Mississippi Heat

Ah, Mississippi. I think I am developing a love-hate relationship with the Magnolia State. Hot sun, sticky sweat, beautiful country roads, endless TFA sessions, a sweet southern hospitality, and a 4:00 am wake up call. That’s my life here in Cleveland, MS. It’s easy to complain, but it’s also hard to forget why I’m here when I think about the precious fourth graders that will walk into my classroom next week who are grade levels behind in math and reading. Yup, that’s right. Fourth grade. Elementary school. And yup, you heard me—four o’clock am. Our bus leaves for Coleman/Manning Elementary, my placement school, at 5:23 am. We have to be at breakfast by 5 (the earliest the dining hall opens) and leave enough time to go through a lunch line, where we fill our (drab) Delta State University lunch boxes with an entrée, two sides of our choosing, a drink and an ice pack. I honestly feel like an elementary schooler myself, loading the cheese wagon with my dorky lunch box and trying to fight the first day jitters. But we survived Day 1 of our school visits, and we’ll be back at it by 5:23 am tomorrow.

Most of the day was information sessions and meeting in our small groups with our Corps Member Advisors (CMAs) to discuss our placement grades, subjects, expectations, lesson planning, etc. We’ll start learning how to write lesson plans tomorrow, and will have our first three lessons due Thursday morning. It’s like education classes on steroids. I’ll be team teaching with a girl from another region, and we’ll switch off teaching math and reading—the first two weeks of math for me, followed by two weeks of reading. The afternoons/evenings will be reserved for more information sessions and lesson planning. I will admit I’m a little afraid of 25 fourth graders, but I’m also really, really excited. We start officially teaching a week from today.

Everything else about Institute is great. Yesterday, we went through a very organized, run-of-the mill registration, with plenty of tables and a heaping pile of city maps, menus, and the infamous “Bounder”, a 2-inch think bound notebook of all the readings we will be doing in the next 5 weeks. We were greeted at our dorms by local boy scouts and college-aged students, who helped unload our cars and handed us ice cold bottles of water. A great introduction to the Deep South. Most of day/night 1 was trips to Walmart, a cookout, and hanging out with our region. Maybe one of the best things about Institute is the fact that all of our ENC Corps Members live on the same floor of the dorm, and we’ve invested in door stops so we can wander in and out of each others rooms. We’re one of the smaller corps here (there are people from Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Houston corps—a total of over 500 people) and it shows—we all already know each other and spend a lot of time together.

Hard to believe we were all in North Carolina together just a few days ago for Induction.

I may quite possibly remember my first few moments at Induction for the rest of my life. I walked into the hotel and a Program Director immediately welcomed me and handed me a 1” binder with color-coded divider tabs, a table of contents, and everything I could possibly need to know about the week. It was heaven, I tell you, HEAVEN. I knew immediately that this was the place for me, and the rest of the week only confirmed that for me. ENC TFA is incredibly structured, organized, well-thought out, and planned. All of the staff is amazing and friendly, and it is clear from the get go that they truly believe what they are fighting for: closing the achievement gap.

The achievement gap may well be one of the most important TFA buzz words. In a nutshell, it refers to the fact that 1 in 10 kids living in poverty won’t graduate from high school, and those that do typically graduate years behind in math, reading, and other critical skills. Again, I encourage you to check out TFA’s website at www.teachforamerica.org to get a bigger picture as one of the nation’s most underexposed problems. On a similar note, check out the trailer for the new movie “Waiting for Superman” that’s coming out soon (maybe only in select theaters)—Michelle Rhee is a former TFA corps member and the current chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEFhb2Z7LCY

Just experienced a little more Delta excitement—the power went out campus wide during our rotating sessions! We had to walk back in the pitch black. It’s now WAY past my bed time (10:45 pm…I have to be up in less than 6 hours!) so I’m signing off. Good night!