Dear friends, family, past professors and teachers,
(If for any reason you don't want to be on the email list, just let me
know, I won't be offended. I also hope to add more, but I don't have
emails of many people, so please feel free to forward this on to
others.)
This email, and future ones probably, will be written at different
times due to very little free time (as I will explain later). I
apologize for any chopiness or odd transitions. I also divided parts
of this into sections in case you've already heard some of the
information or just don't want to read the whole thing.
I just wanted to say "hi" to everyone and to deliver my promise of
updating you all on my Teach for America (TFA) experience. I just
started my 5 weeks training (in Houston) and I wanted to give you all
an inside (and honest) look of TFA. It's actually going really well.
While we have a lot to do each day, I feel that I will be prepared for
the first day of school in the Delta.
1. Praxis
I arrived in Houston on Friday, June 8th, with my Dad as I had to take
my Praxis 2 (certification) test in Secondary Biology on the 9th. A
car is a necessity in the Delta, so we had to make the trip from Akron
to Houston. The trip from Houston to the Delta will happen after the
Institute finishes. On test day I felt pretty good as I knew what
most of the questions were asking. Each question only had 4 choices
and I was able to eliminate at least 1 in each case.
2. Where I'll be teaching
I will be teaching in the Mississippi Delta region, which is northwest
corner of Mississippi and the southeast corner of Arkansas. It is
called the "Delta" due to the flooding of the Mississippi and the
subsequent fertile land for agriculture. If you are thinking of the
South with lots of cotton fields, then you have the right image. There
will be 90 of us heading to the Delta region; I believe we are the 2nd
largest corps at our Institute. The largest is the Houston Corps,
which has 150 or 200 members (I think). TFA has been in the Delta
since 1992 (I think) and its teachers are very well received in the
Delta. The region does not have as many horror stories about other
teachers and parents being skeptical of TFA teachers.
3. Placement
4. TFA's Mission and Ideology (really helpful for those applying for
TFA next year--TFA pretty much said, "we look for people who believe
things similar to our mission/ideology.")
TFA believes that its mission is to "close the achievement gap," which
means giving all children a quality education. TFA believes in
"standards based" education, which means that teachers have a set of
objectives they must teach and assess in an objective manner. These
objectives, and whether or not they are met by students, are tested by
the state in those amazing multiple choice tests that are now
mandatory thanks to No Child Left Behind.
While TFA touts standardized education and testing they are very much
behind giving students motivation, using good assessments, and moving
students ahead in their grade levels. TFA believes literacy is
important in each subject and trains its teachers to teach literacy in
any subject (including math). They believe in differentiated
instruction and making sure all students in a class have ambitious yet
feasible goals and that those goals are met. TFA believes strongly in
"fluid intelligence" and not "fixed intelligence." Their teachers
send the message that you are not intrinsically smart but that you
become smart through hard work, dedication, and persistence.
The reasons behind the standards and objective assessments is an
extension of TFA's business management system. TFA continually
assesses itself and changes quickly when given criticism (of course as
long as they accept it). I've had to fill out many surveys for each
aspect--applying, pre-institute communication, stuff going on at
institute, etc. At Institute they time everything. They start out
with a clock set to "TFA Standard Time" and we are expected to set our
watch to this time. Next, almost each activity has a TFA leader
standing nearby to time how long it takes to do it. For example, when
I registered I took around an orange sheet to each station where the
members helping me recorded how long it took. I've seen them at meals
assessing how long it takes people to get through the lines. They
believe heavily in maximizing efficiency.
TFA's belief structure for its teachers has one overarching theme:
Teaching as Leadership. TFA believes that the teacher's actions cause
the students' actions. Most would agree with this, however, TFA takes
it one step further and doesn't take lack of parental involvement,
lack of resources, or any other social causes outside of the teacher's
control as excuses for why students are not achieving. If a teacher
has a student with a different learning mode, learning disability, a
native tongue that isn't english or any other challenge, then it's the
teacher's job and duty to seek out the resources to make sure that the
student makes just as much gains as the others (not the same ones
necessarily but the same proportionately--ie moving up 2 grade levels
in reading).
Their belief is that the teacher leads the class by setting a big goal
and individual goals for students and then teaching according to that
goal. A big goal might be moving all students 1.5 to 2 grade levels
(these students are sometimes entering the late elementary grades--or
later--not being able to read). The teacher also sets individual
goals with the students and then creates their lessons based around
those goals. Next, the teacher motivates the students through
"investment." Basically, the teacher shows the students that he or
she cares and wants them to succeed. The teacher makes phone calls
for good and bad behavior, attends the students' extracurricular
events, uses role models that the students can identify with, develops
a relationship not just with the parents but all of the influences in
a student's life (pastor, coach, cousin, etc), meets with parents on
weekends or any other time that may be good for them instead of
holding one parent conference night where only a few show up. The
idea is for the teacher to motivate students on a daily basis through
positive messages, stories of hard work and dedication, and caring
about the student's life outside of school. Many teachers coach
sports teams and use part of the time for learning (ie football chants
to memorize history dates--real example, no joke).
All of this is able to happen because of the classroom management
system the teacher has set up in the classroom--everything from rules,
to procedure, and the purpose of being at school relates to learning.
An elementary teacher might say, "the reason we have a set way of
lining up is that it increases our learning time"; a middle school
teacher might say to a kid talking, "please be quiet, each time we
interrupt or cause a disruption it leads to losing learning time in
class--we aren't getting any closer to our big goal." We even have
videos of teachers timing certain procedures and sharing those results
with the class with the goal of increasing efficiency each time. TFA
believes that the gains their students need are so important that
every second is important. The main thing behind all of the teaching
a teacher does is the following, "if you do not have a plan for the
students then they will develop a plan for you." Following the idea
of "teaching as leadership," all parts of class--assessments, goals,
management, motivation/investment are the duty of the teacher and must
be planned out ahead of time.
Finally, it all comes down to "expectations." If a teacher has high
expectations for his/her students and works students to meet them,
then the students will. If the teacher has low expectations then the
students will either meet those low ones or even fail to meet those
(this is TFA's belief as to why our public schools are failing). TFA
teaches this to its corps members by setting down expectations and
then when those are not met, they are recorded (you get an update each
week--you might get "written up" for not signing in, missing the bus,
not turning in an assignment, not improving as a teacher, etc). If
you keep messing up, then you are put on an "improvement plan" where
you meet with the staff and you develop a plan to get your act
together. If you are unsuccessful, then TFA has you leave the
organization.
Some might be thinking at this point, does TFA succeed? The data
seems to be "yes." Students succeed not only on standardized tests
but on other rubrics and assessments and many teachers meet their big
goals they've set for the class. A recent alumnus of TFA founded Yes!
Prep in Houston and while it's maybe 5 years old is now ranked as one
of the best public (charter) schools in Houston and one of the top in
the country (#30 by Newsweek--this is what we were told at our
induction ceremony). I wish I had other data to share, but I'm sure
most of it could be found on: www.teachforamerica.org. The
organization seems to have changed alot from the earlier years where
it received many articles and some books criticizing the organization.
5. Institute--what it's been like
Everything is very structured. There is always a procedure to be
followed, a set time, and activities always go for the scheduled time.
This is why I have not had much time to write or do much online--my
day starts at 5:30 am and I get back from school at 4:30 pm. Next, I
get food and do the work they've assigned for the day. I try to be in
bed by 10 or 10:30 pm to start it all over again.
The dorm is named "Moody Towers" and it's like two really large Caples
dorms put together. 2 towers, 17 stories, symmetrical layout with a
common room, store, and dining hall. Our rooms do not have "beds."
Instead, they have "bouches": a combination bed and coach. The seat
is the bed and it can be pushed in or pulled out and there are pads
for back that can be pulled up for small storage spaces. The
mattresses are pretty horrible--we found one tag that said,
"correctional facility supplies." Luckily I've got a pretty good
mattress pad that is quite comfortable.
As for the food, we get the wonderful cuisine of Aramark Food Systems.
I'm sure most from Kenyon are grinning as this was our food service
for our first two years at Kenyon. We do not have nearly as many
choices here as we did in either dining hall at Kenyon. We only get a
hot breakfast on Wednesdays--all other days it's the standard fruit,
cereal, yogurt, bagels, and hard boiled eggs.
The way our training works is one week of classes and preparation and
4 weeks of summer school teaching (Houston Independent School
District); although we only teach for 14 days because 5 days are taken
out for testing and one for July 4th (we'll have morning classes to
attend and the afternoon off). I will be teaching 7th grade science.
I'll be teaching objectives mandated by the Houston School
District--objectives that they see as needing the most work by Houston
Students. The students are at summer school for a variety of
reasons--they might have failed one or a few parts of their TAKS test
or they are there for enrichment (very few though). The objectives we
are teaching are somewhat related, we have to teach about graphing and
representing scientific data, photosynthesis, and then basic physics
such as simple machines, forces, and gravity. The students are given
a diagnostic at the beginning of the 4 weeks (6 multiple choice
science questions covering the objectives) and then are given the same
exact test at the end of the 4 weeks. After the first diagnostic, the
results are entered into the ISAT tracker--an excel document created
by TFA based on data created by their New York Institute which aims to
predict how much certain students can improve in a set summer school
period. These results give each student an "individual growth goal"
and it's our job as teachers to get each student to make this growth
goal. For example, if a student scored a 35% on the diagnostic test
then he or she might need to score 70% (these numbers are determined
by the excel sheet) on the final test to consider the goal "met."
The next 4 weeks will consist of one period of individual teaching
each day coupled with another period of my collaborative (3 other
teachers) teaching together. No, we don't "tag-team," but instead
work with small groups of students in the same room--we are able to
split up groups based upon different needs of each student and
different teacher strengths. If we are not in class then we are
attending lessons about teaching, talking with those who observed us
about our performance, watching videos of our performance, meeting
with our faculty advisor (a teacher at the school), and doing anything
else that can improve us as teachers.
The school I am at, is a pretty nice middle school and its staff is very supportive of TFA (it has a few TFAalumni in it). The students do not have a single uniform, but the
dress code is quite restrictive to prevent the wearing of gang
insignia in its many forms (colors, pants style, jewelry, etc). The
kids seem to be quite well behaved given the stories I've heard from
other teachers at the other elementary, middle, and high schools.
(If for any reason you don't want to be on the email list, just let me
know, I won't be offended. I also hope to add more, but I don't have
emails of many people, so please feel free to forward this on to
others.)
This email, and future ones probably, will be written at different
times due to very little free time (as I will explain later). I
apologize for any chopiness or odd transitions. I also divided parts
of this into sections in case you've already heard some of the
information or just don't want to read the whole thing.
I just wanted to say "hi" to everyone and to deliver my promise of
updating you all on my Teach for America (TFA) experience. I just
started my 5 weeks training (in Houston) and I wanted to give you all
an inside (and honest) look of TFA. It's actually going really well.
While we have a lot to do each day, I feel that I will be prepared for
the first day of school in the Delta.
1. Praxis
I arrived in Houston on Friday, June 8th, with my Dad as I had to take
my Praxis 2 (certification) test in Secondary Biology on the 9th. A
car is a necessity in the Delta, so we had to make the trip from Akron
to Houston. The trip from Houston to the Delta will happen after the
Institute finishes. On test day I felt pretty good as I knew what
most of the questions were asking. Each question only had 4 choices
and I was able to eliminate at least 1 in each case.
2. Where I'll be teaching
I will be teaching in the Mississippi Delta region, which is northwest
corner of Mississippi and the southeast corner of Arkansas. It is
called the "Delta" due to the flooding of the Mississippi and the
subsequent fertile land for agriculture. If you are thinking of the
South with lots of cotton fields, then you have the right image. There
will be 90 of us heading to the Delta region; I believe we are the 2nd
largest corps at our Institute. The largest is the Houston Corps,
which has 150 or 200 members (I think). TFA has been in the Delta
since 1992 (I think) and its teachers are very well received in the
Delta. The region does not have as many horror stories about other
teachers and parents being skeptical of TFA teachers.
3. Placement
4. TFA's Mission and Ideology (really helpful for those applying for
TFA next year--TFA pretty much said, "we look for people who believe
things similar to our mission/ideology.")
TFA believes that its mission is to "close the achievement gap," which
means giving all children a quality education. TFA believes in
"standards based" education, which means that teachers have a set of
objectives they must teach and assess in an objective manner. These
objectives, and whether or not they are met by students, are tested by
the state in those amazing multiple choice tests that are now
mandatory thanks to No Child Left Behind.
While TFA touts standardized education and testing they are very much
behind giving students motivation, using good assessments, and moving
students ahead in their grade levels. TFA believes literacy is
important in each subject and trains its teachers to teach literacy in
any subject (including math). They believe in differentiated
instruction and making sure all students in a class have ambitious yet
feasible goals and that those goals are met. TFA believes strongly in
"fluid intelligence" and not "fixed intelligence." Their teachers
send the message that you are not intrinsically smart but that you
become smart through hard work, dedication, and persistence.
The reasons behind the standards and objective assessments is an
extension of TFA's business management system. TFA continually
assesses itself and changes quickly when given criticism (of course as
long as they accept it). I've had to fill out many surveys for each
aspect--applying, pre-institute communication, stuff going on at
institute, etc. At Institute they time everything. They start out
with a clock set to "TFA Standard Time" and we are expected to set our
watch to this time. Next, almost each activity has a TFA leader
standing nearby to time how long it takes to do it. For example, when
I registered I took around an orange sheet to each station where the
members helping me recorded how long it took. I've seen them at meals
assessing how long it takes people to get through the lines. They
believe heavily in maximizing efficiency.
TFA's belief structure for its teachers has one overarching theme:
Teaching as Leadership. TFA believes that the teacher's actions cause
the students' actions. Most would agree with this, however, TFA takes
it one step further and doesn't take lack of parental involvement,
lack of resources, or any other social causes outside of the teacher's
control as excuses for why students are not achieving. If a teacher
has a student with a different learning mode, learning disability, a
native tongue that isn't english or any other challenge, then it's the
teacher's job and duty to seek out the resources to make sure that the
student makes just as much gains as the others (not the same ones
necessarily but the same proportionately--ie moving up 2 grade levels
in reading).
Their belief is that the teacher leads the class by setting a big goal
and individual goals for students and then teaching according to that
goal. A big goal might be moving all students 1.5 to 2 grade levels
(these students are sometimes entering the late elementary grades--or
later--not being able to read). The teacher also sets individual
goals with the students and then creates their lessons based around
those goals. Next, the teacher motivates the students through
"investment." Basically, the teacher shows the students that he or
she cares and wants them to succeed. The teacher makes phone calls
for good and bad behavior, attends the students' extracurricular
events, uses role models that the students can identify with, develops
a relationship not just with the parents but all of the influences in
a student's life (pastor, coach, cousin, etc), meets with parents on
weekends or any other time that may be good for them instead of
holding one parent conference night where only a few show up. The
idea is for the teacher to motivate students on a daily basis through
positive messages, stories of hard work and dedication, and caring
about the student's life outside of school. Many teachers coach
sports teams and use part of the time for learning (ie football chants
to memorize history dates--real example, no joke).
All of this is able to happen because of the classroom management
system the teacher has set up in the classroom--everything from rules,
to procedure, and the purpose of being at school relates to learning.
An elementary teacher might say, "the reason we have a set way of
lining up is that it increases our learning time"; a middle school
teacher might say to a kid talking, "please be quiet, each time we
interrupt or cause a disruption it leads to losing learning time in
class--we aren't getting any closer to our big goal." We even have
videos of teachers timing certain procedures and sharing those results
with the class with the goal of increasing efficiency each time. TFA
believes that the gains their students need are so important that
every second is important. The main thing behind all of the teaching
a teacher does is the following, "if you do not have a plan for the
students then they will develop a plan for you." Following the idea
of "teaching as leadership," all parts of class--assessments, goals,
management, motivation/investment are the duty of the teacher and must
be planned out ahead of time.
Finally, it all comes down to "expectations." If a teacher has high
expectations for his/her students and works students to meet them,
then the students will. If the teacher has low expectations then the
students will either meet those low ones or even fail to meet those
(this is TFA's belief as to why our public schools are failing). TFA
teaches this to its corps members by setting down expectations and
then when those are not met, they are recorded (you get an update each
week--you might get "written up" for not signing in, missing the bus,
not turning in an assignment, not improving as a teacher, etc). If
you keep messing up, then you are put on an "improvement plan" where
you meet with the staff and you develop a plan to get your act
together. If you are unsuccessful, then TFA has you leave the
organization.
Some might be thinking at this point, does TFA succeed? The data
seems to be "yes." Students succeed not only on standardized tests
but on other rubrics and assessments and many teachers meet their big
goals they've set for the class. A recent alumnus of TFA founded Yes!
Prep in Houston and while it's maybe 5 years old is now ranked as one
of the best public (charter) schools in Houston and one of the top in
the country (#30 by Newsweek--this is what we were told at our
induction ceremony). I wish I had other data to share, but I'm sure
most of it could be found on: www.teachforamerica.org. The
organization seems to have changed alot from the earlier years where
it received many articles and some books criticizing the organization.
5. Institute--what it's been like
Everything is very structured. There is always a procedure to be
followed, a set time, and activities always go for the scheduled time.
This is why I have not had much time to write or do much online--my
day starts at 5:30 am and I get back from school at 4:30 pm. Next, I
get food and do the work they've assigned for the day. I try to be in
bed by 10 or 10:30 pm to start it all over again.
The dorm is named "Moody Towers" and it's like two really large Caples
dorms put together. 2 towers, 17 stories, symmetrical layout with a
common room, store, and dining hall. Our rooms do not have "beds."
Instead, they have "bouches": a combination bed and coach. The seat
is the bed and it can be pushed in or pulled out and there are pads
for back that can be pulled up for small storage spaces. The
mattresses are pretty horrible--we found one tag that said,
"correctional facility supplies." Luckily I've got a pretty good
mattress pad that is quite comfortable.
As for the food, we get the wonderful cuisine of Aramark Food Systems.
I'm sure most from Kenyon are grinning as this was our food service
for our first two years at Kenyon. We do not have nearly as many
choices here as we did in either dining hall at Kenyon. We only get a
hot breakfast on Wednesdays--all other days it's the standard fruit,
cereal, yogurt, bagels, and hard boiled eggs.
The way our training works is one week of classes and preparation and
4 weeks of summer school teaching (Houston Independent School
District); although we only teach for 14 days because 5 days are taken
out for testing and one for July 4th (we'll have morning classes to
attend and the afternoon off). I will be teaching 7th grade science.
I'll be teaching objectives mandated by the Houston School
District--objectives that they see as needing the most work by Houston
Students. The students are at summer school for a variety of
reasons--they might have failed one or a few parts of their TAKS test
or they are there for enrichment (very few though). The objectives we
are teaching are somewhat related, we have to teach about graphing and
representing scientific data, photosynthesis, and then basic physics
such as simple machines, forces, and gravity. The students are given
a diagnostic at the beginning of the 4 weeks (6 multiple choice
science questions covering the objectives) and then are given the same
exact test at the end of the 4 weeks. After the first diagnostic, the
results are entered into the ISAT tracker--an excel document created
by TFA based on data created by their New York Institute which aims to
predict how much certain students can improve in a set summer school
period. These results give each student an "individual growth goal"
and it's our job as teachers to get each student to make this growth
goal. For example, if a student scored a 35% on the diagnostic test
then he or she might need to score 70% (these numbers are determined
by the excel sheet) on the final test to consider the goal "met."
The next 4 weeks will consist of one period of individual teaching
each day coupled with another period of my collaborative (3 other
teachers) teaching together. No, we don't "tag-team," but instead
work with small groups of students in the same room--we are able to
split up groups based upon different needs of each student and
different teacher strengths. If we are not in class then we are
attending lessons about teaching, talking with those who observed us
about our performance, watching videos of our performance, meeting
with our faculty advisor (a teacher at the school), and doing anything
else that can improve us as teachers.
The school I am at, is a pretty nice middle school and its staff is very supportive of TFA (it has a few TFAalumni in it). The students do not have a single uniform, but the
dress code is quite restrictive to prevent the wearing of gang
insignia in its many forms (colors, pants style, jewelry, etc). The
kids seem to be quite well behaved given the stories I've heard from
other teachers at the other elementary, middle, and high schools.
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