This weekend I was reminded of the finer things in life. I realized that these finer things are the little things that we, all too quickly, take for granted! This past weekend was one of the best weekends I have spent in a long time. Not because I went on some elaborate trip, not because I spent super large quantities of money, but because I got to simply enjoy the little joys of life. Some of these little joys I experienced this weekend were:
*Driving in my car ALONE and singing out loud to the radio with no one to hear
*Starting out to make cookies and ending up eating the entire bowl of batter
*$20 business professional shirts at Banana
*Laughing with best friends about "old times"
*Bubble baths with Disney Princess "Dream Boquet"
*Comfy blankets and pillows
*Freshly brewed coffee
*Waking up to chocolate chip pancakes and bacon
*Finishing an entire bottle of wine with my bestie
*Using REAL creamer in my coffee, not 2% milk
*Wearing goofy glasses when seeing movies in 3D
*Driving and looking at dream homes I could never afford to live in
*40% off sales at Loft
*Dinner with the man of my dreams
*Church services that focus on the mission of Christ and making His name known
*Amazing Grace!
Again, this weekend was so MUCH NEEDED and rejuvenated my heart, mind, and soul for this week! God continues to remind me while I'm here that I take too much advantage of all the wonderful blessings I am given on a daily basis. I praise Him for a restful weekend that has given me the strength to entire this week with rejuventaion and passion.
Continue to pray for strength and encouragement please because today was nothing short of awful! However, it is making me stronger as an education and as a person! He will never give me anything I cannot handle! He will complete the promise He has set out before me! Genesis 28:15
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
One At A Time
Ahhhh! I just got in bed, pulled out my laptop and glanced down at the clock. Seeing that it is 10:10PM I realize that this is the first time since I arrived at this fantastic place called Institute that I have been in bed before 11PM. Don't get me wrong there have been some absolutely wonderful moments, however there are times when the stressful overpower the great. Just a short run-down of one of my days here for your entertainment purposes:
5:20AM Hear the sound of my alarm going off...compromise to stay in bed "a few more minutes."
5:30 Snooze again and repeat this process approximately 3 more times
5:43 Finally roll out of bed, throw on flip flops and head to the "survery" (TFA talk for the place where we make our lunch and eat breakfast)
6:07 Arrive back at my dorm with my lunchbox filled with a turkey pesto sandwich, house salad with honey mustard, Sun Chips french onion, Jell-O Pudding cup, apple and an absolutely necessary Diet Coke. To save time I also bring my breakfast back to my dorm and eat it in my room.
6:58 Load the bus located outside of the survery with the other 52 TFA Corps Members teaching at Bruce
7:03 (literally if you arrive at 7:04 you are driving yourself) Depart from Rice and drive to Bruce Elementary
7:15AM-4PM I will not bore you with all of the school details; however just know it is some combination of building relationships with students, analyzing data, teaching an Academic Impact Hour to aid student's math and literacy skills, creating data trackers, demonstrating the Behavior Management Cycle, identifying and banning any biases we may have against our students or their environments, teaching literacy, math, and science lessons. All of these plus about 98747921094 more sessions and lessons can be found within any given TFA CM day.
4:15 Arrive back at the Rice Campus
4:30-5 Regain my sanity and try and let all of the mounds of knowledge learned from the sessions sink in before I have to directly apply it to my lesson planning, nightly assessments and evening sessions.
5:15-6 Eat dinner with Courtney, Liz, Rachel and other wonderful Dallas CMs. Honestly this is the part of my day I look the most forward to. These are the people who get me through the everyday grind and who keep my spirits lifted! I am so blesssed to have met these people!
6-9 Attend evening sessions about how to give Diagnostic Reading Assessments, how to plan effectively, other important teacher tools
9PM-midnight Plan with group lessons that are due the next morning. By "plan" I mean "vision set" the objective, key points, assessment, connection to summer growth goal and organize how to implement the "I do, We do, You do".
Confused? Thank you! I have paid tens of thousands of dollars majoring in this exact thing for the past four years. However, being here it is like I received my bachelor's degree in nuclear physics because all of this is brand new to me. Crazy right?!
Just as a recap...the days are long and the nights are even longer. I luckily get to see a few of my good friends here and talk to friends and family back home on a very seldom basis. I know that my time here is preparing me to be the absolutely best teacher I can be for my students. I know that if I continue to invest in them and soak up as much knowledge as possible that I WILL make an impact, even if it is one day, one student, one lesson at a time!
Please continue to lift us all up in your prayers! If you are praying or thinking of us let me know, it is such an encouragement to hear from people in the "outside of TFA world". Peace and Blessings!
5:20AM Hear the sound of my alarm going off...compromise to stay in bed "a few more minutes."
5:30 Snooze again and repeat this process approximately 3 more times
5:43 Finally roll out of bed, throw on flip flops and head to the "survery" (TFA talk for the place where we make our lunch and eat breakfast)
6:07 Arrive back at my dorm with my lunchbox filled with a turkey pesto sandwich, house salad with honey mustard, Sun Chips french onion, Jell-O Pudding cup, apple and an absolutely necessary Diet Coke. To save time I also bring my breakfast back to my dorm and eat it in my room.
6:58 Load the bus located outside of the survery with the other 52 TFA Corps Members teaching at Bruce
7:03 (literally if you arrive at 7:04 you are driving yourself) Depart from Rice and drive to Bruce Elementary
7:15AM-4PM I will not bore you with all of the school details; however just know it is some combination of building relationships with students, analyzing data, teaching an Academic Impact Hour to aid student's math and literacy skills, creating data trackers, demonstrating the Behavior Management Cycle, identifying and banning any biases we may have against our students or their environments, teaching literacy, math, and science lessons. All of these plus about 98747921094 more sessions and lessons can be found within any given TFA CM day.
4:15 Arrive back at the Rice Campus
4:30-5 Regain my sanity and try and let all of the mounds of knowledge learned from the sessions sink in before I have to directly apply it to my lesson planning, nightly assessments and evening sessions.
5:15-6 Eat dinner with Courtney, Liz, Rachel and other wonderful Dallas CMs. Honestly this is the part of my day I look the most forward to. These are the people who get me through the everyday grind and who keep my spirits lifted! I am so blesssed to have met these people!
6-9 Attend evening sessions about how to give Diagnostic Reading Assessments, how to plan effectively, other important teacher tools
9PM-midnight Plan with group lessons that are due the next morning. By "plan" I mean "vision set" the objective, key points, assessment, connection to summer growth goal and organize how to implement the "I do, We do, You do".
Confused? Thank you! I have paid tens of thousands of dollars majoring in this exact thing for the past four years. However, being here it is like I received my bachelor's degree in nuclear physics because all of this is brand new to me. Crazy right?!
Just as a recap...the days are long and the nights are even longer. I luckily get to see a few of my good friends here and talk to friends and family back home on a very seldom basis. I know that my time here is preparing me to be the absolutely best teacher I can be for my students. I know that if I continue to invest in them and soak up as much knowledge as possible that I WILL make an impact, even if it is one day, one student, one lesson at a time!
Please continue to lift us all up in your prayers! If you are praying or thinking of us let me know, it is such an encouragement to hear from people in the "outside of TFA world". Peace and Blessings!
Monday, June 14, 2010
...and the Journey begins!
Today we began our 2010 Teach for America journey at "Teacher Bootcamp." They call it this because they cram everything I have learned in the previous 4 years in college into 5 weeks at Institute. We are staying at Rice University in Houston, TX. It is a rather nice facility actually and I am greatly enjoying my time here.
This morning began bright and early for me at promptly 5:46AM (not quite used to this after being done with Student Teaching for almost 2 months). We were advised to go get our lunch first thing in the morning to ensure we did not receive a "tofu burger" as our supplementary lunch. So there I was walking through the cafeteria of at least 200+ other corps members similar to myself all rushing to get lunch in my pink, flower print pajama shorts and over sized T-shirt. This early morning endeavor did pay off, however, because I received my brand-new Rice Owls TFA lunchbox and koozie (sp). I filled this new box with a Turkey and Pesto sandwich, side salad, fruit cup, Sun Chips, chocolate pudding and an apple. All of this accompanied by my much needed caffeine fix of Diet Coke. Needless to say, Rice hooks us up pretty well with the lunch situation! :)
After we received our delectable lunches we boarded our buses to take us to our respective schools. My bus leaves promptly at 7:03AM every morning. If you are there at 7:04 you are late and the bus is gone. We arrived at Bruce Elementary about 15 minutes later. I was surprised to find out that Bruce was a brand new campus and was a Music Magnet School. Considering my passion for choir and theatre I knew this was going to be a good place for me. We dived right into Session 1 where we learned about the various roles we would be playing in teaching summer school. We also attended sessions that informed us on how to write lesson plans and how to set "big goals" for our students. I thought all of this would be a breeze considering I have been studying educational practices for the past 4 years. However, Teach for America has a very unique way in approaching everything they do. The methods I learned today differed greatly from the traditional teaching methods I have learned.
We came back to the Rice campus around 4:15PM where I was greeted by my sweet new friends Liz and Courtney. These 2 girls are a gift from above and I know the Lord has blessed my life with both of them. We had dinner in the "West Servery" which consisted of chicken breast, beef tenderloin, rice pilaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The meal was quite satisfactory!
We then walked the, what seemed to be, 3 mile hike to the Rice basketball arena where we attended our "Opening Ceremonies". Here we heard from previous corps members and also from Wendy Kopp, the CEO and founder of Teach for America. This session was inspiring considering the terrifying task we are about to enter into.
After walking cripply back to my dorm (I had to take my new black pumps off because I have blisters the size of quarters) I decided to take a shower and head to bed. This puts us at where we are now. Please continue praying for strength throughout all of this to encounter each day with a renewed passion and commitment to this movement. I know that through my efforts, one day all of my students will have an opportunity to obtain an excellent education. I wholeheartedly believe that this opportunity begins with me!
This morning began bright and early for me at promptly 5:46AM (not quite used to this after being done with Student Teaching for almost 2 months). We were advised to go get our lunch first thing in the morning to ensure we did not receive a "tofu burger" as our supplementary lunch. So there I was walking through the cafeteria of at least 200+ other corps members similar to myself all rushing to get lunch in my pink, flower print pajama shorts and over sized T-shirt. This early morning endeavor did pay off, however, because I received my brand-new Rice Owls TFA lunchbox and koozie (sp). I filled this new box with a Turkey and Pesto sandwich, side salad, fruit cup, Sun Chips, chocolate pudding and an apple. All of this accompanied by my much needed caffeine fix of Diet Coke. Needless to say, Rice hooks us up pretty well with the lunch situation! :)
After we received our delectable lunches we boarded our buses to take us to our respective schools. My bus leaves promptly at 7:03AM every morning. If you are there at 7:04 you are late and the bus is gone. We arrived at Bruce Elementary about 15 minutes later. I was surprised to find out that Bruce was a brand new campus and was a Music Magnet School. Considering my passion for choir and theatre I knew this was going to be a good place for me. We dived right into Session 1 where we learned about the various roles we would be playing in teaching summer school. We also attended sessions that informed us on how to write lesson plans and how to set "big goals" for our students. I thought all of this would be a breeze considering I have been studying educational practices for the past 4 years. However, Teach for America has a very unique way in approaching everything they do. The methods I learned today differed greatly from the traditional teaching methods I have learned.
We came back to the Rice campus around 4:15PM where I was greeted by my sweet new friends Liz and Courtney. These 2 girls are a gift from above and I know the Lord has blessed my life with both of them. We had dinner in the "West Servery" which consisted of chicken breast, beef tenderloin, rice pilaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The meal was quite satisfactory!
We then walked the, what seemed to be, 3 mile hike to the Rice basketball arena where we attended our "Opening Ceremonies". Here we heard from previous corps members and also from Wendy Kopp, the CEO and founder of Teach for America. This session was inspiring considering the terrifying task we are about to enter into.
After walking cripply back to my dorm (I had to take my new black pumps off because I have blisters the size of quarters) I decided to take a shower and head to bed. This puts us at where we are now. Please continue praying for strength throughout all of this to encounter each day with a renewed passion and commitment to this movement. I know that through my efforts, one day all of my students will have an opportunity to obtain an excellent education. I wholeheartedly believe that this opportunity begins with me!
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