First steps in my classroom

Today was my first real day in my classroom at my school, and the clearest description of my initial sentiments was...overwhelmed.

I was overwhelmed by the fact the the teacher who just retired after 22 years left me all of his possessions.

All. Of. Them.

Piles and piles and piles and piles of books, text books, test prep books, old wrapping paper, old bulletin board paper, old loose-leaf paper, old student work, old student notebooks, old art projects, glittery snowflakes whose glitter is no longer on the snowflakes but rather at the bottom of my bookshelves/ And, did I mention piles and piles of books?

Walking into my classroom I didn't really know where to begin. There were mismatched desks set up in clean rows waiting to be molded in the way that I chose, shelves and shelves of books waiting to be sorted through, and of course, the dreaded cabinets with unknown belongings and the possibilities of animal droppings waited to be peeked in.

After getting over the initial shock of just how much work setting up my classroom would actually take, I realized that I actually am really lucky. I am LUCKY that I have a school with books! Some schools don't have ANY books! I am SO LUCKY that my library is leveled...many of my TFA friends have had to level their libraries from scratch! I am even MORE lucky that my literacy coach and other new teacher coaches spent hours of their lives this summer sorting through the learning lounge where even MORE leveled books exist. I am LUCKY to have piles of materials to sort through and keep, lucky to have a smart board in my classroom, and yes, I am lucky enough to have a beautifully air-conditioned room.

I am also so appreciative of the staff at my school. They are all REALLY helpful and doing just about everything they can to make us new teachers feel a part of the team and that the work ahead of us is manageable. I didn't go more than 20 minutes today without a fellow teacher peaking his or her head in, and actually spent a good chunk of time poking my head into the fourth bilingual grade classroom across the hall and asking for advice on just where my centers should go and just how I should arrange my desks, which just turned into him helping me move all of my desks around for about 40 minutes. Our new teacher mentors were just wonderful and would drop by to help us move bookshelves, desks, rugs, chairs, and whatever else. My fellow fifth grade teachers are also fantastic people and I know that I can and I will be leaning on them for a lot of support this year.

Basically, although I'm overwhelmed with the mountain of work that is ahead of me in the next few days (and I suppose the next two years), I am starting to realize just how lucky I am to be working at my school.

Tomorrow, Sydney and Izaz take on my classroom with me. three people to tackle the mountain of my classroom is certainly better than one...

I'm a teacher

I'm officially a teacher. On Monday, my 4 person collaborative group and I met and taught the 17 beautiful second-graders we are teaching this summer, and meeting them and working with them makes why I am here and doing what I am doing so tangible.

It's hard, I'm not going to sugar coat it. I get up at 5 every day, on the bus at 6:15, and don't get back to campus until 5. I work on lessons as soon as I get back, and sometimes I have sessions at night. We have our rough drafts for the following week due along with our final drafts and prep materials for the following day lesson, so there's always something to be done and never a stopping point. I haven't gone to bed before 12:30 any night, with the more likely sleeping time has been 1 or 2. That is an average of 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night, and by Thursday afternoon I am delirious.

We teach one subject each week, and then rotate the next. This week I taught math, and next I will be teaching a morning block of phonics and interactive writing. When we're not teaching, we're learning through curriculum and literacy lessons, corps member adviser sessions, or lesson plan creation at our school sites. Lunches are generally working lunches.

We get observed once a week, and I have never seen a better way of giving feedback than the TFA way. My adviser basically watches my class and writes down practically everything I say and do and then everything the students say/do in response, making the feedback debrief probably the most useful thing I've ever received. I can target the areas I need to work on with such precision because of this process, and am so excited at how clearly I can see my areas for improvement and the steps I need to take to work on them. I'm guessing this will make my learning curve high, and I can already see huge progress in my lessons and in my execution in the classroom.

It's hard, and I love every minute (except the bus ride). I don't even want to think about how tired I will be in 2 weeks, but I never dread waking up in the morning, and as soon as I see my kids, all my energy rushes back and I just get caught up in their bubbling excitement.

Kyle, we'll see if I get to blog again. It's doubtful.

Queens

I'm all moved into my dorm room in Queens and it feels like freshman year all over again, except that most of the people I'm meeting are actually really awesome and with super interesting stories.

I live in a suite with 10 girls. We share a common living space and a half kitchen. I live in a triple with two girls, one from Chicago that went to Michigan and one from Jersey that went to Rutgers. We share a bathroom with the double room next door.

Yesterday I got here after spending a relaxing Saturday and Sunday afternoon with some of my favorite people ever. I arrived to 550 corp members going through 10 stations of paperwork, fingerprinting, etc. Very organized and very overwhelming. It was so so great to see familiar faces amongst the crowds, and especially to see Ms. Katy Hayes at the laundry station after a 2 week hiatus.

I guess it finally hit me that I'm doing this, like...for real, during our official welcome last night. I got butterflies and was like ooooooooh mannnn. I've been waiting for that to catch up with me.

This week is nice. We have a few days to get settled before the real work begins next week, and for that I am grateful. Today I will make a target run, perhaps go see our beautiful new apartment, and open a checking account. I got a little preview of my new neighborhood yesterday, and it made me so happy.

More updates to come. Miss everyone. A lot.

Black Sand Beaches

Sunkissed and smiling ear to ear after spending the day on black sand beaches in El Salvador. Me encanta la vida.

El Salvador

The lonely planet has never scared me prior to going to a country. It scared me last night before we hopped on a bus to El Salvador.

Luckily, a few lovely AIESECers picked up, and our last adventure begins.

Oh, and we saw some dudes carrying machetes. Awesome.

Xela

Right now we´re in the middle of the Xela portion of our trip. The sun wakes me up at around 730 every morning and by 8 katy and I are off exploring the city until noon. The city is quaint and I feel safer walking around here than in Guatemala. Everything is within walking distance, and our school is a 30 second walk from the city center, which is a beautiful park surrounded by old colonial looking museums, banks and restaurants. The winding streets are lined with strings of brightly colored houses, each distinguishing where they begin and end with crisp colors of blues, oranges, pinks, and greens. The city is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, and on a clear day, you can see them boldly stand against a bright blue sky.

After lunch with our host families, we head back to Sakribal to begin our 5 hour long one on one Spanish classes. We speak in Spanish with our teachers who speak no english, and get subjuntivo and direct and indirect objects drilled into our conversations over and over until they seep into our brains and make our heads spin. Yesterday we took a needed break from class with our teachers to visit a weaving coop that supports the indigenous women of surrounding villages, and then we climbed to the top of a hill to overlook the city as the sun began to set.

After class finishes at 7, katy and I hussle back to our street in the dark. The twenty minute walk is the most tense part of our day, as catcalls and dark alleys cause us to quicken our steps, clutch our bags, and be alert.

We live on the same street 6 houses apart, and after dinner, I can run to Katy´s to flop on her bed and watch TV. Our families live on the same street, but seem worlds apart. My family bathes with buckets. I get fed bread and honey for breakfast, a hotdog and cucumbers for lunch, and soup for dinner. My family makes meat twice a week, and so far my hotdog has been the only meat I have tasted. My door has no lock and doesn´t close, so I have to tie it shut with a ribbon. The front door of the house also doesn´t close, and has a padlock on the inside in order to open and close it, meaning someone always has to be home to let others in or out of the house. Katy´s room has a bathroom with a shower, 3 couches, a tv, and a dvd player. She eats big delicious meals every day, and her mom makes me extra pancakes when she finds out that my breakfast was 2 tortillas and some cheese.

Overall, I love this city. It makes me nostalgic for Granada, Nicaragua and the experience I had there. I sometimes wish I could just stay here for the whole summer, or hop a plane back to Granada and live there.

This trip has been so different than anything else I have done because it comes at a time of complete transition. I have nothing holding me back right now. Nothing is on pause back home. I don´t have a job that I am taking a vacation from. I don´t have an undergraduate education to go back to. I don´t have an apartment that I am going home to. My undergraduate life has ended, and my life as a corps member has not yet begun. I can really just be here. In the moment. Living now. Everything else seems so far away. And, while I know that in a few short weeks I will be on whisked back to reality, right now I can just enjoy the fact that I am here and having an amazing experience.

Tales from Guatemala

I knew this trip would be ridiculous when we started it off at hooters. Our first night consisted of ladies in scandelous clothing serving us wings as Katy´s boss belted sexual hearing. Needless to say, there are too many stories to tell,and this lady will surely tell some of our tales, but for right now, I will attempt to describe one particular tale...

So, Katy´s friend Raquel wanted to have us and a few friends over on Thursday night for "movies and pizza." She lives with her husband Danilo, his friend Ronal(d), and her cousin Evita from Belize. Starting the night off on Thursday were all of these folks, Katy, her friend Nikki, her awesome friend Abner, and myself. With so many people in the apartment,spending the night there would be tricky. But, Raquel told us not to worry. Her friend Fabian lives in the apartment above hers and had plenty of extra rooms for people to stay in.

Fabian, The 30 plus year old neigbhor, joined us early in the night, and was sending the creepo vibe hard within the first 20 minutes of his arrival. Instead of movies, Raquel stopped and bought drinks, and the night turned into supersticious storytelling of ghosts and spirits. Fabian managed to interrupt the conversation to sing rap songs, make starwars references, and appear as creepy as possible throughout the night. With every sip he took, the comments became more creepy.

At some point, of course, Raquel told Fabian and Ronal(d) that I was Egyptian. "EGYPTIAN?!" As Fabian asked me about mummies and pyramids, Ronal(d) ran to his room to grab his phone so that he could play me an Indian song and ask me to translate it. My persistent "I´m pretty sure that´s not Arabic" statements were lost in the excitement, and I resigned to losing that battle and flopped onto the couch to attempt to dose off.

This is when Ronald felt it necessary to pet my forehead...multiple times. The first time I swatted it away, but his persistence led to my various "no me toques" accompanied by hand swats. As this was going on, Fabian wanted some attention, so he started yelling "sara" and crossing his hands over his chest like a mummy. "Sleep like this." Awesome.

So, with the creepy vibes near an all time high, we decided it was time for bed. At the same time, katy and I started desperately thinking of how to get out of sleeping in Fabian´s apartment. We casually asked Abner in front of everyone if he was sleeping upstairs with us and he was pretty noncommital. Raquel started walked up the stairs with Fabian, showing us the way to the apartment, and as she turned up the corner katy and I started desperately whispering to Abner that he better not freaking leave us up there with Fabian alone, and we bully him into staying with us.

As we entered Fabian´s apartment, we realized it is a completely pimped out, rico suave bachelor pad. There´s a spinning DNA strand in the corner, a bright orange fold out couch, orange walls, crazy looking bacardi bottles, a glass table with pink chairs...the works. "Please sit please sit" He kept saying, "Please sit". We kept telling him thanks but no, we want to sleep, as Raquel laughed and muttered "ha, these girls are gonna get raped." "Please sit, I´ve never had an Egyptian and an American sit at my table. Please sit." Katy then decided to shut him up by sitting for 2 seconds on a pink chair, and instantly he turns on the music. She jumped up and we told him to show us the room. Abner, Katy and I entered into a room that looked pre-arranged for our visit. Fabian rambled about the beds, the blankets, pillows, and asked us if we wanted drinks. We quickly replied no, and kept saying goodnight to get him to leave. When he finally left, we shut the door, locked it, and burst into fits of giggles. As I dropped my pants to change, I said, "it´d be pretty hilarious if he came back".

Knock knock knock.

He tried opening the door but we´d locked it. I quickly put my pants back on and we opened it, only to have him speak to us for 20 minutes more about blankets, pillows, drinks, etc. He grabbed the fan from his room and plugged it into the outlet in our room, explaining to us in detail what each button was for. At this point I´m facing the back wall and just laughing my ass off, and Abner and katy are uncontrollably laughing as well. Finally, he told us he was heading back down to Raquel´s, and we quickly closed the door, turned off the lights, and peered out our window to see if he was leaving the apartment. We couldn´t see him, couldn´t see him, he wasn´t leaving...

Knock knock knock.

We all jump, and don´t open the door, but instead simply asked, "what´s up Fabian"...he responded..."I just wanted to say how happy I am to have an Egyptian princess sleeping in my house."

And with that, Katy and I huddled on our twin bed, and woke up two hours later to get the hell out of that apartment and hop in the back of Raquel´s pick up truck to get to the Academy by 7 am.