Obviously I did a miserable job of blogging this year; that’s what next year’s goals are for! There is no way I can adequately summarize the past few months, but my kids made awesome progress, and I was so proud to see all of my senior “babies” graduate. And I’m already incredibly excited for next…

I’m doing some experimenting with my management system, since it’s not as efficient as it could be. I’ve become more lenient than I should have. However, tightening up again has so far resulted in mostly misery, which I’m taking as a sign that the approach I’ve been trying isn’t natural to me or my students,…

(For some reason, either this blogging site hates Firefox or Firefox hates this site… this post was written right after winter break but I have not been able to post it until now.)   It’s a new year, and the Class of 2010 is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as we…

When I was a high school student, I didn’t realize that my teachers might have agonized more about my tests than I did. I get it now. Grading tests is, for me, a little like watching a sporting event. I’ve scouted the competitors but there is always a bit of uncertainity. Also inevitable frustration and…

Apologies to my mother and any other loyal readers for not updating in months. Between enormous events in October and the enormity of small day-to-day trials, many times I could not find the time or the words. But I’m going to give it a shot today. I was told going in that October was the…

My email inbox has been overflowing with spam comments on this blog, and I realized I hadn’t written in quite some time. The last week has been interesting, to say the least. I gave my first unit test on Friday. The scores ranged from under ten percent to over one hundred percent (since I never…

In the past two weeks, I have just about tripled my total previous teaching experience in terms of minutes. I’ve also done a lot of walking (there’s a reason my legs hurt every day!) which is not something I had thought about until our speaker at professional Saturday mentioned it. Here’s the little bit of…

I have now been teaching for five days. I’d like to write an insightful, eloquent post about my experiences so far, but I don’t think I have that in me at this point. So here are some scattered observations from the past week. -Right now, being a teacher also means being an actor and an…

A very short span of time has taken me across a very large range of emotional ground. Tuesday afternoon, after more sessions, I was feeling hot, itchy, irritable, and worried: that I wouldn’t find a house, that my placement might somehow get changed (the TFA Deltan rumor mill is quite active), that I wouldn’t be…

That would be the fire alarm that is going off right now (and by that, I mean when I wrote this on 7/12/09) at the Delta State Dorms. Yes, I should be outside, and was, but it’s pretty clear that nothing is actually on fire, so I returned. It’s been a rough day. The drive…

The summer of teaching ended on an anti-climatic note: my student didn’t show up for his last day of class. I gave my lesson, but to a group of fellow CMs. As much of a letdown as it was, it was a really good experience, because they all did a great job of modeling student…

Seeing that a student has, in fact, come to school might not seem very exciting–but if what’s at stake is the student’s opportunity to prove what he’s learned (and my opportunity to see what I’ve actually taught)… I peeked in the door yesterday at 1:50 and there he was, head bent over the test. That…

The loneliest number? Also the number of students I currently have. This poor kid. Sometimes, he is vastly outnumbered by observers (my faculty advisor is almost always in the room, and I usually have at least one other person drop in and observe me. For those not in the know, corps members are required to…

(This post took far too long to get posted.) -My kids, for many things, among them getting, today, every single last one of them, 100% on their quizzes. Both quizzes, today’s and the one from yesterday that I didn’t have time to give yesterday. By the way, their class average on the diagnostic test was…

Don’t mind this. Just trying to get this to post.

It’s really hot in Houston. That probably doesn’t sound like a revelation, but I could count on one hand the amount of 90 degree days I experienced in the 12 months before coming here. Now, every day is pushing 100. Tonight’s low of 74 is hotter than it gets in Minnesota a good 7 months…

Wan. Musty. Soviet. Dismemberment. Lolling. Compensation. Epidemic. Insidious. Blighted. Devastating. These are just a few of the many, many vocabulary words I have pulled out of an article I’m going to give my 9th grade “master geographers” next Monday.  I’ve pulled them out so I can define them and hand them a reference list, to…

It amazes me how many different perspectives are possible in one classroom. Today, I laid down the law on my students coming back 2-3 minutes late from their bathroom break. I had been making a show for the last few days of enforcing a time limit, but today I had had enough and told them…

Megan was right (of course, Delta CMs are so wise) about placement. I have been placed! For the next few years, I get to call Sunflower County, Mississippi home. I’m thinking I might grow some sunflowers. I’m going to teach algebra at Ruleville Central High School. I’m just happy to be placed in general, but…

I have now spent 200 minutes teaching. A multitude of quiet queries. “Miss?” Seven students, few of whom have showed up all four days for the entire period. Armfuls of photocopied, hand-shaded maps to read, starting with vethe title, working on down. When I talk about the range of my students’ knowledge and behavior, I…

It may be a little pathetic, but right now my best context for maintaining high expectations is climbing the eleven flights of stairs to my dorm room at Moody Towers. You know, you start off strong, it’s pretty easy going. Three or four flights go quickly. And then, somewhere between six and seven… The awesome…

As I was typing the above, I heard someone down the hall break out in the same chant. It’s an excellent transition point from Induction to Institute. We’re just starting to build regional pride, so we can take it with us from home (yes, I am starting to call the Delta home) to Institute, where…

I’m outing myself as a total nerd here: the quote above is from Garth Nix’s Sabriel. In its original context, it refers to walking the realm of the dead and keeping them from leaving—quite a path to walk.  I was reminded of it today when, in an interview preparation session, I was asked “Did you…

Written on 6/4/09, posted now because…no internet at DSU. First impression of the Delta: it’s another world. We emerged from Memphis traffic and it was immediately apparent: the greens were greener, even when gilded with yellow or edged in blue, the browns were browner. The two-lane highway was painted with figures of planes: crop-duster landing…

Two of my favorite books (Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, for the record) begin with the same conceit: what we take with us into war, into the wild, into a new life, matters. I packed my bags today for Induction in the Delta and Houston Institute. The fact…