Institute and Job Update!

Four weeks down, only one week to go. All of us have seriously been counting down the days until we get to go back to our own regions and get settled.

Last time I wrote in here, I had told all of you about the mix up with our curriculum and what we are supposed to be teaching. Well, that confusion and curriculum change now happens on a daily basis. Each day, my collaborative is told that we need to teach this, teach that, test on this, test on that, turn this in, turn that in. It gets really frustrating when things change last minute and our students get really frustrated too. The school district took away our Math Power Hour- an hour where the students are placed in ability differentiated groups- and our kids were extremely disappointed.

In addition to everything that is going on at our school, our evenings are filled with training sessions, lesson planning, creating assessments and action plans. This is really hard work. Much harder than I had ever anticipated it to be. I feel like once this is over I will have the sense of empowerment that I stuck through it and I am capable of everything that the next two years are going to throw at me.

We rotate subjects in our third grade classroom every week. The first week I taught reading, the second and third weeks I taught math, the fourth week I will be teaching writing. I think my favorite subject that I have taught so far is math. It is so exciting to have a student finally understanding something, especially after lesson planning that activity for 4 hours! Third graders are so incredibly wonderful.

I never fully understood the expression "kids say the darndest things" until I spent four weeks teaching third graders:). Here are just a few quotes they have said over the past few weeks:

- "I think freedom means that black and white people can be friends."

- "I want to be like Chris Brown when I grow up. But I won't beat nobody."

- "I am going to go to college."

- "Is Oregon in Russia?"

Oh! And the most exciting news... I HAVE A JOB! :) I got a phone call from my placement coordinator on July 8th and she arranged a phone interview. I had my phone interview that same evening and found out that I got the job that same evening as well! It is such a relief to be hired and employed! The school is Confluence Old North. It is a charter school in St. Louis and it is run by EdisonLearning. EdisonLearning has schools all over the world. The principal who interviewed me was looking for someone who was endorsed in science and social studies, which I am. The school is about 7 minutes from my house in St. Louis.

I was talking to another TFA corps member about what to expect and he told me to expect the best and the worse. The best case is that some of the kids who are there are there to get a great education and they want to be there. The worst case is that some of the kids who are there were kicked out of St. Louis Public Schools for a number of reasons and they were placed at Confluence Old North. Regardless, the principal told me that at long as I go in there were strict classroom rules, the majority of my problems will be small. I start inservice days on August 2nd. The first week I am there is for new hires only, then the returning teachers come back on the second week. The first day for students is August 16th.

I feel like now that I have a classroom, I can really start planning my room, year, behavior and investment plans. It is so exciting that all of this is finally happening! I am so ready for the challenge and I know that I am going to come out of this a strong and amazing teacher, but the process is going to take some time. I feel so optimistic about the years to come:).

I'm off to bed! I will try and update this blog more often, but until then... Thanks for reading:).

Always,

Allie

Week Two of Chicago Institute

This week was rough, challenging and so rewarding all at the same time. On Monday, we started teaching in our classrooms for half of the day and sitting in educational sessions for the other half. I work with a collaborative group of three other people to teach four different subjects for 45 minutes each day. We met our faculty advisor (a veteran teacher who supervises us in the classroom) and she said that we have a few students in our class that will give us constant trouble because of his behavioral problems. My group and I decided that we would walk into the classroom with a new set of eyes and treat each student as if it were the first day of the rest of their lives.

Each week, our objectives are written for us by an Institute Curriculum Specialist. We are given the objectives and we need to design a lesson plan that will allow students to master that objective. Well, Monday did not go so well. I felt as though they were not fully understanding the concept of inferences, which was my objective for the day. Tuesday did not go as planned and my reading lesson got pushed back to the last thirty minutes of the day. On Wednesday, I went in fully prepared and motivated with all of the materials to help my students master the concept of inferences and character traits. Well, my four hours of lesson planning paid off! My students were on fire! They were understanding the content, engaging in the material, and they all did amazingly well on their end-of-lesson assessments! It was so rewarding to finally succeed in teaching someone something!

Thursday was a completely different story... Ten minutes before my lesson was scheduled to begin, my faculty advisor pulled me out into the hall to meet with the schools curriculum specialist. I was told that I needed to change my lesson for that day in order to teach to a script so my students could pass the assessment to be given at the end of that same day. I was so caught off guard, all I did was smile and nod. Thankfully, my entire collaborative group was willing to change our schedule so I ended up having an hour to prepare. As I quickly learned, an hour is not nearly enough to understand phonetic sounds and plan how to teach phonetic sounds. To top everything off, we also found out that the school was being audited that day and auditors would be sitting in on our lesson to make sure that we are following the National Geographic text that the school is supposed to use. There must have been some major miscommunication between Chicago Public Schools and Teach For America, and unfortunately, I was caught in the middle of it.

This weeks success story:

This boy, I will call him Tyrone, is seriously the highlight of my day. He went from being semi-disruptive in class to being the first to raise his hand, turning in his homework on time, and asking for more challenging work in class. I honestly think he has made this transition in just four days because we made sure to start off with a clean slate. Now, don't get me wrong, he has moved down a few stair steps on our behavior chart, but he is more than willing to do whatever he needs to do to get back up to an A+ with the rest of the class. Working with kids like Tyrone make it so much easier to get out of bed in the morning, because I am waking up with a purpose. I might not be changing the world, but for that day, I am changing a life.

I have a lot of work to do this weekend, but I am heading to my roommates parents house for a Fourth of July barbeque. It will be nice to get out of the residence halls for a few days and relax. Our students don't have school on Monday, but we still have sessions planned all day... but the good news is...

We are 2/5 of the way done with Institute!

Bottom Line: I am still surviving, learning how to live without sleep, working the hardest I've ever worked in my entire life, learning valuable lessons and loving almost every minute of it!

Good night:)

Week One of Chicago Institute

So this week has been absolutely insanely crazy busy! I checked in to my dorm room on Sunday evening and made a run to Target to expand my "professional" wardrobe. I spent way too much money, but I can wear the clothes all throughout my teaching career, so that is how I justify it:).

I woke up on Monday morning at 5:30, because our bus leaves from our school at 6:55am and we need to eat breakfast and pack up our lunch. It is actually really nice that I don't need to worry about grocery shopping for the next month.

My schedule every day this week has been as follows:

5:30am Wake up, pack lunch, eat breakfast, walk to bus

6:55am On bus

7:30am Arrive at school

7:30am-4:30pm Sit in sessions discussing the Achievement gap, lesson planning, diversity awareness, and classroom management. Working lunch between 11:30am and 12pm.

4:30pm On bus

5:05pm Back to campus, grab dinner and change

6:00pm Evening sessions begin

9:00pm Evening sessions are over, shower and start lesson planning

11:00pm Bed time

It was really hard to adjust to this new schedule, but I am sure that as the summer goes on, it will become a little easier.

We met the kids we are going to be teaching this summer! We had to administer the DRA (Diagnostic Reading Assessment) and it was so difficult to see some students doing so well and other 3rd graders reading as a pre-pre-kindergarten level. It just makes it even more clear to me that I am here for a reason.

A few complaints...

-The air conditioning in our room doesn't work, so it is about 85 degrees in here all the time. It is so humid and some other rooms have started to grow mold. I have submitted quite a few maintenance requests, but nothing has been fixed yet. It isn't exciting to put on damp clothes every morning.

-The schools that we are in all day have no air conditioning. It is hard enough to stay awake just being tired, but being hot makes it almost impossible.

-We have so much work! Our work load is the equivalent to what an education major studies in a full year of school, except we complete ours in 4 weeks!

The good news is...we have Saturday and Sunday completely off! Well, actually only Saturday, because we have a ton of work to do on Sunday before we start teaching our classes on Monday morning.

I went out last night with a few people from my school site and got to experience the real Chicago. We got on the "L" at the baseball stadium and the Sox and the Cubs game just finished. It was crazy to see so many die-hard fans. We went to this bar called McGee's and for $20, we got unlimited drinks and unlimited food! I definitely got my money worth on the drink portion:). It was a lot of fun, but I ended up coming back to the dorm at 11pm because I was so tired!

BOTTOM LINE: I am hanging in there and I look forward to my weekends every Monday through Friday morning:)

I miss everyone from back home so much!

Always,

Allie

Oh and PS: I didn't get the job, but after talking with some fellow TFA members, I realized that it wasn't the right fit:). So I am excited to continue interviewing and securing a job! I will definitely keep you posted:).

Interview!!!

I have an interview at Hazelwood North Middle School tomorrow! I am so incredibly excited because the school seems like such a great environment and the kids have access to so many great resources! There is one other science teacher and three communication arts teachers also interviewing at the same school tomorrow. The rumor is that the school has quite a few positions available. I spent the evening preparing for my interview and trying to predict which type of questions they are going to ask.

Tomorrow is our last full day of induction and we will end with a few hours of sessions on Friday morning, then off to Chicago!

I will let all of you know how my interview goes! Keep your fingers crossed:)

Always,

Allie

Induction

Greetings from St. Louis!

Sorry in advance for this crazy long post:).

I went to sleep at 1am early Sunday morning and had to wake up for the airport at 3:45am. I spent about six hours on the plane and had issues with my carry-on luggage being "too large." I finally arrived in St. Louis at 1:45pm on Sunday afternoon only to be greeted by 85 degree weather. I can handle 85 degrees, but I can't handle the 85% humidity:). I am slowly adjusting to sweating and being ridiculously hot all the time!

I took the shuttle to the hotel where I met Candy and picked up my car:). For those of you who don't know, Candy drove my car from Portland, OR to St. Louis, MO. After picking up my car, I drove straight to my new house! It is so much more beautiful that it was in the pictures and my roommate is so very nice! I have yet to meet the second roommate, but she is moving in tomorrow! I think it is going to be so much fun!

I woke up this morning at 6:30am, got dressed and walked to go eat breakfast. We are staying at Washington University and the campus is huge! Our dorm room is also huge, so that is great news! After breakfast we went to registration and turned in important paperwork, then to introduction. The staff is continually reassuring us that we are here for a reason and that reason is to close to achievement gap in St. Louis. It feels so good to finally be a part of something that I am so excited about!

After introduction, we attended a few sessions about Teach for America and how it operates then we went to lunch. After lunch we attended a Diversity and Inclusiveness workshop and got a feel for what our classrooms will look like in St. Louis. I really had to motivate myself to attend the event in downtown St. Louis tonight. I was so incredibly exhausted from only sleeping about 8 hours over the past few days, but I mustered up the energy to go!

We had dinner at a bar in St. Louis and received one free drink. Then we toured an apartment complex, which definitely reassured me that I LOVE my new place! We then walked a few blocks to another roof top terrace bar. The city of St. Louis is so beautiful but I think it is only like this a few months out of the year!

I got back to the dorm room at about 9:25 then had some reflection questions to complete. I thought we were going to get a little bit of a break, but it really seems like induction is a lot of work!

In regards to my placement... I have not had any interviews. Quite a few people have already been interviewed and placed in their schools. I have been told by everyone that I will get a placement and if I don't, TFA will supplement my income until I get a job:).

I am off to bed right now, because I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow:)

Love you all, goodnight:)

Graduation Party

My graduation party was yesterday and thank goodness for good weather! A few of my friends from Western drove up, but for the most part it was just family and friends of the family. It was so much fun getting to visit with everyone because for some people, it has been quite a long time since I have seen them! So many people came from so far away! My cousin Courtney drove down from Seattle, my uncle Gary and his girlfriend Jan drove over from Idaho, and some family friends drove over two hours to celebrate the day with me! It really does mean so much to me that everyone is so supportive and truly happy for me. It has been a long and difficult road to get to where I am right now, and I could not be more thankful to those who have helped me along the way!

The food was fantastic, the cakes were amazing, and the gifts were extremely generous! I honestly could not have asked for a better party:).

Well... now that the party is over, I really need to focus on PACKING!! A family friend is leaving to drive my car back on Wednesday, so I need to have everything packed up on Tuesday and I haven't even started. I have my very last final on Tuesday, so these next few days are going to be extremely stressful! My amazing mom is helping me do my laundry and I am headed over to my grandmas to clear my things out of her garage. I think that after Wednesday, I will be feeling a little less stressed, because all I will have to worry about is physically getting to St. Louis:). Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes as planned! :)

Oh, and my birthday is in 3 days! I will be turning the big 2-3!

Official Countdown to St. Louis: 7 days!!!

Always,

Allie

Teach for America Placement

I had a conference call this evening with the Teach for America field placement staff in St. Louis. She said I could expect emails and phone calls for available positions any day now, especially because I passed my Praxis:). They place the majority of their corp members within the city of St. Louis, so I hope that I am placed decently close to my house.

Everyone in Teach for America has been so nice and accommodating. I have had several corp members (past and present) reach out to me to answer my questions, tell me about St. Louis, ease my concerns about the transition, and give me information on institution. I have never been a part of a sorority or anything like that, but I have been paired with a current corp member and it sounds like she will be my "big sister." She will drive me to interviews, show me the city and answer any questions I have.

As the days get closer and closer, I feel more and more confident with my decision. I am so excited and mentally ready to become a teacher.

Quote of the day: "Goals are simply dreams that become reality through dedication and perseverance."

Countdown: 17 days!!!

Praxis

So I went out for drinks with a friend last night and we were really stressing about finding out if we had passed the Praxis exam or not because we were both in the same situation that if we didn't pass, we would need to reorganize our lives for the next year.

I could barely get to sleep last night and once I did, I just tossed and turned. The Praxis scores are posted at 7am Eastern time, so of course I had to wake up at 4am Oregon time to find out. I was thinking it would be a bad idea to start the day off with seeing my scores, because it would be a horrible day if I didn't pass.

Today is going to be a fantastic day! I passed!!! I needed a 149 and I received a 157!!! I am really thinking that those 250 flash cards must have done the trick! I am so excited that I don't have to take it on graduation morning! That was the last hurdle that I had to face before I start teaching in St. Louis and I am so thankful it is now behind me!

Now instead of stressing about the Praxis, I can really focus my efforts on my pre-institution work which involves a ton of reading and start preparing for my big move:).

I hope all is well with you and yours:)

-Allie

Update: Testing and Moving

I have been running out like crazy trying to get everything set up for my Birthday/Graduation/Going Away Party! It is stressful to help my parents make the yard nice, pack for St. Louis, and finish up my last two classes as an undergraduate!

I have also been on edge because tomorrow I found out if I passed my Middle School Science Praxis. The Praxis is the test which qualifies me to teach in St. Louis. If I do not pass it, which I hope is not the case, I have one more chance! That last chance just happens to be on graduation day! Great timing, right? I am really hoping that I passed! Keep your fingers crossed for me! I need to get at least a score of 149 to pass!

As of right now, I am just really looking forward to starting my new life in St. Louis! I am going to miss my friends and family so much, but I find comfort in knowing that this is what I am supposed to be doing with my life.

I have already found a great living situation back in St. Louis! I will be living with another Teach for America member and her friend from college who will be a Med student at a school in St. Louis! The three of us will be living in the most beautiful home I have ever seen! I am so excited to meet them and form new friendships!

I am getting really nervous, because I still have a ton of loose ends to tie up in Oregon before I move. My car is being fixed and I need to order transcripts, complete my required reading for Teach for America, as well as find the time to say goodbye to everyone! I am fully prepared to cry like a baby on graduation day!

Off to do my homework! Only 19 days until graduation and 20 days until I hop on the plane to STL!:)

Always,

Allie