Time for a career change update. I'm now in Philadelphia at TFA's teaching institute and it's been a long, exhausting, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes aggravating week. Mostly it's been a pretty amazing week. I'll give a general overview about institute before I get to the nitty gritty of it all.
Currently on the campus of Temple University are 800 brand new TFA corps members from 6 different regions: Baltimore, D.C., Delaware, Detroit, Philadelphia and Massachusetts. These new teachers will be spending 5 weeks (1 week of training and 4 weeks of teaching/training) at (roughly) a dozen different inner-city elementary, middle, and high schools around greater Philadelphia, mostly teaching credit recovery classes to those who failed one or more courses this past school year. Others corps members will be teaching Freshman Academy, which is a summer transitional program for incoming freshman to strengthen their academic background and prepare them for the rigors of high school. My specific school is a West Philadelphia high school, Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter School. (No Fresh Prince references, please.) To answer your questions, yes, it is an all boys school and no, I will not be teaching Latin. Although all the students do study Latin for the entire 4 years of high school, I will be teaching Freshman Academy reading. I'm actually rather excited because I get to spend the next four weeks reading, analyzing, and discussing George Orwell's Animal Farm with 16 incoming freshman. It's very exciting.
You many wonder, does TFA just throw you into the classroom without any formal instruction? Welllll... Here's the nitty gritty: For the past week, we've had 5 days of intensive training in classroom management, lesson planning, literacy, and a few other sessions - a few of which were completely non-essential (IMO). Most of our time was well spent but there were a few sessions that I found either unnecessary or entirely too long. A 90-minute diversity session was pretty unnecessary but if they wanted to have it, it should have been cut down to 30 minutes.
The way the TFA model works that each corps member is put into a corps member advisory (CMA) group at their school where they have 1 adviser to guide them. In my case, George is my corps member adviser. George was a 2010 corps member and just finished his 2nd (and final) year of teaching in Philadelphia. He will be in law school in the fall because that's exactly what this country needs is more attorneys. (Where is that sarcasm font?) My CMA group consists of 10 corps members from several different regions (I am the sole Massachusetts member). We are then subdivided into 2- or 4-person groups who are known as collaborators (or "collab"), who will teach the same group of students but 2 different subject matters. For instance, my collab is Kelly, Ankur, Alex and myself. Kelly and Ankur will be teaching math and Alex and I are teaching reading. We have been tasked with imparting 40 different objectives in each of math and reading which our young scholars need to master by the end of 4 weeks. It's a pretty daunting task and we're sure that we are not going to be able to get through all 80 objectives but we'll do our best. Alex and I are co-teaching reading this summer, which means we split a 120 minute session with each of us teaching a different objective during our individual 60 minute classes.
This past week was grueling. A ton of new information was imparted to us plebes and a lot of paperwork was generated in the form of vision statements, lesson plans, management plans, and investment plans. As with the sessions, some of these tasks I feel were necessary, some not so much, some of these items were also incredibly repetitive and therefor annoying as hell. But it's a process and most of us have decided to just accept it like sheep and go through the steps. At the end of the day, TFA is attempting to shove 4 years of a bachelors in education into 5 weeks of training. Lots and lots of coffee, red bull and soda is being ingested this week (not by me, but others) in order to get through these long days. The things that I'm happy about from this week: (i) 4 weeks of teaching reading and literature, (ii) that Boys' Latin has air conditioning, (iii) that I've got a great collab and adviser, and (iv) that I lucked out in getting a single studio in the dorm and don't have to share a bathroom. Holla!
Starting Monday morning, I will officially be a teacher and seeing 16 new and (hopefully) excited faces in my classroom. Stay tuned for the week 2 update next Sunday!
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You many wonder, does TFA just throw you into the classroom without any formal instruction? Welllll... Here's the nitty gritty: For the past week, we've had 5 days of intensive training in classroom management, lesson planning, literacy, and a few other sessions - a few of which were completely non-essential (IMO). Most of our time was well spent but there were a few sessions that I found either unnecessary or entirely too long. A 90-minute diversity session was pretty unnecessary but if they wanted to have it, it should have been cut down to 30 minutes.
The way the TFA model works that each corps member is put into a corps member advisory (CMA) group at their school where they have 1 adviser to guide them. In my case, George is my corps member adviser. George was a 2010 corps member and just finished his 2nd (and final) year of teaching in Philadelphia. He will be in law school in the fall because that's exactly what this country needs is more attorneys. (Where is that sarcasm font?) My CMA group consists of 10 corps members from several different regions (I am the sole Massachusetts member). We are then subdivided into 2- or 4-person groups who are known as collaborators (or "collab"), who will teach the same group of students but 2 different subject matters. For instance, my collab is Kelly, Ankur, Alex and myself. Kelly and Ankur will be teaching math and Alex and I are teaching reading. We have been tasked with imparting 40 different objectives in each of math and reading which our young scholars need to master by the end of 4 weeks. It's a pretty daunting task and we're sure that we are not going to be able to get through all 80 objectives but we'll do our best. Alex and I are co-teaching reading this summer, which means we split a 120 minute session with each of us teaching a different objective during our individual 60 minute classes.
Starting Monday morning, I will officially be a teacher and seeing 16 new and (hopefully) excited faces in my classroom. Stay tuned for the week 2 update next Sunday!
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