First week mayhem

Days at the institute seem like eternity. It is only Thursday and already I feel like I have been here for two weeks. Maybe because that is the amount of information they cram into a few short days, who knows. Whatever the case, I'm here, I'm alive, we're still moving forward.

Let me explain institute for a few minutes...basically, they teach you how to teach. This doesn't sound thattttt hard, except there is a certain Teach For America way that they teach you how to do things. The program has been around since 1991, it is revamped constantly, it works. Because we just got here and aren't quite ready to teach yet, we spend ALL of our time in sessions. We have literacy sessions, curriculum sessions, sessions with our corp member advisor and sessions with everyone at our school teaching roughly the same grade levels. I am teaching Kindergarten at Browning Elementary this summer and have a phenominal CMA (corp member advisor), Elizabeth Ballard from the Mississippi Delta. When we leave the school at 4:15, we have been coming back to Moody towers, our home away from home. Then, each night this week we had more meetings or training sessions to be at. Mind you, this still doesn't sound so bad...but when all you are doing is sitting in sessions ALL day (after getting up at 5:30 a.m.), this is a challenge.

Last night was our biggest challenge, almost everyone here had their first two lesson plans due. I am an activity-driven person....but that is not good for lesson planning. We had to fill out templates for every objective that we need to accomplish during the lesson, then fill out the key points, how we will do the assessment, what the new content knowledge is, how we will show guided learning, what the students will do for individual practice, and type up our opening and closing. The place was a madhouse. I met up with a group of people in the lobby...and it was hard to find a seat. Going to print your lessons was another story....the computer lab was pure, utter insanity. Not only does it take 5 minutes to log on, but people are printing like crazy. Most of the printers in the computer labs stopped working for one reason or another. It was "intense" like everything else around here.

However, I worked with a group and we all are instructing Kindergarten science, so we did our unit plans for the entire summer school session and then worked on the lesson plans. It was time consuming, but really not that hard. I don't think that is what I would ever want to be working on at midnight the night before giving the lesson!

So, needless to say, with computer lab drama, I didn't get nearly as much sleep as needed and 5:30 a.m. came reallllly quickly this morning. However, tonight is the FIRST night that we don't have anything else going on in the evening...therefore, praxis practice time....

Better jet, my bus leaves at exactly 6:40 a.m. If you are not on it, it will leave you. Hey, at least I get to watch the sunrise over downtown Houston on my way to school :)