Just got back from the Reality Israel trip. For those who have not heard of it, TFA pays for 70+ corps members to travel to Israel for 12 days, hear from educators and leaders, and engage in discussions about education, leadership, and inequity. For free. Yes, you heard that right. All expenses paid. Perhaps I’ll…

The first year teaching is brutal. For almost everyone. But I can’t shake the feeling that it shouldn’t be this hard. What do you wish someone would have told you or taught you how to do before your first year teaching? For me, 1) I wish someone would have demonstrated how to effectively use betterlesson.com…

This may not be a new thought, but it needs to be said.  Institute is a pile of garbage.  It serves one primary purpose, and there’s no close second–getting you used to be completely and utterly miserable. It certainly wasn’t for the students.  I was supposed to cram a year of algebra into about fifteen…

Oh, I wanted to.  September sucked.  October sucked.  November sucked.  And when I say sucked, what I mean is every day was truly awful.  Not just kind of bad.  Truly awful.  The depression was overwhelming.  Just getting up in the morning was a struggle. Has it really gotten that much better?  I’m not sure….I think…

So Induction starts Wednesday, and I’m excited to let the brainwashing begin. I’m two years out of college, so probably less likely than some to be susceptible, but then again I’m pretty susceptible to brainwashing in general if commercials are any indicator (KFC Double Down! I’m going to buy that tonight!) But here’s my question.…

A few days ago, I got an email from Adam Geller, who is apparently the founder of Teach for Us. He directed me to Kerry Folan, who recently created a site called teacherlove.org for people to post stories about their favorite teachers. I was told I would have  $100 donated to me through Donors Choose…

From the card my kids gave me on the my last day: You are awesome, Mr. G! Thank you 4 being here. Sad to see you go but hope to see you again! PS You will be missed. I will miss you pleas [sic] come and visit us. We’ll miss you! Come back soon! Thanks…

The Boston Charter School I worked at last year employed something called “AP for All”–in order to graduate, every student was required to take AP US History junior year and AP English senior year. Jay Matthews, the education reporter for the Washington Post, is also a huge believer in the importance of AP courses and…

A lot of incoming CMs starting blogs are over-the-top crazy enthusiastic about teaching.  Which is great. But I worry about the confidence that many of these newbies seem to have.  There’s this mentality along the lines that “the only reason my students haven’t achieved is because their previous teachers have held low expectations for them.…

You are very brave. In my experience, it’s hard enough to manage behavior when the class is in English.  But in another language?  Doubly hard. So here’s a question I’m posing: is it possible to be an excellent Spanish teacher without being a little terrifying? As a student myself and as a school employee, I…

…to fix a broken relationship with a student.  That’s what I’ve come to believe.  But it requires a lot from a teacher.  Patience.  Persistence.   Willingness to start fresh.  Faith. I have one student that I work with that tested my belief in the nature of relationships.  In a moment of frustration, I snapped at…

Since I moved back to DC, I have been very interested in DC’s charter movement.  Charters now educate something like 40% of the kids in DC, and new charters seem to be sprouting up every year. But if there’s a great resource for profiling and comparing DC’s charter schools, I haven’t found it.  Only through…

There is a woman who is currently a New Leaders for New Schools Resident Principal at the charter school where I work.  Before becoming a resident principal, she was a music major in college and then taught elementary school in Hawaii for two years through TFA. She can’t be much older than 25, yet she…

TFA believes in data (as in “data-driven instruction”).  So does the charter school I currently work for.  Teachers give four interim assessments spread out over the year to prepare students for the DC-CAS.  They are supposed to track progress on certain objectives and develop reteaches and strategies/plans to address students who are not on track.…

I’ve been teaching SAT part-time for Kaplan since September.  I have come to think that Kaplan sucks the big one.  More on that another time. But it got me thinking about the following questions: 1)  Is there any national SAT prep company that caters specifically to low-income students? 2) Are the SAT prep needs of…

I accepted my job with TFA the day it was offered.  I’d spent the past few months reading everything I could about education reform and teaching, while observing and practicing “teacher moves” as a teaching assistant that I would be able to perfect as a CM next year. Then, out of the blue, I got…

This one, right here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10School-t.html. I feel like this article gave me a better idea of what working in a non-charter high-needs school will be like (if I get placed in a non-charter school). Two interesting mentions of TFA by the principal of 223. 1.  TFA first-year teachers are essentially worthless. 2.  The ideal teacher…

Since I’ve been working as a teaching assistant in a sixth grade math classroom for the past year, I put down middle school math as one of the subjects I’d be willing to teach. At this point, I’m an expert percents, decimals, fractions, etc. So I was a little surprised when I realized that in…

I’m going to attempt to summarize my last two years in ten minutes and one paragraph. I applied to Teach for America as a naive college senior two years ago. Around the same time that I was accepted and assigned to teach middle school math in St. Louis, I was accepted into the MATCH Corps,…