Week Four

ONE MORE WEEK IN THE DELTA.....

Two things.... students change on Fridays and after holidays. After the long weekend, my babies were sleepy!

Tuesday... yawn! Not only was I tired from my weekend trip, but so were the kids. I worked SO hard the night before changing my lesson on nonfiction. My objective was supposed to cover five different types of non fiction and the students were to be able to (SWBAT) compare and contrast the different sources.... Originally I had five different sources on College. I changed the topic to hip hop because I thought the students would be more intrigued to "learn about hip hop" (like, they wouldn't realize they were learning about nonfiction....). I strategically put my students into five groups and made a beautiful graphic organizer for each student. My plan was to have them read for five minutes then take two minutes to fill out the graphic organizer about the source.... They were not having it. I think it was just too much reading at 8am...

Wednesday.... I gave out guided notes and presented each source on hip hop. They were to fill in guided noted about that type of nonfiction and then go to their graphic organizer from yesterday and write specific information about that source I was reading. They all did great on their assessment :)

Thursday... I taught synthesizing and it went really well. I scaffolded the lesson and I left this day feeling satisfied.

Friday.... TGIF! What a long week, today I taught the different ways to organize paragraphs based on the information you want a reader to know (compare and contrast, spatial, order of importance, etc.) After school and training sessions, the teachers went out to our local bar, "Hey Joe's" and had a blast! It was so fun to see all of the teachers in normal cloths and letting loose at the bar.

Saturday..... At 9am my alarm clock went off and by 10am my friend Molly hopped into the car and headed to Memphis, TN! It was a very pleasant 2.5 hour drive. We went to Graceland for a while and toured Elvis' estate along with some Elvis museums. Then we went to an Art gallery with some of the most beautiful art I have ever seen. We went to a place Molly found that was featured on the Food network called "Leanards." I had a salad because it was the only vegetarian thing on the menu but... we shared AMAZING onion rings :) When we got back to the dorms, I got ready once again and went out to "The Senators Place" which is another local hot spot, and listened to live music. What a great day!!

Sunday.... Working on finishing my lesson plans for the week, making an action plan for moving (leaving at 6pm this Friday!!), and relaxing just a little more before this crazy week ahead!

Week Three

At 4:30am on Monday June 28th, my first thought of the week was, "wow, I made it through my first week of teaching." On Friday, on my way to New Orleans, my last thought of the week was, "wow, I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing with my life."

This week was FULL of highlights. First of all I had my first "I really am a teacher" moment. At the beginning of class, after my "Do Now" (a ten minute creative review of the day before), I asked the class if they knew what implicit and explicit details were (this was my lesson for the day).... No one knew.... Then after guided notes, a worksheet, and a short story, I gave them an assessment. My entire class scored 100%. Eighteen students walked into my class room (#127) and didn't know something, but when they walked out.... they did. It was magical.

I now have 18 LOW income students in Indianola, MS. They are all African American, and for a few, I am the first white person they have ever talked to face to face. The other day, I was working with one of my struggling students "Martrell" and I wrote his name down on the paper we were working on. He said, "You are the first teacher to ever spell my name right." Ever since then, he has worked harder and talks to me more respectfully than ever. In general, I understand why I am here. One of my students, Erin, has a 7 month old child. I really try to work with her in class if she is struggling because I know she doesn't have time once she is home. Erin is in my class because she missed too much school last year (the 8th grade) because she was having her baby. When I asked the class to write down in their journals who they look up to, she wrote: "right now, Ms. Kahn because she teaches me everyday."


This week, I got an apartment in Charlotte! It is just beautiful and is centered in South Park which is a great part of the city. I have one house mate (2br/2ba) who is also teaching high school English.

On Wednesday, I saw BB King live here in Cleveland, MS! He was WONDERFUL!

But the highlight of this week.... New Orleans! Five of us Charlotte girls packed into a car and drove 5 hours to NOLA for the long weekend. We saw the best firework show ever, listened to the most amazing live music, and just maybe had a daiquiri or two ;). This weekend was one of the best of my life! Just the traveling to and from LA was great in that the South is so beautiful and open.... Now off to prepare my lessons for the week! (nonfiction, synthesizing, paragraph organization, and persuasive writing). Week three of teaching, HERE WE GO!!

Week Two

671 new teachers began the quest of ending the achievement gap in the Mississippi Delta on June 21, 2010. I started my week with 21 aspiring ninth graders (meaning they did not do well in the eighth grade so they must take summer school to be promoted to the next grade). Yes, I did say I started the week with 21, but as of today I have 19. I have 19 students ranging from 14 to 17 years old in an entering 9th grade English class.

Beep, beep, beep. On Monday June 21st at 4:30am, my clock went off. I put on my new blue teacher dress and headed to school.

"So Sarah, what was the hardest part of your first week, ?" My response: "classroom management." I didn' t realize that most of my job as a teacher would be to force students to listen to what I am saying.

With that said, Monday was a day of assessment testing in each class. I teach block A from 8-9am, the Science teacher, Mr. Johnson, Teaches Science in block B and the Math teacher Ms. Taylor teaches block C and D before and after lunch. The three of us are a team called a "collaborative" or "collab" for short. We share the same classroom, the same classroom theme, the same reward/ discipline system, and the same students. In between block B and C, we have "academic intervention hour" which is a time to break the class into three groups and help certain students who are struggling or excelling faster than their peers. In general, Monday went well in that my students practiced classroom procedures well and each took an assessment.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010- I taught my first lesson... "Point of View." My students did well on their assessment and followed my behavior rules. Tuesday was a good day. I learned Tuesday that cool-aid pickles are a snack. Also, I am not Ms. Kahn... I am Ms. Kaa.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010- Not a good day. This day I ATTEMPTED to teach my students what a plot diagram is. We went through each term, none of which they have seen before. It seemed today that not too many of my students slept before because I had to wake up almost every student. They were so disruptive that I didn't get a chance to hand out the assessment. Instead of teaching a plot diagram, I taught how to raise your hand.

Thursday, June 24, 2010- I re-taught the plot diagram with the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air because this song is about a story. We plotted this song on a plot diagram together. Then I gave a football example and we plotted that on a diagram. They took an assessment and FINALLY got it.... I guess a little creativity in the morning isn't a bad thing... I'm learning remember! We breezed through the actual objective for the day, which was compiling an accurate summary of a text.

Friday, June 25, 2010- TGIF. What a week! Today, my objective was to teach the students how to use context clues to signal antonyms or synonyms in a text to define a challenging word. As complicated as it sounded, they got it!

Saturday, June 26, 2010- Soccer game at a bar then a 12 hour nap!

Sunday, June 27, 2010- Lesson planning for week three in the MS Delta, week 2 of teaching!

Week One

What a week!

Last Sunday at 9am I graduated from UCSB. Just a few hours later I was on a plane to Memphis, TN. But was that my final destination? Nope!! After a three hour car ride and super-walmart trip later, I landed in Cleveland, MS.

Delta State University is my home for the next four and a half weeks... It's not Charlotte, NC but it will do ;)

Each day this week, I woke up around 4:30am to get ready and eat breakfast before catching a bright yellow school bus to Carver/Merritt school at 6:03am. For the past four days, from 7:00am to 4:30pm, we had sessions at our new schools on lesson planing, classroom management, finding our teacher voices, and much, MUCH more. Starting this monday, we finally get to teach ( I will be teaching an entering high school English class and I have 30 students). Every night this week, we've had a lot of work to do, so we don't get to bed before midnight, but exhaustion is worth it for my future students :)

At the end of each day, we give out 6 awards to corps members that each represent a TFA goal. I was bestowed the "Sense of Possibility" award on Tuesday :) Keeping up my positivity and excitement in the Delta is a must!

The best part of this week was friday night. The city of Cleveland threw us a catfish fry with live music and free beer! It was amazing to relax with 670 other teach for america teachers and tons of community members. It is so amazing to continually meet so many intelligent and kind people here and I cant wait to get to know everyone better!

I do not get ANY cell phone service here in Mississippi (excluding the car ride home from the High School for about ten minutes) so I apologize for having a terrible cell plan.

I didn't think I would say this, but excluding the lack of cell service and the 102 degree weather with extreme humidity, I am LOVING Mississippi!

I took a tour of the Mississippi Delta today and it was awesome. From slavery, to civil rights, to modern day developments, this place is so rich with history.

Week one was great!