I know it's been a while, but if you guys only knew how intense this whole Teach For America business is . . .
Here's a list of the interesting things that have occured in the last week:
- My first day of class (Monday, 20th), I met my very first student and asked his name. Jamale. I shook his hand and introduced myself. "Hi Jamale, it's nice to meet you. I'm Andy."
- On my second day, in the afternoon after teaching, I had a post-observational meeting with my advisor (Sarah Bullard) that went something like this:
Bullard: "How do you think it went today, Andy?"
Me: "Great! Man, that was so much better than yesterday!"
Bullard: "Totally. You really took control today. You know, to be honest, I was worried about you yesterday."
Me: "Worried? What do you mean?"
Bullard: "Well, frankly, you were sort of a doormat."
- I have a student named Grey in my class. I talked to his mom Wednesday afternoon and found out the following:
Grey's middle name is Hawk.
Grey's mother has cancer, and is currently undergoing chemotherapy.
Grey's father moved, unannounced, to San Diego a month ago.
Grey needs help in math.
- Dominique is probably the smartest kid in class. He's also one of the most outspoken. Thursday, Dominique announced to me, without raising his hand, that the math I was teaching was too easy, and that we needed to get moving on. This erupted the class into chatter.
- Lesson Planning is probably the least intuitive thing I've ever done. My bedtimes for this last week went as follows:
Monday: Work on Tuesday's lesson plan - 12am.
Tuesday: Wednesday's lesson plan from scratch - 1am.
Wednesday: Thursday's plan, as well as drafts of next Monday and Tuesday - 2am.
I get up at 5 every morning.
- Meanwhile, Moody Towers (the dorm we all - 900 of us - live in), has brought about a condition I'm referring to as the Moody Bowels. I've never seen such a rainbow of colors and consistency.
- My non-teaching high of the last week was Batman Begins, which I managed to see on an Imax screen.
I think that's a pretty good glimpse at my life here in Houston. This afternoon, I'm going to head out to Galveston Island to spend the night with a few people from my Eastern NC group. Should be pretty sweet, and a nice break from Moody. I also plan on finding a local comic shop, on Jack's drunken suggestion, so I can get a 'reading' copy of the new Hellboy series.
And as one final note (especially to Jack and Lindsey), I finally managed to get those pictures from Lin's cameras onto my gallery.