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!