Only One Week Left!

There is only one more week of institute left. I ca not believe time has flown by so fast. The experience has continued to be quite the emotional roller coaster, but there is a LOT about it that I will miss.

Over the past two weeks, the classroom has contained some ups and downs, but things have slowly continued to improve. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, the two students in my class with the greatest needs both showed up for “breakfast club” for extra help before school, and I had my first successful lesson where 100% of the kids in attendance got the questions right on the exam (yay for the “KFC” method of dividing fractions!).

However, during this time nearly 25% of the class has been absent each day, one of my favorite students moved to Queens, and I have still not been able to prepare material that keeps every student engaged and learning as much as they can… Teaching continues to prove to be a big challenge, and I wish that I had more than 4 days left with these students.

Outside of the classroom, my time has included attending evening sessions where I have enjoyed quality time with tantagrams and other math manipulatives, competing against the other summer schools during TFA Day (offiical "tug o' war" and Saltine eating champions!), enjoying Manhattan with friends, and eating Coldstone cake with the members of my collaborative group to celebrate how fantastic our Corps Member Advisor is.

One more week means only 5 more days of boxed lunches, living in a college dorm with 8 other girls, and riding a school bus to work each day. And while I may not miss EVERY aspect of institute, it is incredible how much bonding has gone at 6:15am as we file on the yellow school bus to head to the Bronx with our cups of black coffee and at 11:45pm when 80 of us line up to use the copiers before they close.

One week also means only 4 days to teach ratios, proportions, unit rates, area, percents, and absolute values…. I am not sure how it is all going to get accomplished, but thankfully I am surrounded by committed teachers and capable students- both of which I will miss immensely.

I hope all is well wherever you find yourself reading this blog, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Love from Queens,
Katie

First Week of Teaching Reflections

I am officially done with my first week of teaching. It has been a HUGE emotional roller coaster filled with late nights, earlier mornings, and more thinking/strategizing than I have ever done in my life. I would like to thank every teacher that I have ever had for all the effort they put into trying to keep each student in their class on task, challenged, and learning.

Thankfully, my students are fantastic. I teach around 12 kids everyday who could not represent a bigger variety of interests, ethnic backgrounds, ability levels, ages, and personalities. They are at summer school for diriment reasons- poor attendance or struggles in one subject area. It’s interesting because some of them really excel in math while others lack basic addition/subtraction skills.

It has been a hard week but for different reasons than I expected. The 4-5 hours of sleep/night is rough but the harder thing is realizing that I am not yet equipped to meet the discrepancy of needs. It is a bit overwhelming that these students only have 20 days to get back on track. Whether or not they move up to 7th grade and their level of preparedness is my responsibility. I just wish I could learn and become more effective faster…

PS: Again, I posted this a while after I wrote it. Expect a rundown of week 2 soon.

Calm before the storm.

Today marks the last day of training, and I begin teaching on Monday! While the past week was great- filled with more lesson planning, classroom management, and student “investing” information than I previously thought possible in a week, I still feel slightly unprepared to actually *teach* the students. I am concerned that they are so far behind. I don’t want my lack of pedagogy and content knowledge hurting the possibility for them to catch up to there peers in these short 16 days of summer school… I guess that just provides more incentive to learn as much as I can, and I could not ask for more resources.

Regardless, the classroom posters are created, the jelly bean jar is ready to be filled for good behavior, and the parent letter is writing in English AND Spanish. I meet my kids tomorrow, and I will let you know how everything goes!

I hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July. Remember to wish my dad a happy 50th and my parents a happy anniversary!!!

PS: I forgot to upload this until Tuesday, but I am sure my parents would still appreciate the warm wishes.