TFA and Training!

Well, today was supposed to be my first day of teaching, but mother nature had different ideas and decided to through a torrential downpour complete with lightning and thunder on the city of Houston, cancelling summer school for the day at all of our sites and putting my expertly crafted lesson plan on hold for a day. Tomorrow I will wow my students with my expectations, class goal, and their first diagnostic (so I can get a chance of how they're doing).

After an epic road-trip with Aunt Annie (we made it to Mississippi in three days from Washington, that's pretty good) we arrived in Houston on day 4 (also made a detour to New Orleans, that was quite an experience...though I haven't had much time to reflect on it).

Institute has been a whirlwind of deadlines, lack of sleep, and full days of work. Last week our bus left around 6:21 a.m., meaning I had to be up, dressed, and breakfasted by that time. The school I'm teaching at is in West Houston, and it's about a 45-1 hour drive from where we live, depending on the traffic.

Most of the days were spent in lectures, but these were really helpful and informative: all about setting goals, gauging progress, and how to set classroom expectations. Even in a short week I felt pretty confident about my first day. The people here are all amazing too and come from all different backgrounds and walks of life. But they're all unified in their wanting to change things in our public schools. It's that mission that unites us and it's a great thing to share with people.

More to come: Lesson 1 will start tomorrow. I feel ready, nervous, and excited. I'm teaching 7th grade English for a summer school program and then I'll be shipped off to Arkansas to teach choir (I used "shipped off" deliberately: this feels like teacher boot-camp) by Mid July.

Wish me luck.

Cheers,

-Nate

"You were almost kind, you were almost true. Don't let them see, that other side of you."

Krakow, Wraclaw, and Auschwitz

What a trip it's been so far. The choir has managed to travel quite a bit in a short amount of time, hitting the bus. Warsaw was lots of fun, but Krakow was an amazingly beautiful city, deeply affected by World War II. It was there that alot of Schindler's List was filmed, so we saw the old Jewish Ghetto and Jewish quarters of the city, along with a great many churches and castles. Our concert in Krakow was kinda dissapointing, very few people showed up because the church forgot to advertise for the concert. I had some great clubbing experiences there though and met lots of Polish students who were willing to talk about the world and life in general, and it's definately been one of the best parts of this trip: getting to know different people with different viewpoints.

After Krakow we headed to Auschwitz, and it was truly an eye-opener. Words really can't do justice to the emotion and power of the place. Most of the time "How could this happen" was going through my head, but I oftentimes would put myself in the places of these different people. When you see the results of humanity at it's greatest evil extreme, you often wonder where you would be in that spectrum: what if it was me holding the gun as a guard? What if I was interned at one of the camps? Would I have been brave? What is brave? These are powerful questions, and definately worth exploring and experiencing.

Wraclaw was also a very nice city with a big square and we had a very quirky tour guide. Highlights included getting drunk before the bus-ride to Prague.

Now we're in Prague, and the city is amazing. Not too big geographically, but very beautiful and well reserved (it wasn't touched by WWII). Our concert is in about a half hour, so I have to cut this entry short.

Cheers,


-Nate