Last week, I started my summer fellowship at RePublic Schools! I’ve mostly been working at Smilow Prep, but I’m going to spend the majority of my time at ReImagine Prep, which was the first charter school to open in Mississippi. My fellowship is an operations position, and most of the work I’ve been doing is …
931 miles. 160 miles driven on the Natchez Trace. For anyone who hasn’t driven on the Natchez Trace, it’s a slow, scenic drive with very inconsistent cell phone service. The scenery is very similar to northern Michigan. 10 phone calls. 1 state driven through by surprise. Hello, Alabama. 3 gas stops. 33.67 miles per gallon, …
Yesterday was the last day of school. Over the summer, I wrote in my classroom vision that I wanted to have a class where my students were collaborative and supportive and learning from each other. Come October, December, February, this felt like a silly, naive idea, totally irrelevant to the actual struggles I’ve had in …
TFA frames teaching as leadership. That’s the name of the framework we’re following, TAL – Teaching as Leadership. Throughout the recruitment, this is a point they head home – this is leadership training, our students need strong leaders, and diversity, equity, and inclusivity is the center of our leadership. As a student leader, this was …
When I was at Western, I was obsessive about my GPA. It felt like a chance to redeem myself from what felt like a huge failure at art school, it felt like a chance to finally prove that I was smart. In two and a half years, I only had one B and one BA, …
I’ve been focusing a lot of my energy, lately, on getting my afternoon math block right. The morning has gotten better because I’ve been more consistent about explaining centers and I’ve started our morning meeting earlier, but it still feels, often, like my afternoon is a hot mess, my kids won’t stop talking, and there’s …
Lent starts this week. I low-key love the idea of Lent because I like all the things Lent is about less, about giving up, about making space in your life for the things that actually matter. It’s about cutting through the nonsense that so often occupies our minds and focusing on the things that actually …
I went home this weekend, unexpectedly. I had a family member pass away last weekend, and the memorial service was to be held this weekend, in Metro Detroit. I debated a bit, about coming – I was concerned that it was just too much, that I would be too stressed for the next week, that …
Last night, I finished reading Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded. It was excellent, really – it’s a deeply personal memoir by Hannah Hart, of My Drunk Kitchen fame. Honestly, this book surprised me. Hart is awesome, and I love her YouTube channel, but I did not expect this book to be as …
I heard of Dispatches from Pluto sometime when I first found out I was placed in Mississippi, it was recommended by someone from TFA, as a depiction of life in the Delta. I had been meaning to read it for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to it. I finally got around to reading it, …