when i first made my decision not to return to the classroom for year 2, i felt the need to defend myself; although i decided to leave for a variety of reasons, many of which sprang from the deep depression within which i found myself for most of last year, i was not doing so…
read more »During my TFA interview a thousand years – and by that I mean not even two years – ago, I knew that I would be asked about whether or not I could ever see myself leaving before my two years were over. My relentless perusal of Relentless Pursuit prepared me for this, and I was…
read more »there have been multiple occasions now on which i’ve assumed i’ve hit my lowest point. i’m finding i can always, always, go lower, as if my life is a neverending game of Sad Limbo. so far, my lowest point happened two nights ago. as i stared at my bleeding scalp and the mascara streaming down…
read more »my students were enraptured by the martin luther king, jr. read-aloud book i read to them today. a lot of them had learned about him before, whether in their first-grade class or in the reading center, and shared their understandings with the class whenever i prompted them with questions (and sometimes just when they wanted…
read more »[during arthur's christmas, a ridiculous read-aloud book for which i didn't even really try to assign a real objective other than imparting the idea that good readers read for fun] “ms. garnett? why are you crying?” “if i wanted to talk about that, i would.” the bizarre, and utterly exhausting, fact about this work is…
read more »the other day my roommate was answering interview questions for her college newspaper, which is doing an article on the tfa experience. “which aspect of your experience has most surprised you?” she turned to me and read out loud. we both sat there for a moment, considering what our answers would be. “hm. how your…
read more »first things first: i have posted my first project on donorschoose, so please take a moment to check it out if you’d like to play a part, no matter how small, in closing the achievement gap in my classroom! i would greatly appreciate ANY amount of support, and know that my students would too :)…
read more »welp, we had our first lockdown last month, so it was only a matter of time before we had our first [You Teach In An Urban School So You Cannot Possibly Escape A] Lice Crisis. i’m in a 4-day GLAD (guided language acquisition design) training, thank GOD; otherwise i would be panicking on the way…
read more »[i put some music on youtube while the kids work on publishing their first narrative pieces...one of the musical selections is michael jackson's thriller, because, why not] “G, what’s wrong? you look like you’re upset about something.” “i’m shy.” “you’re shy?! i’ve been to your house! we’ve talked a thousand times! why are you suddenly…
read more »D is sometimes like a walking shadow. her home life is the stuff of rocketship legend; the story has it that her father, brimming with machismo, once threatened to “call CPS” on the school, and on another occasion actually attempted to run over faculty members with his truck. to be perfectly honest, i had no…
read more »oh hey blog. i want so badly for my students to find and use their voices as writers this year, and yet — here is the bitter irony — i have been grasping fruitlessly for my own over the past couple of months. it’s hard to know where to begin; my feelings and experiences have…
read more »“i couldn’t do my homework because…because my brother had a pimple…on his neck…and it was big…and it hurt.” teacher look. D, that is not an excuse for not doing your homework.
read more »being in the classroom really does make me feel like i’m putting it all together — all of my experiences and beliefs and passions and skills and who even knows what else. teaching is exhausting because it’s ALL of you. every moment. if i let it slip for even a second, my students would slip…
read more »and it just dawned on me why it was PERFECT that i taught middle schoolers this summer even though i’ll be teaching second graders — some of which are the size of kindergartners — starting this fall. having seen how devastating the achievement gap can be when it’s wreaking havoc on 12-year-olds, i am that…
read more »on the monday of the last day of institute, i woke from my usual bus coma with a start. the people around me seemed to be really, really concerned about something, and it only took me about two seconds to figure out why. smoke. black. LOTS. the street was blocked off. there were at least…
read more »don’t get me wrong, i am not one of the all-stars by any means.
read more »today, this is all the data i could ever need
read more »point-blank, it’s easy to feel like a failure here. it’s frustrating to “own the results in your classroom” while wondering all day every day what happened in your students’ classrooms in the years leading up to this summer. it’s exhausting to create rough drafts for lessons that you know will likely need to be tweaked…
read more »i totally forgot to mention my highlight of the day from friday. during our last non-academic “academic intervention time,” i was leading the kids in some last culture-building activities to help them realize that they have a lot more in common with each other — and are a lot more unique from one another —…
read more »i staggered upstairs at the end of the day — note: yes, teaching in heels is a pretty bad idea — and walked towards my classroom feeling kind of…down. yesterday’s lesson seemed to go SO WELL, and today’s was…eh. (good thing all 3 rocketship principals observed today) anyway, something almost supernatural happened to me the…
read more »things you can do during institute: completely re-do most of your lessons by the time you actually teach them meet amazing, adorable, eager kids meet said kids’ parents and talk to them in somewhat broken spanish learn to kind of like being referred to as “miss!” make a fool of yourself for the sake of…
read more »longer post later. for now, this is institute, with authentic post-bus-nap hair:
read more »almost two years ago, i mailed my friend mica a letter. she was about halfway through her first semester of teaching as an ’08 bay area corps member, and i had a feeling she could use some encouragement. i also had a lot of questions. i don’t remember what exactly i asked her in that…
read more »i have a tiny break here at induction – whoop! here is the news of the hour:
read more »this thing is STARTING. not quite yet for the bay area corps, of course, but certainly for others, such as friends of mine (and many bloggers on this site) who are already knee-deep in their own inductions and institutes, answering their own 5:30 wake-up calls. (i’m sending tidal waves of encouragement y’all’s way. you can…
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