In TFA, there’s a lot of talk of transformational change. It’s an organizational core value, and it’s emphasized pretty regularly. It’s hard to understand, though, what it means for me personally. Changes in my life tend to manifest in big, dramatic ways rather than small ones.
I feel like, in some way, TFA is transforming me. Not in any of the ways I expected, though. I expected Institute to be incredibly hard – I’d heard stories of how no one got any sleep, how it was so stressful, how people were competitive to out-work each other. That’s not how it’s been at all. People have been really willing to help each other out, and I feel like I’ve been getting an adequate amount of sleep, and I’ve had a bit of time to socialize. I’ve had bad days here, for sure, but they feel very justified. For instance, we had one day that was pretty bad because our SGI lessons were totally unplanned and we pretty much winged it – I learned my lesson from that and I’ve done a better job planning SGI since then.
Since being here, I feel like I’ve been significantly more relaxed than I was during college. Going into Western, I had a singular goal of being successful, of fitting four years of achievement into two and a half. I feel like I did that, without brakes – I would stop at nothing to get good grades or try to go above and beyond.
Here, it feels different. There’s this sort of understanding that you are not going to be an amazing teacher right now, and that is okay. The whole goal is to be a transformational teacher, but it’s been made clear that you probably are not going to be there very soon, and that’s okay. It feels like the point right now is to put yourself on a path where you’re going to be transformational one day, where you’re constantly growing and learning.