School doesn't start until August 25, but we all had to get settled in the Bay earlier so that we could get a headstart (or just a start...) on lesson planning for the school year. During the summer, pretty much everyone was lesson planning night by night and I guess the lesson we were supposed to learn was that working night by night is not sustainable. Before school starts we're supposed to have a structure of units, learning goals, and lesson plans for the year, with specifics weighted towards the beginning of the year. Oh, and I suppose I should tell you that I'll be teaching 3 periods of geometry and 2 periods of algebra 1 during the year...
The remaining weeks mark the final stretch for taking care of teaching and credentialing logistics so everything runs smoothly for us in the fall. I've found that "smoothly" can be interpreted in many ways with Teach For America. For instance, I would say that things do not always run "smoothly" when all of our correspondence to our school and teacher credentialing program must be done through TFA. It wastes time and causes confusion, among other things. And I seriously doubt I'll be using the word "smoothly" to describe how my teaching experience is going this fall when I have to attend classes of my own after school 3-5 hours at a time once and sometimes twice a week. We attended two additional days of course planning training earlier this week, with a specific session devoted to mental health. Luckily, I think I have a great support system around me in Oakland - six other TFA people live in my building and a good number more live nearby.
I'm living in an apartment complex just outside of downtown with a slight view of the lake. It's basically your typical apartment with mostly good things: a large, nice layout, huge windows, a pool; but then of course it has its quirks, like a sleazy assistant apartment manager, light switches on the wall that do not turn anything on - not even any of the outlets, and no ceiling lights at all actually. With no furniture of our own and the need for ample floor lamps, our place is beginning to look like an IKEA showroom, but I suppose I can live with that. And by the way I think our apartment is actually quite nice - nice enough to willingly show it to my parents I mean.
Other than our mattresses finally getting in, the only big news is that Nicole, one of our TFA building-mates got her car stolen literally the first day we were here. Strangely enough, it wasn't stolen from the apartment or in Oakland. The TFA sessions earlier this week brought us to the Berkeley Marina each day, and her car was taken in broad daylight from the hotel parking lot. Since then, the police found it, completely totaled. I think Nicole has proven that this support system we've got going will work out just fine.
Oh, and I've already figured out my first real world example of algebra for my math class: would a sane person choose a U-Haul or a Penske truck for picking up a craigslist couch? U-Haul is cheap but charges by the mile and Penske offers a flat rate. I'm sure the high schoolers will enjoy hearing that their own math teacher got suckered by the prices and got fooled into thinking that U-Haul was cheaper. Or maybe I should tell the story to them as strictly hypothetical...
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