Life in Moody Towers

2 weeks down, and 3 to go.  I've already started the institute countdown.

Life's been pretty crazy in Houston, and I just went through probably the longest 5 days of my life.  I'm not so sure how I feel about 5 day work weeks.  I kinda got used to the whole college thing where by the time Wednesday rolled around you could just coast the rest of the way until you were done by Thursday afternoon.  Anyway, I made it through my first week as Mr. D, teaching Algebra 1a at Reagan High School here in Houston to kids who failed it earlier this year.  I have a small class (only about 15 students) and they're good kids.  One of the science teachers at Reagan has 40 kids, so glad I'm not in that position for the summer.  The way it works is that our first week here, we just took classes, and now we're in the middle of teaching summer school for Houston public schools.  I thought it would be something like team teaching with some other people, but no.  I have my class all to myself and it's just me up there for 80 minutes every day, trying to keep a bunch of high school kids entertained.  The only company I get is from TFA staff people periodically observing me and then telling me what I'm doing wrong up there.  It's kind of scary how much responsibility we all have for the summer, trying to get failing kids to pass, especially since I have no idea what I'm doing up there.

When I was told that TFA Training Institute would be "boot camp for teachers" they weren't kidding.  There's 650 of us here at the University of Houston (the people going to the Delta, Houston, Denver, St. Louis, Rio Grande Valley, and Hawaii), and we're all staying in one giant ugly dorm building - the Moody Towers.  It sounds as shitty as the name moody implies.  I'm on the 14th floor in a double that has a bunk bed, and I feel lucky to have that.  Most of the rooms have "bouches" where you pull you bed/couch out of the wall when you want to go to sleep.  During the day, you push it into the wall about halfway so you have a couch.  Pretty ghetto.  

We wake up at 5:30 every morning, and since there's 650 of us all going to take a shower at the same time, there's never any hot water.  So cold shower it is.  Quick breakfast in the dining hall, hop on a school bus with my fellow teachers at Reagan, and we're there by 7:00.  I teach 1st period, which means I get some prep time, but some of the other TFAers start sessions right away at 7:10.  After teaching for 80 minutes, I have some time to grade some papers, and then from 11:20 until 4, I'm in sessions, basically taking classes on how to become a teacher.  It's like a whole curriculum smashed into 5 weeks of learning.  Get back to the dorms around 5, change eat dinner, and then work on lesson plans or go to more sessions back at Moody.  I've been getting to bed around 12:30/1, and getting more sleep than a lot of people.  It's totally fine doing that schedule thing for about a day, but after two weeks, it's really getting grueling.  They say week 3 is the hardest and it's downhill from there, so I'm trying to recharge this weekend to get through next week.

Aside from the entire paragraph complaining about stuff, I'm really enjoying it.  The people here are great and I really like the group of us heading to the delta.  We've been hanging out and doing various things on the weekend (drinking).  Most of us are still waiting for our final placements in the delta, so I think a lot of anxiety will go away once we know what town/state we'll be working in for the next two years.  My roommate is cool - no replacement for my life partner of course - but it's kinda like rooming with Karlin.  He's mostly nocturnal during the week (napping after dinner and waking up at 2 am do start doing all his work for the next day).

Some of my favorite stories from week 1 of teaching:

-My roommate had all his students in 8th grade fill out a survey.  One of the questions was "What do you want to be when you grow up and why?"  One response: A hit man.  Why?  "So I can kill people."

-Another delta guy is teaching 6th grade reading.  One of his students is completely illiterate.  As in he couldn't identify pre-K words on a reading test.  This same student scored 9/19 on his diagnostic exam, the third highest grade in the class, apparently just by guessing.

-"Code 42" is what you yell when you're teaching elementary school and you have a kid run out of your classroom (so as not to alert your other kids that there's a students running wild though the halls of your school).

Hope you're all having relaxing summers.  I'm just taking things one day at a time here.  

-Mr. D