Well It's About Time...

Disclaimer: So I’ve gone all of institute so far without updating the blog. Institute has been so time and energy consuming that blogging could have only happened during the 2-3 hours of each day that I left to sleep and if I had attempted it I would have gotten less than 2-3 hours AND my blogs would have hardly made any sense. Seriously, revising some of the lesson plans I’ve written at 2am is plain hilarious because I’ve often found sentences that include two or three tenses.

I started a drafting a blog on Thursday of my second week, never did finish it, and never did post it. Below is the drafted entry and then I’ll chime back in to sum up what I didn’t finish and cover the weeks since.

From June 24, 2010

Courtney and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week

Just a note: I have wanted to update for two weeks now and I’ve thought about it every day but have chosen sleep every night instead… Read on to see why…
I don’t really know how to start off. The past two weeks have been a whirlwind. I arrived at Rice for institute that first Sunday to 105 temps and almost 100% humidity. Welcome to Houston. By the time I had checked in and moved my stuff in, almost three hours had gone by and all of my make-up had sweat off. Carrying cartons/boxes of resources, paper, binders, printer, and dragging three large, over-sized suitcases across a field was hardly a warm welcome, but necessary I guess. I’m spoiled by Pine Cove welcoming counselors, Baylor Move-In Crews, and a boyfriend who doesn’t let me lift a finger. Moving myself in was my first sign that – hey guess what – you’re on your own, get ready to work.

Once I arrived at my room, I was excited to see that I have probably the best accommodations out of any of the other dorms. My particular dorm is North Village style. You walk into one large empty room that has a bathroom off of it with two sinks and the usual other stuff and then two doors on the far wall. I see that each room only has one name sign on it. I’m thinking either my roommate is already here and has taken hers off, or it is a single room. Nope! It’s a room with space and furniture for two people, but it’s all just space for me! I do have a roommate in the other room but we have our completely own space – which has been such a gift for this experience. I turned one side into my office and the other into my actual bedroom. Perfect!

Since after that first day, honestly, I can summarize all of the jumbled memories for the past 10 days here:
~ Waking up at 4:30 to shower, finish assignments, and get to breakfast by 5:50.
~Going through the line to pack my lunch (little blessing – they always have Diet Dr. Pepper!!!)
~Grabbing a quick breakfast and filling my coffee mug. The coffee area is hilarious. College has taught us all the importance of our morning fuel/drug.
~Constantly watching my watch to make sure I walk out to the bus at 6:36 – the time my school’s bus loads. We pull out at 6:41 on the dot. No exceptions.
~20 minute bus rides to school during which I check Twitter, wonder why no one has updated since I woke up, and then realize that although I’ve already been awake over 2 hours, the normal world is still asleep…
~Arrive at school, sign in, say hi to my school director, Bonnie, an ’07 Baylor Bear, turn in lesson plans, and head to my group’s portable.
~The rest of the day is full of 2-hour sessions, no restroom breaks, many un-air-conditioned rooms, more sessions, and plenty of Lee Canter videos.
~The bus leaves school at 4:10. We get back, I change, go to dinner with Kathryn at 5, call Allen at 6, and then work from 7-2. Then I don’t finish everything and get up at 4 the next morning to do a last-minute finish up of my work. I wish I was exaggerating, but this is my reality.

This last weekend was exactly the break that I needed from TFA world! Allen came into town on Friday night. I took my time getting ready and we headed out to dinner around 8:30. After dinner we came back and sat on a hammock on campus enjoying the summer evening. Saturday I slept in and we went to brunch, ran some errands, went to see Toy Story 3 (which I’m obsessed with), and ate at Pappasito’s for dinner. Sunday morning we went to Tallowood Baptist Church and then lunch at Chili’s – a little comfort food is always good! Then it came time for Allen to leave. Honestly, I thought it would get easier to say goodbye as we get used to spending the weeks apart because it would be an expected goodbye, see you later. That was certainly not the case for this weekend’s goodbye. [End of draft from June 24]

To conclude that last paragraph, I had felt that goodbyes would get easier but each weekend it just gets more difficult. The knowledge of spending a week apart in two different towns becomes more real the more you experience it and more difficult the more we come to enjoy our time together on the weekends.

My second week at institute was my first week to teach my summer school students. The class periods are 2hrs10mins long and two objectives need to be taught in this time frame. We were assigned a class with a collaborative partner. My partner taught the first 1hr5min independently and I teach the second half independently. We plan ideas together and discuss students but do our individual plans and teaching times separately. We received our roster for our class the Thursday before and found that we had 12 students on the roster. When we got to school we found that there were actually 15 students in our class and some of our students on the roster were not there. This should have been hint number one that something was odd…
We went into class the first day, laid down the rules and expectations, and began implementing all that we had learned about managing behavior in our classroom. We never got control. From minute one of class the students had complete control of the class and even using all of the management tools that we had been given, we could not gain any control ourselves. As a result, we started off with no authority in the room and accomplished nothing in regards to the objectives we had attempted to teach. Day One was a SLAP in the face. P.S. You’re not in Midway anymore… The best part of the day was when we walked back into the room with all of our peers and they were all beaming about how wonderful their students were and how well the setting of expectations and implementing the behavior management plan had worked. Talk about feeling like a failure.

My collab and I were so distraught that we called an emergency meeting that night with our CMA (basically our teacher) to create a plan of action for the next day because we were not about to perpetuate this behavior, not in our classroom. We create a plan together and went in strong the next day. We started the class together and caught students at the door. My collab stood at the door, handed out the assignment, and gave explicit instructions to each student: 1. Do NOT talk 2. Go straight to seat #__ 3. Work on the assignment, you have 3 minutes 4. Again, let me remind you, do NOT talk. As she gave these instructions I was in the room eyeing each students as they walked in and stopping any misbehaviors immediately. After the students completed the assignment (which was to write the 4 rules and explain the behavior of each) we re-set our expectations and made it clear that we wouldn’t put up with any misbehaviors.

I would like to say that after this second day everything was great, but it hardly was. The entire week I was constantly fighting to maintain that control. I found out by talking to the previous teacher for that class in the hallway on Wednesday that these extra 5 kiddos that were not on the roster had been moved to her class. Why? Because she is a well-respected teacher and one of the only teachers that certain students will do anything for. Five of the students in our room had been such behavior problems that their teachers had kicked them out and sent them to our class in hopes that she could contain them. This helped to ease our feelings of inferiority because we realized that part of the reason everyone had these “perfect” classes was because they had sent their problems to us!

Staying consistent and assertive with behavior management became more and more difficult throughout the week because of my exhaustion. In addition to writing lesson plans, analyzing assessments, creating a scope and sequence for the summer, filling out investment plans and management plans, I was scheduled to take my 8-12 Math TExES test that Saturday. I had been under the impression from TFA that I would have plenty of time to study for the test while at institute. This proved to not be the case. All week I had e-mails coming from Dallas reminding me of the importance of studying plenty and passing this test and was simultaneously receiving feedback from my CMA that I needed to be spending more time focusing on planning my lessons in more detail. At the same time I also knew that if I didn’t get the sleep I needed each night, I would not be able to effectively manage my classroom. I was being pulled in so many different directions with no one party really understanding the amount of stress that I was under from the other parties.

Each day that week I got home from school, changed clothes, and crashed in my bed and cried for at least 20 minutes, but no longer than 30 minutes because there was too much to do to waste my time crying. I’d get myself together and go to dinner with Kathryn and then call Allen and spend another 30 minutes crying on the phone with him. Then around 7 I’d get myself together and start working on lesson plans.
I never did get the chance to study for my test until Thursday night when some Dallas regional people came into town to help us focus on studying. I was so relieved when they contacted my CMA to free me of my lesson planning responsibilities for the evening so that I could focus on studying. I cannot describe how incredibly refreshing it was to finally have someone advocate for my needs and actually help me be able to focus on what I needed to.

In the weeks since this Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week, everything has been improving. I’ve had more time to focus on planning because my test is over (for now anyways…) and our first week management/investment plans are finished. On average I get about 4 hours of sleep, which is a significant improvement. Because I get more sleep I am able to manage my class better. I’ve found a really intimidating teacher-face that some of my students actually respond to now. Since I’m able to focus on my plans more and actually know what TFA is looking for, I’ve been getting much better, encouraging ratings. (Can you imagine 4 years of ed school and writing lp’s and then getting here and being rated a Novice lp writer? Ya, that happened that first week and only added to my frustrations…) My students are actually learning and their daily assessments improved from a class average of 31% to 84% over the course of a week. Each day still presents its own challenges but I finally have the skills that I need to manage a class of (large) ninth graders. My poor students at Spruce will have no idea what hit them come the first day of school!

Maybe in another post soon I’ll tell some stories of individual students. This post is already so long I don’t want to add to it but I feel like the stories are one of the most interesting parts so I’ll try to post some later on this week.

This is our final week of institute and our last four days with our kiddos. Today and tomorrow I will be presenting new objectives, Wednesday will be a review/final exam day, and Thursday will be a score reveal and enrichment day where we’ll be able to relax with the students, talk about college, and maybe even do some math puzzles! Friday we’ll spend the morning closing down the school and the afternoon finishing up with our CMA and school groups and then I’ll be heading out of Houston!!!