Ms. Arrasmith

So it's been a while since I last posted.  Let me briefly give you a glimpse into the craziness of the past couple weeks when I went from Kiki, UC Davis Spanish/Communication major to Ms. Arrasmith, teacher.

Rice University

I left Dallas along with the other 190 DFW (Dallas, Fort-Worth) corps members and drove to Houston.  The time to myself in my car was a nice break from the constant social interaction at induction.  I arrived at Rice University and was greeted by friendly TFA staff and plenty of humidity.  They had a very smooth move-in process, and we had a short orientation.

Monday morning started early and the first week was filled with sessions ranging from data collection to family support to lesson planning clinics.  We found out which schools we would be teaching summer school at, and also learned who our fellow "collab" members are.  (Collab is short for collaborative.  TFA lingo is all  about abbreves and acronyms.)  Basically, I, along with 3 other ladies, are taking over one summer school class.  I am at Rodriguez Elementary School in the Gulfton area teaching 4th grade this summer.  Gulfton happens to be in one of the most dangerous zip codes in all of Texas, and the population of the school is about 97% Hispanic.  Most of the population of the school is comprised on newly arrived immigrants (most have been in the country for less than 5 years.)

Our class rules

Hearing this stats made me a little bit nervous to find out what teaching would actually be like.  But, I was very pleasantly surprised when I found that these kids are just like any other kids, and was reminded again about the reason that TFA exists; and that is that we believe that all kids have the ability to succeed and that our country is doing a great injustice in letting low-income communities' schools slip through the cracks.

Like I said, I am teaching 4th graders going into 5th grade this summer.  I have a class of 9 boys, and they are the best champions I have ever met!  Every day each teacher rotates and we all spend about an hour teaching our content area.  We rotate through the subjects as well and this past week I got to teach science.  Now, for those of you that know me well, you know that science isn't exactly my thing.  BUT.  I had so much fun teaching science this week!  It's pretty much all of my kids' favorite subject area and they were so excited to get to learn about reflection and refraction, mixtures and solutions, and melting and boiling points.  I was even able to relate the reflection and refraction lesson to soccer, which they just ate up.

And now I officially start being obsessed with my students

Our theme for our students is the Olympics because we want our students to strive to reach excellence by working hard and persevering just like Olympic athletes.  We know that they have many obstacles standing in their way, but we tell them every day how much we want them to succeed today, in summer school, in 5th grade, and beyond so that they can have a bright future by going to college.  Our class mascot is "Charlie the Champion" who embodies the four character traits that represent our class.  They are: bilingualism, self-advocacy, optimism, and critical thinking.  The first hour of every day all 4 teachers are in the room for what we call "Academic Intervention Hour."  Next week we will start working with the students in smaller groups to target those kids that need remediation or enrichment, but this week we got to use the time to teach the students about our big goals and visions, and to teach them about the traits.  Each one of the four has motions and all of the kids know them now.  Javier even used one of the motions completely unprompted during a different class!  That was definitely one of the highlights of my week.

Teachers on the bus in the morning

Life is so incredibly busy right now.  I get up around 5:30 every morning to catch my bus and be at school by 7:15, and stay at the elementary school until we get picked up around 5pm.  In the morning we teach during Academic Intervention Hour, and then I have my one hour of teaching.  Next week I will get to teach these kiddos about writing expository pieces!  So exciting!  After lunch we have different sessions which are a lot like lectures.  Unfortunately after getting up so early and being up so late, sitting in back to back sessions in the afternoon about phonemic awareness and planning an academic intervention can sometimes be tough.

The line for making copies at the copy center

Once we get back to Rice University, there's just enough time to grab dinner before it's back to work.  We're always revising our lesson plan for the following day while having to turn in rough drafts for the next few days.  I have been lucky and I have been pretty successful at writing these plans, but now I have to learn  how to do it more efficiently because although my lesson plan was great, it took me maybe 3 or 4 hours to write one for 45 minutes of instruction, and when I'm planning for 7 hours of instruction, that just becomes mathematically impossible.  (Ok, I don't know if that's actually true, but good thing I'm not teaching higher math).

Clearly, incorrect.

The main point is that even though it can be more stressful and overwhelming than I have ever experienced, I have never felt like anything was more right.  It just seems so natural and I'm loving every minute that I get to be in that classroom.  I look forward to my time in the classroom with anticipation each morning, and I'm taking that as good sign.  But, as you can see by this assessment question on the left, I still have something to learn about getting knowledge into these kids' brains.