The Journey Begins...

I've officially begun TFA's boot camp in Atlanta, GA this week. We'll be here for 5 weeks teaching summer school and learning intensively about lesson planning, classroom management, and setting big goals (to name some of their favorite catchphrases). During this first week of 9+ hour school days, we'll write lesson plans for next week and learn about the Atlanta standards assessments. Then, next Monday the real work begins with our classes full of students, all of whom either failed their class or the standards test. We apparently have 16 instructional days to bring them up to grade level literacy and/or math proficiency (I thought we had 4 weeks! =-O Upon arrival, we received an 850p. reader to add to the other 750p. of pre-institute work we already had, which seems like a lot now, though we somehow managed to get to page 60 just today. And it's kind of mind-blowing to think of 7AM as sleeping in, but I guess the 5AM mornings will get me ready for school in the fall. All that said, things are going pretty well right now, and we had hardly any take-home work today, which is a relief, considering the 2 hour additional session tonight on the literacy assessment. But hey, we went to Wal-Mart yesterday and I scored fantastic amounts of questionably healthy foods, such as $5 24 packs of soda and $3 tubs of goldfish, and an actual pillow to replace the one left on my floor in Memphis. Aside from that, the other people are awesome (we have 800+ at the Atlanta Institute incl. some from Hawaii, from some reason) and the weather is warm. I don't really mind the "dungeon" of a basement we work in at MLK, Jr. Middle School. The work all feels very purposeful.

Hopefully this first step will lead to big success for my students and I'll be pumped to make it happen in Memphis.

Quotes of the day:

Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better (ha!)

Émile Coué

French Psychotherapist

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Lao Tzu

Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Taoism