Halfway through Institute

So I guess I'm really more than halfway done, having been here at Loyola Marymount University in LA for three weeks of our five week stay, but in reality everyone has their own way of measuring the time passing here at Institute. Some measure it by what we get for lunch this week, some with a countdown of days in their dorm window. I'm just measuring it by the number of teaching weeks gone by. Thus far, I have been an Algebra 1 teacher for 9th and 10th graders at Hamilton High School for two weeks.

I suppose I should say this whole experience began in Berkeley even before coming down here - mind you, this happened only a week after graduating, so the pace of life has not slowed since frantically finishing my senior capstone project at the U. I found that it's quite an ordeal to make sure I've "said goodbye" to all my friends in that short span, especially with the need to prepare my things from school and from home to move my life from Seattle in a matter of days. But one "last night out" and two overstuffed luggage bags later, I stepped onto a plane heading to the Bay.

In Berkeley, we experienced the week-long version of Teach For America logistics presentations and what they consider training to get us ready for training in LA. I really only took two things away from that week. The first: TFA is a well oiled machine, almost entirely statistic-driven and quite corporate-feeling on the large scale (good or bad, I don't know). Second: Institute teaching training is not meant to be fun - and it won't be. Myself and friends were pretty sick of being told this by the end of the week, and I particularly didn't enjoy this opinion being made for me. All in all, TFA is a great organization, but that is not to say I don't have my rants... more on this later.

One thing TFA does well is incite a level of camraderie amongst its corps members. Good or bad, ups and downs, we definitely have the feeling by now that we are all in this together, which is weird, because I often feel a little out of place among the Ivy League graduates. Now that's not to say that I am friends with everyone here; there are a handful of people that I just want to ask blatantly to their faces "How did YOU get here?" It's just definitely an interesting dynamic. I keep telling people that the corps is full of type A personalities so things can get pretty intense and heated throughout all of this, and then at the end of the day you realize that all these people have varying degrees of "work hard play hard" personalities. It's weird to think of the possibility that all my teachers from elementary to high school would all get drunk or go clubbing on the weekends... I suspect this is one area where, as recent graduates, we won't be quite like the other teachers.

But enough of that- I'm sure I'll have more to talk about on that subject throughout the next years (that's weird to say). Anyway, here I am at Institute, and I will admit, the first week was hell: so much information being hammered into our heads from so many angles through various strategies of repetition... Being able to actually teach has been the best part about this experience, because after two weeks of wondering what we got ourselves into, we got reminded exactly why we are here.

I wake up around 5am every day, leave for school in school bus full of teachers (quite a sight when we unload at the school) around 6:30 and my three person teaching group welcomes students with a handshake into Rm 607 at Hamilton High School to be seated and ready to learn Algebra (again) by 8am. The catch is that this is summer school and all our kids have failed the class once before. Let's just say I was not mentally prepared to reteach adding and subtracting negative numbers when the lesson plan for the day was to teach solving two-step inequalities. Oh yeah, they don't know how to multiply or divide negative numbers (and sometimes positive numbers) either, which makes it difficult to explain how you need to flip the inequality sign when you multiply or divide by a negative number...

That first week was rough. I've told people that I felt bipolar for those first days in front of the class. After all, my kids really seem to like me (one student said I should teach their old teacher how to teach), but understanding the material takes a lot more than them just liking me. Since then, I have gotten into a better groove of things, but our exam results from Friday left our group a little discouraged. To no surprise, TFA sets a summer goal for each student based on an entrance exam, and their reaching of the goal is measured in an exit exam (the exact same test) taken after teaching the material in summer school. Overall, our kids met 56% of those goals in the class. Unfortunately, our own goal as teachers is to on average reach 100% of those goals, and even worse is that some of these goals for students would still equate to C or even D grades during a normal year. Apparently getting them to pass the class alone is a bigger feat than imagined.

I'm sure I'll rant about this later, but you'll notice that these students of mine just experienced Algebra 1A - a semester class - retaught in two weeks (ridiculous I know). Tomorrow we begin Algebra 1B, even when a few students didn't improve at all in proficiency in the first ten days of class. Each day we break into small groups with the three teachers, and my group is the one that needs the most help, so I'm hoping to finish this Institute experience strong!

As far as being told Institute is not fun, I very much disagree. For four weeks now I have surrounded myself with some of the most motivated individuals I have ever met from all over the country. Most of these people have amazing life stories and are incredibly sincere, opening up to help others as well as themselves during this experience. There is a group willing to play soccer pretty much every day after school (...whether or not it's a good choice, since we have seriously limited free time) and every weekend there are new and fun plans with friends. Last night we went out to Korean BBQ and karaoke afterwards... so guess what, TFA? I'm having plenty of fun and there's nothing you can do about it.