One of the weekends the really really amazing people of Winstonville hosted a cookout at their community center and invited us to come.  The food was delicious, it was so generous of them to do, and it was so nice to be in the middle of a real community with real people.  Seeing people in their environment makes it so much easier to imagine them complexly. I'm so glad I got the chance to go.  

Also, it was the most beautiful evening ever.  

Institute Days 7 and 8: Institute Just Got Real

Yesterday was my first day of actually teaching.  Overall my day went pretty well.  My lesson, however, totally bombed.  Like actually bombed. Not "oh Deanna don't be so hard on yourself I'm sure it went fine!" But  some kids who got the question right before I even taught how to do it then didn't get it after my lesson.  I unlearned them.  I turned their knowledge into confusion.  And I still got another note from a student saying she loves me and from other students saying I'm smart.  Read further for details.  But of course I can't expect my first try to be perfect!

At the end of the day I did a lesson about never giving up and about exercising your "brain muscle" so it can "grow" and so you can get smarter.  I tied this into why it important to do homework.  (The following day, ALL my homework came back complete -- BOO YAH).  I also taught them that if a bully tells them they're stupid to sass them back with "there ain't no such thang."  We practiced this by me going around to my students as the bully and them giving me the sassy girl response back.  That was highly entertaining for both me and them.  Then I had them fill out a couple of questions after the lesson and one of the questions was "Who inspires you and why?"  I had three students (of 6) say that I inspired them because I am smart and nice.  One said I make her happy because I always smile at her and she thanked me for it! So cute.  I'm so overwhelmed by the love!  After school let out we had "Community Night" which was basically Open house but in the multipurpose room instead of the classrooms.  We only had one parent come (parent of the student who wrote me my first love note).  But it was more like having 1/3 of a parent because she had 6 kids (my 4th grader being the oldest) so we had to share her time with her 1st and 2nd graders teachers.  In the meantime all the teachers were holding the baby and chasing the toddler around as he drew on walls.  My shining star was so excited to have her teachers all to herself.  She played "I spy: sight words" with her reading teacher and later with me. She also did some homework with her reading teacher and she told us that she loves homework and wants us to give her more! She is so eager to learn and I'm so excited to see how much she does learn.

We didn't get home until 8pm and that was pretty rough to make sure I got all my work done at a reasonable time but somehow I did.  Many people stayed up till 3-4am or flat out pulled all-nighters.  Someone from my school already quit and so did someone from the high school.  But Ive been told this is the worst week....

Today was much better.  My lesson was much smoother and my behavioral management went better as well.  My students grew.... kind of.... well... they went from 14% mastery to like 35-ish% mastery sooo thats something?  Definitely an improvement from the negative "growth" of yesterday lmao.  Gave one of my students a reading test who was absent for testing and he tested on a 5th grade level! So proud.  We also had the students take pictures holding signs that say what they wanna be when they grow up for our bulletin board.  Can't wait to hang them up because they came out adorable!

Others in my school are struggling.  There's been multiple classroom fights, at least one every day.  Couple teachers crying -- both in front of and not in front of students.  We have a lot to process right now.  Our school is so poor they can't even afford basic things.  No paper for students to write on (students come with only pencils, if that) so that threw off my first lesson.  I don't even try to get soap from bathroom sinks cause there is none -- no paper towels either.  Bathroom stalls will be lucky to have toilet paper -- today we used tissues and napkins from our lunches and we had to ration them among students so they could use the bathroom.  Toilet paper that does exist sits on the floor because the holders are broken or non existant.  Many stalls aren't even working in the first place.  2/4 are usable in the bathroom across the hall and in the multipurpose only one of the two stalls has a door on it.  100% of students (and some community members) get free lunch and breakfast due to their financial situation and most students come from single parent households (or single grandparent) and have many siblings.  Every one of my kids has at least one younger sibling.  One student is one of 9.  It breaks my heart to see the struggles they go through, and it clearly has an affect on them.  Again, if anyone would like to make a donation to the school, please don't hesitate to contact me.  Even something as little as $5 can buy toilet paper for my class for a couple days...

I have some serious love for our school team staff this summer.  They were all such wonderful and supportive humans, and they modeled no nonsense nurturing like nobody's business.  They also did fun stuff to help us through our long and exhausting days, like fruit snack Fridays and teddy graham Tuesdays ever week, and play dough and yoyos to play with during our professional development sessions.  I do not receive sessions without such treats. 

We had a cookout for the Fourth too, with fireworks this time!  Favorite lady  Devon gave us all some patriotic face paint.  So nice!! Pictured above with some of my favorite Pearman ladies, including my CMA who was seriously a godsend. 

A lot of mornings were rough mornings at Institute, but this was one of the things I passed on the way to breakfast every day, which helped.  Good people. 

Here's a fun/delicious thing!  Delta Dairy is a froyo place in downtown Cleveland, Mississippi, that is owned and operated by two TFA alums who came to the Delta to teach and decided to stay and become a permanent part of the community.  Available as a topping in homage to the students of the Delta: hot cheetos. 

Catfish is a big thing in Mississippi, and the Friday after our first week Delta State University hosted a big party for us, Catfish on the Quad, with live music and amazing food.

The first day my kids came to school in Mississippi was magical.  We only had them for a month but I understand now that there is no hyperbole involved when teachers say that they love their kids. 

There were TONS of stray cats at Delta State University for whatever reason, but these ones were the ones I saw most often.  On the left, a white mama kitty and her two baby kittens, pictured climbing a tree, and on the right this cat that my friend Devon called Wizard which liked to chill in the bushed outside of the dining hall.  It was tempting to pet them, but they had fleas, and I heard a rumor of someone having to change rooms because after petting the cats they too had fleas.  No thank you. 

These are the AB first and second grade collab members at my school this summer and I love them all so much ahh.  

Remember that one time I thought I was going to keep a blog during institute, and then, well, institute?  Me too.  

Sorry about that, kind of!  But also not sorry about it, because institute was messy, and I'm kind of hoping that by not recording it as it happened I have enabled the messiness to fade in my memory until I'm left only with the hazy afterglow of knowledge gained and school team and student love.  

Also, I spent a lot of my five weeks in Mississippi feeling frustrated beyond belief - at myself, at TFA, at my collab, at my kids - and I'm glad that I didn't record those feelings in minute detail.  All of those people - but especially my students (and even, sometimes, me) - deserve better than to have me venting my frustration at them on the internet.  Any obstacles that I faced were largely a result of my own inadequacies of the moment - inadequacies that I am still working very hard to overcome. 

The fact of the matter is that - whatever you might think about TFA and the people who become TFA corps members - no one knows better than I do that the 19 amazing, wonderful children I had the honor of teaching this summer deserve a better teacher than I am.  No one could point out the many and diverse ways that I failed them this summer better than I can.  However, without me - if TFA wasn't in the Mississippi Delta, running the summer schools that make up our crash course in teaching - those 19 kids wouldn't have had the opportunity to attend summer school at all.  And every single student in my classroom made growth this summer. I'm not proud of every single moment in my classroom, but I am proud of that. 

Anyway, I wasn't keeping this blog up but I did take some pictures of things as they happened, so I'll share those.  Speaking of messy moments, this is a piece of the cold Domino's pizza that some kind soul bestowed upon me and my collab member, Travis, at 11:30pm in the student union while we made a valiant attempt at Culture of Achievement planning. I'm working on my CoA plan for my classroom in the fall right now, and I wouldn't say no to any proffered pizza.

Today I spent the day in sessions learning about how to teach elementary literacy skills.  Even though I'll be teaching middle school math in the fall, this summer at Pearman I'll be teaching entering 2nd graders.  The first two weeks it'll be my responsibility to plan and teach both morning meeting, which reinforces academic skills but also practices social and community skills, and reading comprehension lessons.  Ohhh boy!  In most collaborative groups (or, you know, "collabs" as we obviously call them.  So many abbreviations and acronyms and initialisms here) there are four partners, two to teach morning meeting and reading and two to teach math, but I'm part of a group of three, so I'll be teaching the two first parts myself for the first two weeks.  It'll be more work, but also more practice and experience.  Looking on the bright side! 

The smaller group of Pearman CMs that I was working with today was really really great, and I was glad to get to know them a little better and feel more like we're a team.  We (and by we, I mean Hillary) created this adorable poster as a part of one of the sessions.  There is a picture of the whole group floating around somewhere - I'll try to grab it to put up. 

When we came back (at 5:45 - I'm exhausted) we got to go to the Instructional Resource Center (or the IRC, duh) to pick up teaching tools.  For us this week it's a book for read aloud and a book for shared reading.  I picked Miss Nelson is Missing and Owen. So excited! Second graders are adorable. 

And now I am going to sleep for a million years/until wake up at 5:30am tomorrow. 

Institute Day 2

Well today was definitely the least interesting day so far in terms of things to write about.  Had to wake up at 530 for breakfast even though I didn't have to be at the lecture hall until 730 so I grabbed breakfast-to-go and my lunch (because we have to pick it up at breakfast). Was a little disappointed with the meager portion of breakfast -- a small yogurt, an orange, and a granola bar.  Apparently bagels aren't a thing in the south... Anyway, today we had lectures and structured work time from 7:30am until 5:30 this evening.  We learned more about our vision then began brainstorming for our vision.  Then, we learned about crafting each individual lesson vision, lesson assessment, and student exemplar (a fancy word for an answer key that shows work) and made a very rough draft of each of these for our first class lesson on monday yay! Mine was essentially a very beginner algebra problem without the letter (ex: 5 + 13 = ____ + 8, what number belongs in the blank).  It seems like it would be easy to teach such simple math but I found its actually a little challenging because I would typically explain in words they don't understand (i.e. "invert the operation", though they learn this in lesson two taught my my partner!) After this, we learned the very basic format for a lesson plan and watched a video of a teacher performing a lesson that employed each step of the 5-step lesson plan.  They gave us a lottt of resources so I feel much more comfortable and confident that lesson planning is something I can take on! Hopefully I won't be unpleasantly surprised.... but I probably will so l will prepare for it!  On that note, bought a beginner yoga kit (mat, block, strap, dvd) for only $25 that got pretty good reviews, so I'm pretty excited about that as a method for de-stressing.  I've also learned that it's hard to keep the college student super frugal mindset when I'm expected to act like a professional adult. But, alas, I have only $2000 to make it till my first paycheck in september-ish with car payments and soon rent to pay and an apartment to furnish.  Womp. So Ms. Dunne is now accepting life donations! I promise I will even put them towards materials for my classroom if you'd like ;)