finish planning my lesson for Tuesday. My objective is to teach students to "combine like terms in an algebraic expression using the distributive property." Good times.