Week 2 of Institute

Week 2 was busy, stressful, and difficult, but it was also rewarding and sobering. It was nothing close to what Summerbridge Fort Worth was like last year. Supposedly, 35-40 people have already left training/TFA completely at our Institute. Many other corps members voiced thoughts of quitting as well. While this is mostly conjecture, it seems as though they make training difficult so that people who will not persevere through difficult times will quit now rather than after teaching in their region. TFA saves face and the school district isn't left with an unfilled position part way through the school year.

As I wrote before, I am teaching summer school students two periods out of the day. The other periods are taken up by Professional Development and Curriculum Sessions. In the former we do things that help us improve as teachers such as practicing parts of our lessons with others, troubleshooting difficult classroom situations, watching videos of good and bad teaching, debriefing with our observers (faculty adviser, corps member adviser, anyone else who observed us). In the other sessions, we get actual lessons on how to improve our teaching--basically what we had been doing for the past week. Each school day still lasts from 7-4. This may be a southern thing, but teachers are hardly called by their last names by students. Instead we are "Mister" or "Miss." It's quite cute and not disrespectful at all. The students know your last name as I had one student who saw me in the hall while going to and from TAKS testing rooms and definitely made sure to wave and smile and say, "HI Mr. Rice."

The two classes are interesting in terms of how they are set up: collaborative teaching where each teacher has 3-4 students and individual teaching where I have 8 students. Many of the students will leave next friday due to passing the TAKS they just took on Thursday and Friday. It's a weird setup because I am not sure how good it is for the students and for the beginning teachers.

The students are in summer school for a variety of reasons: grades weren't high enough, poor attendance, low TAKS scores. Once at school, they are now taught for 2 weeks by actual teachers and then are taught for 2-4 weeks (depending on how long some stay) by teachers with one week of training. Last year this model worked to an extent (with Summerbridge) because the students were already quite smart/motivated, well-behaved, and the focus was on giving challenging material that was fun rather than teaching stated objectives that would be evaluated at the end of summer school.

I know that all teachers have to start somewhere as first time teachers, but the amount of training and education (maybe more of a student-teaching model for the first year) could be increased before giving us students that we have to teach while we are still learning a great deal about the mechanics of teaching. Sure, the TFA line is that those accepted are able to meet this type of challenge, learn quickly, and overcome all of these obstacles, but we are talking about learning a completely new skill set. One week of training to give great lessons to kids who desperately need them is a disservice. The students know this too--they've gotten TFA teachers in the past and know that we are first time teachers. Of course, I and all of the other corps members are trying our hardest, but I just hate the idea that instead of these students coming to summer school for more education they get to be TFA teacher training wheels. For the students who get the teachers that falter and don't improve or just don't measure up, it just adds to the message that they've already received: the education system has failed you once again.

While I realize the shortcomings of this training, I know that I still have a duty to my students on Monday. I know that I cannot afford to come in less than 100% prepared. There were many good things that happened this past week, but there were too many times where the students deserved better.