What a day. It got weird in the first ten minutes of class, when A., one of our girls, was asked to lift her head from her desk and pay attention. First off, that was weird for her not to be paying attention – she is a model student. Rebecca was teaching and A. didn’t respond…and didn’t respond…and didn’t respond to a hand on her back as if to wake her. She was totally non-responsive to either her name or being touched. I was in the back of the class so went out to find another teacher to get someone from the office – with some amazing luck the school principal was coming out of a classroom two doors down. I called her in (we have no school nurse) and she checked on A., asked to call her parents while she called 911. Rebecca was great – the other kids were doing warm-up practice problems, so she kept them working. The paramedics came and took A. to the ER. I don’t think the kids every refocused after that, and the three of us were definitely flustered. We had lost a lot of instruction time, and all concentration. And of course we were worried about A. The principal said it seemed to her like dehydration or low sugar, but it’s still hard to focus when one of your kids is in the hospital. Rebecca’s lesson then ran long, and the kids didn’t understand how to solve multi-step equations, so they practiced more, making the lesson even longer. It was necessary to give them more time (them learning the material is more important than equitable teaching time), but it meant my lesson and Juli’s, both of which built on the first one, were severely compressed. That’s one of my biggest struggles – adjusting time during a lesson. I write 50-minute lessons – teaching that in 25 minutes is very hard and my execution of that lesson is weak. So despite managing to stay calm and collected during our first classroom medical emergency, none of us had a good day and it definitely hurt how well the kids learned. Meanwhile, we still haven’t gotten an update on A., so this day has been very hard.
Aside from my kids, we got an update from GNO (Greater New Orleans regional office) today on hiring – sort of. I still haven’t heard about that job I interviewed for 2 and a half weeks ago, despite following up with TFA. It was good to know where things stand in the New Orleans office, but not so encouraging to know that 76 out of 250 corps members have been hired, school starts in 3 weeks, and apparently that is right on target. Anxiety is very high among the New Orleans corps members since our hiring is taking so long and we don’t feel as if we’ve been kept informed very well. It makes it harder when other regions are almost entirely hired – so everyone I know from other regions at this Institute have jobs. GNO’s goal is to have us all placed by the first day of school – we’ll see. Meanwhile, frustrations are mounting here and rumors fly about hiring, assignments, regional reassignments, etc. It’s not entirely the GNO TFA office’s fault – school districts still don’t know what they need, enrollment numbers haven’t been finalized, new schools are still being chartered, and many faculties are still on vacation. Not to mention the general disorganization of the school districts there. It’s one of those unique joys and frustrations of New Orleans!
On a lighter note, these are the lyrics to our Corps Member Advisory Group's song...sung to the tune of "I Will Survive." We had fun with this. First a TFA dictionary: LP is lesson plan, CFU is check for understanding, GP is guided practice, CMA is corps member advisor, and the Vine is the local bar next to campus. Enjoy!
First I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
being this sleep deprived.
But I spent so many nights
writing my LPs all wrong
The days were long
The sessions droned on and on
I got a class
just behind pace
I just walked in to find kids here
with that blank look upon their face
I should have done a CFU
I should have fixed my damn GP
If I had known for just one second
My CMA'd be watching me...
Get off that bus!
Walk in that door!
You're TFA now
Don't have a first name anymore
I was the one who spent my Thursdays at the Vine
you'd think I'd crumble
You think I'd lay down and die
Oh no not I
I have survived
As long as I know how to plan
I know my kids will thrive
I've got all these skills to give
I've got two whole years to live
I have survived.
I have survived!
HEY HEY (teacher face!)
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