Yesterday I attended the First Annual TFA Bay Area Benefit Dinner as one of many corps member guests. We had to apply to do this and give a little blurb about why we joined and what we thought of TFA - which I imagine was for the staff to pick the corps members whose stories and perspectives were "acceptable" to publicize to very influential people and potential donors. You may not have read about it yet, but TFA can seem very corporate sometimes in their impersonal characteristics or "canned" feel, and that is one of the reasons why I've felt that I've sometimes avoided drinking the TFA Kool-Aid. I don't feel supported or listened to when things become super robotic and uber-data-driven.
Anyway, the dinner brought guests like Condoleeza Rice (who walked by me two feet away) and MC Hammer (who actually introduces himself as MC Hammer), so it was intimidating to say the least. The ballroom in the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco was full of CEOs of major corporations like Visa, the San Francisco Giants, and Bank of America, and countless other Heads of Whatever. I was not aware of how deep these peoples' pockets were until the first live auction item was sold for $75,000. It was the purchase of a 16-person suite at AT&T Park and the experience to throw the first pitch at a Giants game. I imagine that it will turn out to be some kid's most expensive birthday present ever. The lady that bought that also bought some Summer Olympics trip thing for $27,000 as well, making her a donor of over $100,000 in a matter of 10 minutes. I got her business card and was not surprised that goes by only a first name: Trish. No more, no less. Fitting I think for some crazy lady with a shit-ton of money. Even after the live auction was over the auctioneer just got people to raise their paddles to to straight-up donate $10,000 at a time to TFA. I would say that the night raked in $500,000 for TFA in the bay, but I was amazed to find out that the purchases of seats at the dinner alone brought in $1 million. Here we are, the government on the brink of eliminating TFA funding, and the organization pulls a stunt like this. Holy crap. And yes, this is only the FIRST annual event. There has been so much untapped wealth until now!
2) According to our vice principal at Richmond, I am the best math teacher we have.
This means two things: she thinks way higher of me than I thought, and she thinks way lower of everyone else than I thought. I heard this little tidbit from another staff member, but the asterisk to the statement is that it was said with an angle for me to stay teaching in the 9th grade. There have been plans for me to teach more higher level classes, but our vice principal in charge of scheduling thinks that "we should keep our best math teacher in the 9th grade, otherwise the students will never make it to upper level math." I hate that I know the flattery will get me to stay teaching 9th grade.
3) Girls are valuable gang members because they can stash weapons and/or drugs on their person and bank on the fact that the police do a less-than-thorough pat down since the younger, newer officers are afraid of getting the attention of a lawsuit for touching them inappropriately. We had a presentation given today after school about gangs in Richmond, and I thought this was interesting.
4) Never bet a student that you had a worse night sleep than them. It unearths a story that you probably didn't want to or shouldn't hear.
That is all. Aren't you supposed to learn seven new things every day?
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