TFA DAY!
Well, today is TFA day, meaning that our bosses "surprised us" (it was a rumor long before, and we were all pretty much expecting it) with the afternoon off. Whoohoo! So I will write a journal entry, get a massage (Free massages from 3-5 on TFA day, woot!) and then finish my lesson plan for tomorrow so I can hopefully go to bed at 9pm. ahhhh....bed. Such a wonderful yet foreign concept.
They have us basically work 14 hour (or more) days here if you include all the "homework." I wake up at 5am, get on the bus at 6, arrive at my school at 6:40, prepare the classroom and my lesson until 8:30 (sometimes with cafeteria duty) when all my cute little 8th graders come in and demand attention. Then I and my other collaborative members (fellow TFAers in charge of the classroom, rotating lessons) make announcements and break into "study groups" were we each work with about 3 students on math and lit skills for an hour. Then we each get a turn teaching, which depending upon the week and our assigned role, can be a lesson in math, writing, or reading and anywhere from 30 minutes to 80 minutes. This week I'm teaching math, so I have the 30 minute block which I always go over, bad me. Anyway, we teach until 1:00, and then we have meetings and professional development sessions until 4:30, when we go home and eat dinner before starting on making lesson plans or attending yet more meetings and professional developments. Usually my day ends around 11pm, although this week I've been up until at least midnight. I get about 4-5 hours of sleep and then start another long day. I be quite exhausted by the end of a five day week of that.
So this afternoon off thing is awesome. I'm going to sleep! yay! I am quite a grumpy teacher when I only get four hours of sleep, so I hope my kids appreciate the difference, although today's lesson went really well. They were graphing points on a coordinate plane that I mapped out on the floor. I assigned them an ordered pair and then had them go and be the point and show me how they got there by pacing out the x and then the y values. It was quite fun, and I'm pretty sure they all understood it at the end but I suppose that will wait until I grade their in class work. Ah grading. Much hated by me because it invariably shows that I was less successful than I would like to be.
Next week is *shudder* reading and writing objectives, which are SO Much harder to teach and lesson plan for then math objectives. They are vague, hard to assess, and much more complicated than any math assignment. Why wasn't I signed up to be a math teacher in the fall? I could do middle school math. Not Physics, but middle school math I think I could handle...
Anyway, for those not in the know, which I know and you know if you are in the know or not, so know now that you will now know what is in the know and we can be in the know together, I am teaching at John Marshall Community High School in Indianapolis. It is a year round school, so I will be starting on July 28th, which is actually a week after they start school, but since I'm not done with my training (in Indianapolis) until the 26th, they will have a sub for the first week. So basically the one week I was home before I went to Turkey was the only week of true break for me this summer. Ah well, since it is a year round school I'll get off sooner than my cohorts for a fall break. THEN I will have my vengeance!
When I haven't been working my ass off, I've been enjoying eating sushi, getting to know my fellow corps members, watching Joan of Arcadia, going to the Grand Canyon (for the 4th of July), going to the Phoenix Zoo (It was cool! The tiger roared at us!) and generally distressing. Did you know that you actually CAN fry an egg on the sidewalk here? It's neat.
Welp, that is all for now, and I prolly won't update again until the end of Institute. Hope you all are having an awesome summer!
They have us basically work 14 hour (or more) days here if you include all the "homework." I wake up at 5am, get on the bus at 6, arrive at my school at 6:40, prepare the classroom and my lesson until 8:30 (sometimes with cafeteria duty) when all my cute little 8th graders come in and demand attention. Then I and my other collaborative members (fellow TFAers in charge of the classroom, rotating lessons) make announcements and break into "study groups" were we each work with about 3 students on math and lit skills for an hour. Then we each get a turn teaching, which depending upon the week and our assigned role, can be a lesson in math, writing, or reading and anywhere from 30 minutes to 80 minutes. This week I'm teaching math, so I have the 30 minute block which I always go over, bad me. Anyway, we teach until 1:00, and then we have meetings and professional development sessions until 4:30, when we go home and eat dinner before starting on making lesson plans or attending yet more meetings and professional developments. Usually my day ends around 11pm, although this week I've been up until at least midnight. I get about 4-5 hours of sleep and then start another long day. I be quite exhausted by the end of a five day week of that.
So this afternoon off thing is awesome. I'm going to sleep! yay! I am quite a grumpy teacher when I only get four hours of sleep, so I hope my kids appreciate the difference, although today's lesson went really well. They were graphing points on a coordinate plane that I mapped out on the floor. I assigned them an ordered pair and then had them go and be the point and show me how they got there by pacing out the x and then the y values. It was quite fun, and I'm pretty sure they all understood it at the end but I suppose that will wait until I grade their in class work. Ah grading. Much hated by me because it invariably shows that I was less successful than I would like to be.
Next week is *shudder* reading and writing objectives, which are SO Much harder to teach and lesson plan for then math objectives. They are vague, hard to assess, and much more complicated than any math assignment. Why wasn't I signed up to be a math teacher in the fall? I could do middle school math. Not Physics, but middle school math I think I could handle...
Anyway, for those not in the know, which I know and you know if you are in the know or not, so know now that you will now know what is in the know and we can be in the know together, I am teaching at John Marshall Community High School in Indianapolis. It is a year round school, so I will be starting on July 28th, which is actually a week after they start school, but since I'm not done with my training (in Indianapolis) until the 26th, they will have a sub for the first week. So basically the one week I was home before I went to Turkey was the only week of true break for me this summer. Ah well, since it is a year round school I'll get off sooner than my cohorts for a fall break. THEN I will have my vengeance!
When I haven't been working my ass off, I've been enjoying eating sushi, getting to know my fellow corps members, watching Joan of Arcadia, going to the Grand Canyon (for the 4th of July), going to the Phoenix Zoo (It was cool! The tiger roared at us!) and generally distressing. Did you know that you actually CAN fry an egg on the sidewalk here? It's neat.
Welp, that is all for now, and I prolly won't update again until the end of Institute. Hope you all are having an awesome summer!