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I went to Disneyland.

It was friggin' magical, but for a total cost of nearly $200 bucks they'd better be shoving pixie dust so far up my ass I can taste it.  

It's a lot smaller than you might remember.  Things are really close together and it's substantially less impressive through the eyes of a 22 year old.  The rides were fine, the lines were short, the weather was nice.  All in all it was a fair enough time.

Back to reality.

Teaching, teaching, teaching.  Apparently it's all I talk about nowadays.  Lessons have been up and down.  The lesson part I seem to do well with, but the teaching tends to be a bit more shaky.  The kids are their usually selves, stubborn, tired and moody.  I find myself trying to be a better teacher, but glossing over the kids in the process.  

Today was my last day teaching new material.  I remember three weeks ago when everything was so new and scary.  Now everything is routine and scary.  I've gotten past the point of blaming the program for using the students as guinea pigs.  At this point I just want to be home or somewhere where I feel like I'm supposed to be.  

I'm really going to miss (most) of the people here.  When you spend five weeks with the same group of people, you inevitably get attached.  In most cases, the people here are people I genuinely consider friends and will find it difficult waking up at 5 am without them.  

It's been a long, strange journey here in the final days of institute.  LA has not been a kind mistress to me and I can honestly say I won't miss it.  I feel so disconnected from the world and what used to be my life that I'm ready to establish a new me.  There still are a few more days, but I think I can handle myself until then.

Oh!  and there was an mf-ing earthquake today at around 11:40.  I had never been in one before.  Everything just started to slide around and it seemed like all the molecules of the building had turned gelatinous.  Chalk that one up to experience.

Little victories, smaller students

So here I am -- with only two weeks of Institute left. It's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago I was in my cushy downtown Austin apartment ruing the construction and humidity.

I've been teaching for two weeks now. It is exhausting. The teaching itself isn't difficult, but it does cause quite a bit of anxiety. It's like getting up on stage in front of 15 little screamers, ready to scrutinize your every move. Like I said, it's not difficult. You lay down the rules, you discipline the kids that are messing around and reward those that do well. At times, the whole education part gets a little fuzzy amidst all the behaviors that need to be kept in check.

I have a few favorites, and those who know who they are know who they are. Yeah, they're suck ups. Asking for more work or telling me a story about something they saw on the Discovery channel. I never thought I would be the guy who was moved by little 8 year olds, but -gosh darn it- they're just so cute!

There are the ones that cause hell. The ones that don't want the be there. The ones who don't need to be there (all of them, technically). The ones that just want to be loud, obnoxious 3rd graders, and they should be allowed to be! But TFA is about data, results, changing the world. The only way you can change the world is to have data proving you did. Otherwise you're a failure.

It would be easy to detail the multitude of frustrations I've faced both in the classroom and with the program, but you know what? Little Mia, sitting in the back, exclaiming that she lost her homework so instead came up with three multiplication problems so she would have something to turn in, well, she makes it all worthwhile.

Week 2

I'm jumping the gun a little

It's only Thursday, but at ICEF elementary, the teaching week ends on Thursday which means I successfully completed my first week of teaching.  Of course successfully is a wholly subjective term, but I'm still alive and still in the program so I think that qualifies as successful.

My first day teaching was immensely stressful.  No matter how prepared I felt I was, sure enough, I wasn't prepared enough. I've discovered, though, that one is never really prepared to teach.  There are so many variables and random actions and one is never really sure they are making the right choice.  

My first day, which seems like it was ages ago, did not go exactly as planned.  Another thing I learned, planning and over planning are not good ideas.  The kids were rambunctious, energetic, angry, bored, tired, and every sort of minute detail in between.  I didn't think my lesson on "Activating prior knowledge of life in the country" was a great introduction to the teaching world, but I felt certain it wouldn't be a total disaster.

I discovered 3rd graders have a great interest in the word "manure".

The teaching become progressively more familiar from there on out.  I use the term familiar because it was not easier or less random or tiring, but simply an act that I became slightly more accustomed to doing.  The lessons were no more exciting, no thanks to my "preach, preach, worksheet" style of teaching.  

I discovered I'm not capable of being a fun teacher.

The classroom on day 1 was chaos.  Not the cutesy, ordered chaos that maintains a dull roar, but the kind of chaos that had me sweating buckets, looking up at the ceiling and praying that the period would end soon.  I decided the next day I was going to be a hard ass.  For those of you who know me know that that is quite a stretch.

I discovered most kids don't perceive me as threatening.

I slowly started to learn the kids names and which kids did and did not enjoy writing.  Most kids didn't, some kids did but most were indifferent.  These kids are here for summer school anyway where they typically don't receive grades so it's hard to motivate them to do anything.

I discovered that 3rd graders don't act how you want or think.

The days are really really long.  I wake up at 5 am every day and am at the school site until 4:30 every afternoon.  We have subway sandwiches every - single - day, chips, apples, raisins and a drink.  The same thing.  Every.  Single.  Day.   For the next 5 weeks.

I discovered there are only so many combinations of turkey, mayo and pepper.

I realize why people drop out of the program.  It's rigorous, both physically and emotionally.  I feel so drained from a lack of sleep that sometimes I don't think I can function properly.  We're all familiar with those days in college (ha!  I can say that now) where we cram the night before and get 2 hours of sleep.  Then you take that test and go back to bed.  Well-deserved respite.  Here, there is no release during the week.  You go and go and go and go until your mind and body are on the verge of collapse.  Days feel like weeks and the two weeks I've been here felt like years.  Some people do fun things on the weekend, but Monday is always just a few hours away.

I discovered that no matter how hard I perceive things to be - I will make it through.

End of Week 1

Two weeks ago I was in Austin, packing up five years of my life, scared of what was going to happen next. Time soldiered on, it marched forward and propelled me to Chicago for a week then to LA. I'm the type of person that's scared to do new things, especially on my own. I realized, though, that with the TFA corps, I'm really not all alone.

So here I am in LA. The weather is gorgeous, the sun is shining and, yes, I'm really really tired. The work, at least thusfar, isn't hard, but it does take a lot of time. On top of that they require you to wake up insanely early. Everyday we have Subway sandwiches -- every day for the next five weeks. There still lingers a small portion of my subconscious that questions if this really is what I want to do. I try to quell this doubt because I know that if the question gets too loud it'll overcome my thoughts and I will probably break. There's a statistic floating around that between 10 and 20 percent of corps members don't make it through institute and I do not want to be that statistic. I keep telling myself I'm here, I've made the commitment and I will make it through.

I've also come to realize that graduating from college doesn't become an automatic pass to maturity. The people here, though nice from day to day, are still just young kids that like to party, get wasted, and indulge in other vices. Suddenly I'm back at freshman orientation when everyone was tripping over themselves to get drunk and hookup with the next semi-attractive person they could, literally, get their hands on. Meanwhile, I'm huddled in my dorm room with no means of transportation and a slight air of elitism.

Character foibles aside, we will all be teaching, most of us for the first time, on Monday. I've met the 13 kids that I will be instructing and they are an energetic, intelligent, lively group of kids. They do and say things that are so perceptive and funny and they don't even realize. I hope I prove to be an efficacious teacher. I hope to overcome the self-doubt and fear and rise to become a really good teacher. As of right now -- I'm just unsure.

Induction Redux

So I accidentally posted this to the wrong blog -- it takes place about June 17th:

Welcome to Chicago --

As I lay in my bed at the hostel in Chicago I'm not quite sure if I'm more or less anxious than I was one week ago. The induction here was ended up being both expected and unexpected. On an administrative level, we were briefly informed of the importance of diversity, filled out gobs of paperwork for schools we'd never see, and some of use were hired while others were sent on rat races of interviews. Alas, I still do not have a teacher placement. The process of finding housing is no less complicated. 200 eager, mostly white recent graduates are shoved within close proximity of one another and over the course of a few days are expected to decide with whom to live with for the next year. The first time the entire corps was together was at Exposure Tapas (not to be confused with expose your tatas, ha, funny), where the same 200 people were crammed into a space designed for intimate dinners for two. The whole affair was loud, sweaty and ridiculously complicated.

Back at the hostel i was jostled into a suite with 10 other guys all of whom were nice, but few of whom I really connected with. Luckily, my actual room-mate Nate and I clicked pretty well and we immediately scampered off to see a movie while everyone was planning on their nights out in Chicago.

The arduous task of hammering out a living situation caused me much anxiety. It's difficult to find someone suitable to live with let alone navigate the treacherous waters of the Chicago neighborhood system. One block may house sushi-munching yuppies while two streets away is a meth house lit by the cigarette lighters of its inhabitants -- a charming lighting scheme, no doubt, but not quite what I'm looking for. After an initial neighborhood crawl with Garrett in which we viewed a few houses in Lincoln Park and Lakeview, I decided that as much as I would like to live in squalor for $800 a month something with more space would be preferable. Though the Logan Square area does not have a starbucks on every corner nor does every apartment appear to be decorated by Pottery Barn, it does have a certain charm (Latin flair?) that makes me feel like I'm in downtown San Antonio again.

I was informed that the rate of drop-out/kick-outs at Institute is 30%. 1 in 3 people will leave Teach for America because someone doesn't think they're good enough, or worse, the person doesn't think they're good enough. I'm scared. Shitless. Literally, I have this phobia of going to the bathroom while others are around.

Anyway -- I got to see a lot of Chicago. I saw three movies and now I'm about to fly to LA to get my ass handed to me. I pray to God that pinkberry will make it all worthwhile.