Donate Now As I start my third week in the classroom, I have a lot of things going through my head.  First of all, we started rough drafts on Friday.  Even after countless lessons on Narrative Writing, only a handful of my students actually produced what I would call a narrative.  Others almost made it,…

Donate Now This morning, Wednesday June the 25th, marks a milestone in my Institute experience.  That’s right.  It’s Half Way Day.  For the past 2.5 weeks I have lived, breathed, and loved TFA.  Part of me is thinking, “Just another 2.5 weeks?  Psh, I got this.”  But the other, ‘bigger’ part of me is thinking,…

I’m gonna be honest.  Institute is tough.  It’s rigorous, it’s demanding, it’s emotional, it’s exhausting.  Yesterday I learned that many of my colleagues have decided to leave Teach For America.  It’s not even Week 3 yet and people are throwing in the towel.  It made me really appreciate the difficulty of what we’re all doing…

I realize I haven’t written anything in a while.  Mostly because I haven’t had a second to myself since…wait…what’s today? A quick recap before I get back to my amazing lesson plans.  My first day was…an experience.  All I did was give them rules and a test.  Grading the diagnostics certainly validated our being here…

My attitude when I walked into Moody on Sunday was one of confidence.  “I’ve got this.”  I’ve been singing TFA’s praises for a year now.  I know the stats backwards and forwards, I know the alumni and have talked to them, I know just about everything there is to know about this.  I felt like…

First, I would like to begin with an open letter to the University of Houston Drumline: PLEASE STOP PRACTICING OUTSIDE OF MY DORM AT 9:00 AT NIGHT.  NO, SERIOUSLY.  I WANT TO DIE.  THANK YOU. They’re so loud my window is vibrating.  I’m blasting some Damien Rice to try to calm my nerves, but I…

Well, fortunately the food isn’t as bad as the bathrooms.  Actually, it was quite good!  The breakfast was relatively healthy, though we all learned the hard way that we should probably get to the cafeteria earlier.  After breakfast, we packed our lunches (read: crappy sandwiches and cookies) and started a looong day of motivational speaking. …

When my friends tell me stories about Institute in Houston, it usually begins with something like, “It was really rough, but the dorms? Oh, the dorms were the WORST!” Moody Towers. Two tall buildings in the middle of the U of H campus. The walls are stained with something that could be rust, but it…