Still enjoying life...

Well this past week has been great. My parents and my aunt visited me. Getting to spend time with family really is great for boosting the spirits. It also meant that I had the opportunity to see a number of Broadway musicals. Thursday night we saw Promises Promises with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenowith. It was absolutely amazing although I never realized just how short she is. Friday we saw the Broadway version of Elf. It was a ton of fun and thoroughly enjoyable. Saturday we was Chicago and Million Dollar Quartet. Overall there was quite a lot to take in, but I loved every minute of it. The best part by far was having family from home coming to visit. My parents were able to see my school and meet my co-teacher. It also didn’t hurt that instead of eating in all weekend I was able to eat out at some pretty great places. We found a wonderful little Indian restaurant right next to my apartment that I will definitely be visiting again.

This week in class has been pretty low key considering last week ended with a student punching a staff member in the face. Since it was a three day week and only half a day on Wednesday for classes we focused more on review than learning new material. I had a student explain to me his theory on how algebra was created by teachers to make busywork. I then set that as my facebook status. The best part is the first person to comment on that status was my old algebra teacher who I probably used the exact same line on. I also had a student who decide to make vulgar sexual noises all of the class period. That was one of those moments where I had to choose whether or not to address the issue. I did originally, but when it continued it I decided to focus positive attention elsewhere. He was convicted the week before and finding a way to invest him in the class was challenging. I also had a student ask me why we do work every day in class. My response was that we were in class to learn and it was my job to teach him so that is why we have lessons every day. He said that I should try taking a day and not doing a lesson. To which I replied, “Do you think it is ok for me to show up to work and not do my job? Who would want to have an employee who doesn’t do their job?” He then stated, “I couldn’t trust someone like you to do a job Mr. Hamilton. You are too perfect.” Well I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment from my student or not. It is however slightly disturbing to think that he thinks you can go to work and some days just decide not to do anything. We are going to have to work on that. Students quiz scores this week were up significantly which is exciting.

I am in Boston for Thanksgiving with a friend from TFA. It is great to be out of the city and in a home. I’m sure I will have more to say soon.

A week in the life of...

So this week has been filled with new expreinces. I saw a pregnant clown on the way to work the other day. I can't say that I see the subway as the best place for a clown to hang out but who am I to judge. Grad school has been fairly low key. In my classroom however it has been a busy week. All four of my math classes are now at different points due to varying student abilities as well as the constant influx of new students. We have been studying perimeter and area with the middle school and the high school classes are at various levels of solving linear equations. I have a new student named Sirlancelot. Yes that is his real name on his transcript. Yikes! What loving parents. We also had a student punch a staff member today in one of the classes so tension is a little high for some of the students. My parents and aunt flew into Newark last night so I get to spend much of the weekend with them. :) One final thought/peice of advice. I found the greatest tv show on hulu. It is called Murder One and it was filmed back in 1995. The show is set up like any good cops and lawyer show except the entire season is focused around one trail which makes the whole thing much more intriguing.

Back to the blog

I wouldn't have expected gas to be a problem in an all girls class. But hey, I guess everyone does it. So I fail epically at updating this blog. Here are the things that have gone on in the past few weeks.

Improv Everywhere event. So I participated in a giant flash mob in Manhattan which consisted of about three thousand people doing all sorts of random things in stores and in a park. There is a video of the event here: http://improveverywhere.com/ Sufficient to say, it was one of the most unique experiences of my life. Being surrounded by people I had never met before doing things that you normally wouldn’t do in public was a blast. We had a gift exchange and I received a brand new copy of Pan’s Labyrinth. After that we (Matt, Mollie, and Robbie a TFA friend) went to Brooklyn to see a program called digital graffiti. It had a hippie/bohemian feel to it. There were all sorts of extremely obscure art. One of my favorite things that I saw was a woman on stilts with long flowing white robes dancing in front of a projector that kept changing. A local gym was also open and had all of its bouncy equipment set up which was quite fun. All together it was a really fun totally free night out in NYC.

By the way…major props to anyone who reads through this whole thing. In other developments I now have a new roommate. She just moved in. Her name is Simone and she was born and raise here in NYC. Matt and I are both exited to see how things work out. (cheesy intro) When it comes to working out I have now joined a gym. The sad thing is my biggest motivation for actually working out is the fact that I am paying for it. I am only paying ten bucks a month, but it is still hard earned money coming out of my pocket.

For one of my three day weekends I traveled to Baltimore to visit my good friend Joy. She has been doing TFA there for the last year. It was really great to meet up with her and her friends and just have some fun relaxing. Every time that I get to see people who I know from back home I cherish. It is not that I don’t enjoy the people here, but there is so much that they don’t know about me yet and so much that they don’t know how to relate to that I do miss home quite a bit. (Home qualifies as both Spokane and Fircrest in my book).

My students are so great, even the ones who throw desk across the room and the ones who put holes in the smart board, because each and every one of them is just a kid who is looking for attention. While I do have some days where I am frustrated, for the most part I come home each day pretty happy with what we’ve accomplished. If only there were more time. The bummer about being the only math teacher at my school is that I students only get one period of math a day as opposed to the double periods of social studies and English they receive. I feel that especially with math the more practice my kids get the better.

I’ll try to be more on top of updates. I promise myself that now, but we will see when I write again. For anyone out there who is feeling bored for some reason you are more than welcome to give me a jingle.

Catching up...

Student quote of the week. "I'm gonna break you. You ever been hit by a dump truck?"
Well, it has been a while since I updated this blog, which is unfortunate because my intent was to update it weekly. We will see how that goes from this point on. My last update was immediately after my first day of school and boy have I learned a lot since then.
Our four day weekend gave me the opportunity to prepare for class somewhat, although I am quickly learning that there is no such thing as truly being ready for class. There are good days and there are bad days. A part of that has to do with me being adequately prepared and a part has to do with which students are in class on any given day and how they feel for that day. Since the first day of school we have had all sorts of excitement. There have been ten kids who I had who have now left and another seven new ones have been added. To put that in perspective, about 40% of the faces that I see are different. It will take me quite a while before I really understand this system. There isn't necessarily any notice of when kids are leaving which is sad. To go home one night so that I can work to create an extra extension for a kid only to show up the next day and have them gone is a real bummer. The other bummer is half the kids are gone every day anyway for court or some other appointment. It makes teaching math fairly difficult, but we are pushing on. The kids are so great though and I really do feel as though I am beginning to build a stronger rapport with my kids.
At the moment I am still the lead teacher in a math class which is technically illegal, but who cares about technicalities.
The past two weekends have been a little bit crazy. I started out with out many plans, but the NYC nightlife sort of got to me. I don't plan on getting home at 6:30am again anytime soon, but the life experience of seeing a fight (crazy dude with a cane) and dancing in a night club are things that really are a part of experiencing the city. Matt and I now have a couch ordered and on the way and a TV coming soon to round out the apartment. The final thing we need is a roommate who we hope to find soon. I am sorry I haven't been more thorough in updating my blog.
Just as a hint to those of you out there, I really do enjoy catching up with friends so give me a call. I am free (meaning I can put off lesson planning if you call) every day after 3pm except Mondays until 8pm. That is 3pm eastern time so if you have some spare time during your afternoon give me a call.

First Day of School

First day of school. I am actually writing this between classes while I wait for the curriculum to for the class to be faxed over to my site. I have taught two of my three classes for today and I haven't started crying yet. This year is definately going to be a handful. The kids are interesting to say the least. I suppose that it is similar to all the classes I was in when I was in highschool. The each class has its clowns and its model students. Being at passages with this student population there are things that I see and worry about that I hope my teachers never had to concern themselves over. It is hot and the AC is out, so naturally you want to open the windows...well that is fine, but I need to make sure that the window above the fire escape is not open becuase that could be a problem. Having to hlod on to penicils and erasers until we are actgually using them, thne collecting them again after class also seems a like overkill, but these people know what they are doing. It is also a little bit strange to have one or two of the staff memebers in the room who are responsible for removing the kids if they get over aggitaded. Who knows, this experince is going to be great. I do also have to get used to a completely different set of names from what I am used to. Say good by to John and Jane, because a regular name now is Tymaine, Shaquille, or Spanky. I teach math. I will be teaching algebra and middle school math. I am actually the only math teacher at my site at the moment. Woohoo. When was the last time that I worried about slope or linear equations. Well I guess I get to learn it all over again then teach my kids. At this point I have finished teaching my classes for the day and I have to say as a whole it was successful. Successful in that my lesson was about why math is important and not actually teaching them any new math concepts.

I also think that it is I can say a little bit about my new apartment. The apartment as a whole is great, but I do have two slight complaints/things that just make me laugh. The floor in the apartment is uneven. When I say uneven I mean that there is nothing that is flat at any point. In the living room the table leans to the left and when I go to sleep if I lay down on my bed in one direction my feet are definitely above my head. The other slight problem is the noise. We are right along a main road and there is always something going on outside. So now that I have said my little bit of negative about the apartment I feel that I should say that I love it. Apparently Labor Day is a bigger deal in my neighborhood than I have seen it be anywhere else. Both Sunday and Monday we had people out in the street everywhere. Sunday night there was music until about 5am. When I say music we are talking steel drums and all sorts of other fun stuff. People were dressed up like it was Mardi Gras or something. Full on bright Vegas showgirl outfits with feathers and all. Of course the body types aren't necessarily ones that you would want to see in such outfits, but the spirit of the whole thing was great. That is all I can think of for now. God Bless.

This preview for an upcoming film is pretty good. Definitely worth seeing if you care about education at all. It is a documentary looking at the charter school movement.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2518550297/

Apartment plus some...

Knowing that school is getting ramped up back at Whitworth makes me a little bit sad, but school here is going to be ramping up as well so I’m sure that I will have plenty to keep me busy. Well after finding out that I had a job I had to go on and face the next step…finding an apartment. Fortunately, I my friend Matt from home and Whitworth is also new to the city and we were looking together. This is actually quite a daunting task here in NYC because there are so many and yet so few. I have to consider the location, the cost, and the apartment itself. I knew that for me cost and location outweighed the apartment’s look I didn’t really want to end up in a closet. Throughout the past few months friends from TFA have been finding apartments all over the city and some have had it easy while others find it to be a battle. I took almost two weeks to get mine. Craigslist can only get you so far and broker’s fees are expensive. I budgeted for about $1000 a month for an apartment. With TFA friends spending anywhere from 700-1300 a month I figured aiming to be in the middle would be a good plan. Well in the past two weeks I have spent countless hours looking at advertisements for apartments and visited at least ten different places, some nice and others not so nice. I sort of wanted to get one with a doorman and a pool/gym/billiards room, but that was a little bit out of my price range. Matt and I found a great one with a good location and low cost that was not too bad looking, but someone else beat us to it. Yesterday we went to check out a place right next to Prospect Park, the largest park in Brooklyn, that I had found on facebook. It was titled, $1450 / 3br - *Cash* Beautiful 3bed on Rutland Rd. and Flatbush Ave. !*CASH*, and had no pictures. Well after visiting the apartment we were pretty stoked. The maintenance man for the building was the one who let us in and we were shocked at how big it was. So we saw the apartment at 2pm then called the broker afterward to say that we wanted it. We met him at 4pm and put down the deposit which was one month’s rent in cash. (I struggle hand that much money to someone who I just met.) He was a great guy who’s name I still don’t actually know. Then we met again today at 2pm to file our final paper work while in the back of his car and pay last month’s rent along with a security deposit. Money seems to be flying here. So within twenty four hours I now have my keys to an apartment that is unfurnished. Well of course we decide to head to IKEA. Matt and I ended up spending five hours in IKEA and we only really got about half the stuff that we are going to need. This whole process has been a whirlwind. Oh and in case you were wondering if the whole cash upfront thing is sketchy I think so, but apparently in NYC it is actually quite common and I do actually have a legit lease form so it has all worked out. I wouldn’t suggest to friends however that they regularly run around the city with thousands of dollars in cash. I’m sort of over IKEA and all that it has, but I get the feeling that I will probably be back there again in the next few weeks. One more thing to add on to the housing tangent that I just went on, we now have an extra bedroom that we will probably end up renting out and I will be paying about half of what I budgeted for housing. Yippee.

The city as a whole is still a very interesting place. When traveling on public transit you never know what you are going to see. I have witnessed a young boy physically fight the woman he was with (I’m not sure if she was his mother or not). I have seen countless musicians/artist of some kind run into a packed subway car and begin playing expecting people to give them some money. To be a real New Yorker though you need to sit there staring straight ahead and ignore them otherwise they really will come up and get in your face when asking for money. The other day an older woman got caught in a subway car door. You may ask, how does something like this happen? Well I will tell you. I was on the D line heading to Coney Island and we got to a stop and the conductor announced that this train was now going to run on the N line. Well that sucks because more than half the people on the train have to get off and wait for the next D. So we get off and wait. The next D pulls into the station and we all get on only to wait a minute and hear another announcement, this train will now also be running on the N line and we should get out and wait for the next D. So there are a lot of frustrated people on the platform not really sure what is going on, the next D pulls up and the same thing happens only the conductor doesn’t speak very clearly so we are all quite unsure of what is going on. Well I get off because at this point I just want to walk or take a bus. As I get off the train doors close and this old woman is caught in them. She is not just a little bit caught, but a lot bit. Basically the doors are pressing directly against her belly and her backside. Well her head is turning one way then another and she looks very confused. She didn’t look confused about being stuck, but more about whether or not she wanted to be on the train. (Don’t worry, the trains won’t move without all the doors closed so she wasn’t in any danger). Well after about thirty seconds I go up to her and ask if she is trying to get off and she says yes. At this point I realize that this poor old woman was legitimately stuck between these doors that whole time with probably fifty people on the platform and another thirty in the car waited not wanting to step in to help. I guess there is still something to be said for being from Washington and not having as thick of a skin as New Yorkers. I was still willing to step in even if it was a little bit late.

Another fun travel story has to do with me walking down the street and stepping on a rat. That’s about it for that story. Yuck. The neighborhood that I have been staying in for the past few days with a friend from TFA is almost entirely Jewish. I have begun to see the world in black and white. That is really the only colors people here wear. I don’t have a yarmulke or long curls on either side of my head so I don’t really fit in. It is strange walking down the street and hearing Yiddish more than English. I was in a McDonalds the other day where the staff was all black and speaking Spanish. I guess my understanding of diversity in America has grown pretty substantially. Well that is about all I can think to say for now. Hopefully this hasn’t been too long and boring.

School starts soon but before that...

So time here in NYC has been great. I was officially offered a job this past Wednesday. I will be working at Passages Academy in downtown Brooklyn. The school has multiple site and my site is at the boystown campus. http://www.boystown.org/new-york I'm still learning about the school and there is a whole lot more for me to learn before I really have a complete picture. the school is very small. They max out at about 46 students and there are 10 teachers on staff. The kids are at boys town for multiple reasons. Passages academy is a part of District 79 here in NYC. District 79 offers alternative education programs to students who have been incarcerated, teen mothers, and people aiming for GEDs. This district is a relatively new thing for Teach For America. They placed one person in District 79 last year and two of us are in District 79 schools this year. I couldn't be more thrilled about my placement. It will be a unique challenge.

When it comes to living in NYC there is always something new to see and something more to do. I have officially finished my first class for grad school and I got an A. (woohoo) A new student ID card and more student bills to pay. However, being a grad student at Hunter College is not a bad situation. My overall cost is significantly lower than what it was to be a Whitworth student. I don't think that I will be quite as proud of this diploma as I am of my Whitworth diploma. I certainly wont be paying as much for it.

Apartment hunting is not too fun. The cost to live in NYC is outrageous. I'm hoping to get housing figured out in the next day or two, but until then it is couch surfing. Today I was walking around downtown and found some fun stuff. Tim Horton's/Cold Stone Creamery, a Dunkin Doughnuts/Taco Bell, and life is never really complete until you see the naked cowboy...I mean cowgirl. She is especially unique because she is as old as my mother and looks about as fake as possible. This is NYC. If anyone wants to come join me here you are more than welcome. Short term visits are good too.

Catching up

So I realize that it has been a really long time since I have updated this blog which unfortunately is not something that I was hoping to do when I first started the blog, but life is full of unexpected things. The reality is I have been waiting to post something until I was placed in my school for the fall so that I could talk about that and be excited, but unfortunately that hasn't happened just yet. So the reality is I still haven't figured out where I will be working this coming fall. The whole process has been pretty frustrating because while TFA sets up interviews for me I don't really have a ton of control over where I go. My first few interviews went well, back in July, but the first two schools ended up deciding not to hire anyone for the positions. The third school chose a different TFA guy who just came out of the workplace so he actually has experience. Then I took my week off to go to Canada which was great, but put me behind in the placement process since most people still waiting were placed during that week. Oh well.

Then I came back and last week we had round zero training which was not bad, but I missed about half of it because I was out interviewing. Last week I interviewed at four different schools which equated to eight interviews including phone interviews, in person interviews, and demon lessons. Soooo much fun. The basic gist of things is that one didn't think I would fit well in the system they had where I would have had to be a resource room specialist. The second said that they would love to hire me after my demo lesson if they had a position for upper elementary school because they thought I would be far better with that than the first grade position they had available. Oh well. I guess it is a good thing they liked me seeing as how that was the top charter school in the state of New York. So right now I am waiting to hear back from the other two schools. I had my last interview with one of them today, the other I finished up with last week, but with TFA we don't want to take any chances so tomorrow I get to go on a whole new interview with a new school. Hooray for going to grad school tomorrow for an eight hour class then leaving it and going straight to the interview which of course is in an extremely inconvenient location almost two hours away via public transit. So right now my hope and prayer is that I will get an offer tomorrow so as to avoid that whole process. I should find out soon anyhow and I'm excited to see where I end up. At the moment the schools that are pending are in Washington Heights (upper west side of Manhattan) and the other is in Brooklyn with a school for students who are in detention and awaiting court dates. I'll be sure to update again soon once I know something.

Grad school is not exactly what I would call challenging so far, but we will see.

The end before the beginning

Well it is all over. Institute is actually finished and I have a little letter that says I made it through. My kids made some major growth and I learned a ton. The thing that I learned that surprised me a little bit wasn’t necessarily anything to do with what they were trying to teach us. I learned how hard it is to be away from home and friends. Sure I made some friends while at institute, but at this point I don’t know how many of them I will see again and there are probably more people who I don’t really care to see again than people who I do. I miss Whitworth and Tacoma. Spending the next two years here seems overwhelming. I know that the program is great and that the city is great, but for me it just isn’t home.

I am actually writing this in the Newark airport. Within one hour of finishing institute I bought a plane ticket to Calgary so that I could meet my family up at my sister’s new house. Spending the next week with family is just what I need. I’m tired, a little grouchy sometimes, and I want to be around people I love. The next week is family time before I return to the chaos of the city and round zero training for TFA.

Some interesting things about NYC and what I have learned while I have been here:

-I have had a number of friends make comments before that leggings are not pants. I have to say that most of NY would disagree with you. The number of people who I have seen wearing only leggings (both men and women) is a little bit staggering. On that note, people should also avoid wearing tube top dresses while traveling. They look really awkward and sitting next to someone wearing that on the plane is pretty strange.

-Underwear and pasties do not count as clothing if you are 20 or 60. Yes I have seen both and neither should happen.

-On the subway the other day I saw something great. There was a man wearing a yarmulke next, to a man wearing a rosary, next to a man with a turban. There are many interesting people all on the subway.

-While moving my bags from St. John’s (where I have been staying for institute) I saw man dancing in the subway car. It wasn’t just a regular dance however, this man was pole dancing and rubbing his back all over the pole. As if that wasn’t enough a big guy came up to him and laid into him for being inappropriate in front of ladies. This new big guy then went on a tangent about the dancer being a ******ity ***** ********** *******. He started threatening him. He got off the subway only to decide to come back into the next door to yell some more. Then he got off and came back in again to yell. Oh what a night.

-Almost didn’t get out of the apartment this morning because the doorknob fell off. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to fix it.

-One of my best lessons was the last. This past Thursday we did a math review of everything that we had learned during summer school. We had ten full pages of word problems that dealt with all of the math problems that we have been doing. I did all the work independently before class and it took me about an hour and a half. I challenged the kids to beat my time. They got to work as a class and different groups could work on different pages. They took about ten minutes to really get into it, but when they realized they could beat my time they all began to work fervently in teams to try to finish in time. Seeing them get so motivated to do their work was great. Even the students who struggled still worked on the easier pages together. They didn’t get the chance to finish because we ran out of time, but in one hour they finished 9 of the 10 pages so I have no doubt that they would have done it.

-I can get a bagel and coffee from a street side vendor for $1.50. Take that Starbucks, McDonalds, and Sodexo.

-On the same block I can get two containers of blueberries (fairly good sized) for $2.

-If I want to get an apartment with a small room about the size of the study room from my old dorm it will cost at least $500 a month. No wonder the food is so cheap. We have to spend all our money on rent.

-The shuttle to Newark International Airport is only $25 roundtrip which is pretty great because it leaves from grand central in Manhattan and flights from Newark are generally less expensive.

-If you want to live somewhere that allows for cheap travel NYC is the place to be. I found an offer to go to Iceland for 3 days with hotels and airfare for only $400. I don’t really care to go to Iceland but it is still sort of cool.

-I watched the today show this morning while I at breakfast. I’m going to have to get myself on it as one of those silly people in the background waving. I walked by the area last weekend and I would not be hard to get there.

-Living in NY the biggest thing ever is happening … that’s right, Chelsea Clinton is getting married. We are all so excited. I’m not really sure why, but it is hard to miss.

-My kids think that Obama is a god. One of the guys at TFA does a really good Obama impression (his voice is perfect) and he recorded a message to the kids in his class as a class reward for the end of the summer program because they met their goal. They had a kid cry in their classroom of third graders because he was so excited.

-Diversity is a whole new thing. I have learned so much about so many different cultures while I have been here. Within TFA and in NYC there are so many different perspectives from what I have seen in the North West.

-East coast folks as a whole are pretty snooty. Some are great, but a lot have their noses in the air.

- I have learned how to do a teacher stare. J I’m still working on my teacher voice. It works sometimes, but then I want to smile or I scare myself which totally throws me off my groove.

-I love teaching math and reading. Writing is a nightmare and I wish that no one ever had to do it. I just say that now because I can’t see to get a handle on it yet. I’m sure that it will come with time.

-I want to treat these kids like campers. Instead of being Tyler I am Mr. Hamilton and instead of being flexible and fun I have to be pretty structured. Oh well. I think they like me anyway. Now I just have to try going back to camp and having the kids call me Mr. Hamilton. We will see how that goes over.

-Dunkin Doughnuts is everywhere. Their doughnuts are not that great, their sandwiches are lame, and everything is overpriced. Not worth a visit unless you get the munchkins. (Doughnut holes)

-If a dog weighs less than 10lbs it is not a dog it is a rat. The number of little rat dogs that I have seen is overwhelming. There have been a few that are too feeble to walk. Their owners put them in purses or even bags that are intended for dogs. They even had a restaurant (I forget the name, but it was like a Dick’s) that serves dog treats as well as regular food.

-There is going to be a mosque built on ground zero. Hello controversy, lots of upset people on both sides.

Time is ticking away...

I feel as though I am expected to get these kids to make changes in days that normally take weeks and teach objectives in weeks that should have months all while learning how to teach. Today has been fairly frustrating because we are assessing our students. While they have made growth, some of the objectives we simply haven’t had time teach them yet we are expected to test them on these objectives. It is not a student’s fault when their teacher doesn’t teach them something and I would argue at least right now during institute I don’t feel as though it is entirely my fault that the students didn’t get the best education either. Even with all these frustrations the students in my class have made some tremendous increases in reading and mathematics.

On a less school focused note, this past weekend was great. I met up with Katie Zerkel who I haven’t run into since May last year. We spent the day catching up with each other down in Times Square. We also went out and saw Mama Mia. It is my first Broadway musical since moving to NYC. It was a blast getting to see the city and spend time with a good friend. Sunday after church I went over to Mollie’s apartment and had lunch. Sunday evening we went to Pier 54 to dance. The NYC park program had live music along with a Latin dancing lesson. I made someone’s day when I danced with her, but she only spoke Korean and so outside of a smile and a peace sign there wasn’t much communication. Tomorrow is our last day with the kids. I’m excited to be done, but sad to leave my fourth graders. They are wonderful and they make me smile every morning.

I am still waiting to hear about my final placement for the fall. I hope to know by the end of the week, but with TFA you never really know. I’m excited to begin work for my students in the fall.

One week left...

I have almost made it through Teach For America Institute. The five week crash course on teaching that does the best it can to prepare me for a classroom this fall. I have to say that from my perspective the whole thing was a little bit more hyped up than I expected. I was told multiple times that this would be the hardest thing that I would ever do and I have to say that I don't think it is. Then again, when I look at other times in my life I feel as though I have been more challenged. I really can't think of anything that compares to the month that I spent washing dishes in "the pitts" at Frontier Ranch. Those were some hard days will lot of work and little rest as well. I also probably helps that I have had at least some experience working with kids at camp. While a cabin of ten fifth graders for the week is not quite the same as teaching a classroom, I do feel much more comfortable with managing children.

All is well on the hiring front for most TFA folks. We just found out today that 71% of the NYC Corps have been placed at this point (small party). At this point the lucky 29% of us (big party) who are still up in the air are just waiting for the next interview and potentially the next call/sticky note/text message to tell us that we got hired. Yes someone did really learn today that they were hired via sticky note from an assistant principle. It might be sort of cool to have that be how I get my first official job offer. While it is a little frustrating to be on the unhired end of the statistics, last year at this point only 31% of the corps members were placed so we are actually not in a bad position at all.

My fourth graders are great. Today we awarded the first of our 'Rock Star' prizes. Through class students have the opportunity to earn high notes. When they receive twenty five high notes they then get a photo shopped picture of themselves with the celebrity of their choice. Today one of the kids got a picture with him and Michael Jackson. Next week we have kids getting pictures with Madona as well as two Japanese cartoon characters that I can't remember the names of. It is amazing what silly incentives can do to boost a kids spirits.

I am trying to learn how to think like a fourth grader, I have to admit that it is harder than I would have expected. How do you explain to a kid who is struggling with rounding that any number that is equal to or greater than five means that you round up. I thought it was pretty straight forward, but when one child can't figure out that you don't round up with a four or down with an eight it can be hard to come up with more ways to explain. Using manipulatives can help, but they can also confuse the kid even more. Well it just show that I have a lot to learn. Next week I get to teach multiplication of two digit numbers by two digit numbers with regrouping as well as division of two digit dividends by one digit divisors with and without remainders. While I don't really have a problem doing the math myself, explaining the process and understanding why we do things the way we do is something I haven't thought about since I was in fourth grade. I get to learn right along with these kids. I have so much more respect for all of my teachers and the time and energy that they put in. I always thought that teaching was a fairly easy job for most teachers. Well I was wrong.

This weekend I am going to try to enjoy myself a little bit. I also get to spend some time each day with a different friend from home. :)

If you want me to send you a picture of some of my kids awards (their pictures with celebrities) shoot me an email. I'm not supposed to post them for the sake of confidentiality. The best email to reach me at is thamilton10@my.whitworth.edu

NY Times Article

So if I ever feel bad about myself I can always look a this article as a quick ego boost. It was on the front page of the New York Times this last Tuesday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/education/12winerip.html?_r=1

Three weeks in...

Well I have only been teaching for two weeks, but the training has been going for three and I am about to hit my one month mark here in NYC. To say that this has been a difficult experience would be an understatement. I didn't realize how important sleep was to my life up till now. I suppose that is because when ever I had a lack of sleep before in my life I had time to make it up. Well that is not the case here. You take what you can get, a short nap on the bus on the way to school or you give up on lesson planning at midnight knowing that you have to be up at 5am and even if you have the best lesson in the world you wont be able to present it if you haven't slept.

This past weekend I met up with Mollie McComb a friend from Whitworth and we went out to Staten Island and went hiking through a park. It is really great to get the chance to get away from TFA folks and see something different. It is also nice to have a friend who came from the same pond into this crazy NYC ocean. We also went to Redeemer Presbyterian Church this past Sunday. It is a pretty neat congregation and I hope that where I end up living will be within a functional distance of the church. After the service we strolled through Central Park. I wish I could afford to live near the park because it is absolutely amazing. Musicians, artists, trees, and grass although you can't walk on the grass because it is all fenced off. At least it is green.

My kids are priceless. Kids really do say the darnedest things. Today in class they had to use vocab words to create sentences. One of the sentences I looked at was 'the princesses and princes were bravely dancing.' Another said, 'Mr. Hamilton is magnificent.' I'm still getting used to being called Mr. Hamilton. What a strange thing. I do have one student who seems to have missed out on how to spell my name and when ever she writes it at the top of her papers she write 'Mr. Hamlet.' At the end of class today as a reward for good behavior we play Michael Jackson's Thriller and one of the students busted out a choreographed dance to it. He is the sweetest little guy. Being thin as a stick, wearing glasses, and soft spoken make him the person who I was least likely to imagine doing a dance, but he knew how to groove. The kids are great and life is going well here in the big city.

In the past week I have interviewed for two middle school special education positions in the Bronx. I don't know when I will hear back from them, but hopefully soon. I would love to be able to start looking for an apartment. Thats all I can think of for now. To my friends and family in Washington keep holding down the fort and for those of you elsewhere enjoy the experiences that life throws at you.

First few days as PS86

The kids are great. I love my class. They are the sweetest kids. They will own my life this month, but it will be worth it. Today one I asked Paola if she was excited about this weekend. She said that she was happy to be spending time with her family, but that she was sad because she wouldn’t see us again until Monday. J So sweet. I think I scared the kids a little bit because as a part of the writing lesson we had a stuffed bear come out to tell a story. Well needless to say, my stuffed bear voice is pretty much the same thing as my elf voice. It caught a few of them off guard at first, but it certainly held their attention.

I think that this is certainly one of the hardest things I have ever done. We work non-stop and sleep whenever we get the chance. You are doing good if you are in bed by midnight and my alarm is set for 5:30am. This is also however a bit of an ego boost because I am making it through lesson planning significantly quicker than most and actually have time to enjoy dinner and an hour or two off each day.

I had my first interview yesterday. I am fairly optimistic about how it went, however I don’t think I will hear back from the school any time soon. The principle wasn’t really sure how many positions she was hiring for or exactly which positions she needed. We shall see. Perhaps the next two years of my life will be spent teaching middle school special education at PS118 in the Bronx.

I would love prayers for energy and patience. My slightly picky organization side is making it more challenging for me to work with my team members who just don’t think the same way as I do.

A quick update

Well time flies when you’re having fun which I think is what is happening. For the most part I am certainly enjoying my experience here. We saw the classroom that we will be teaching on Thursday. The room is great and my Corps Member Advisor, basically the TFA person who is individually responsible for me, knows the teacher who will be observing us throughout the month. There are three people in my teaching collaborative. We are an interesting combination of folks and I’m not sure how good we will be working together with all of our different styles, but only time will tell. This weekend I caught up on sleep. I got about 9 hours of sleep Friday night and then I hit 15 hours on Saturday night. That was not really intentionally. I fell asleep at 8pm without setting an alarm to get up to go to church. Oops. I slept till 11am the next day. Last night (the 4^th of July) a group of us went down to a park to watch the fireworks. While the fireworks were great, for some reason I just don’t enjoy fireworks as much now as I used to. Perhaps I am a little bit less of a pyromaniac now? Tomorrow is the first day that we have in the classrooms. I will get to meet my students and get started on assessments and explaining classroom policies and procedures. I am anticipating life getting harder here, but who knows, maybe I just led too busy of a life back at Whitworth and what some people think of as busy I just see as common place.

I’m still waiting to hear about placement info which is a little bit frustrating. I haven’t had any interviews so far, but I am told it is just a matter of time. Once I get hired by a school I will begin the great apartment hunt. Doing this in the big apple is likely to be the most stressful part of this whole experience. I have never gone apartment hunting before and the idea of spending more than one thousand of dollars a month on rent just stresses me out.

The chaos has begun

I love being here and at the same time I really wish I could be back in Spokane. I woke up this morning at 5am so that I could get in a run, quiet time, and shower prior to breakfast. I learned that leaving 30 minutes for breakfast is not enough. Actually after today the start time changes from 7am to 6:15am so a good night’s sleep will be hard to get. Oh well, it is all for the kids. That is what we are all reminding ourselves of. Tomorrow is the first day I get to see the school that I will be teaching at this summer. PS 86 in the Bronx doesn’t know what it has coming. Goodnight. For those of you who live on the west coast please remember that calling me anytime when it is evening for you means that you will likely wake me up. :( This has already happened a few times. Oops.

The last weekend of fun

Induction is now done, which is both happy and sad. It is exciting looking forward to institute but also terrifying. Long days and lots of hard work are ahead. Nothing extremely eventful has happened the last few days outside of some great discussions about special education and also diversity. I did rip my black dress pants yesterday…while sitting down next to one of the program leaders. Oops. That means that this weekend also gets to be a bit of a shopping experience in Manhattan.

Friday after institute finished up I That night we went down to the pier and got to check out downtown Manhattan at night. The city has all sorts of stuff set up for the world cup which was pretty sweet. On the way back up I upset a man in the subway. By upset, I mean be for some reason decided that the group I was with was too loud so he began to scold me about my ability to speak. He said that I would never win a Pulitzer Prize if I didn’t sound better spoken. Overall my diction was acceptable, but I said the word I think too many ****ing times. After about fifteen minutes he got off the train. I guess I don’t really know what experiences I will have on any given day.

Saturday I spent some time at a flea market down in Brooklyn with a couple of friends. I then had my first NYC bagel. We looked at apartments in the area as one of the girls in the group hadn’t been placed yet. I am hoping that I will be placed soon. About half of the folks at TFA NYC have their placements already and I have only met a few who like me haven’t had any interviews yet, but patience is a virtue. I went to bed early because I needed to be up early to head downtown for church.

Ruthie and I went to a church called Redeemer Presbyterian on the west side of Manhattan. It was right next to central park. The church was a bit more traditional in the way the service ran than I am used to. Overall I liked it very much, not sure if I will end up back there for the rest of Institute since it takes a little bit longer than an hour to get there on the subway. We start inductions tonight. From this point on I will be wearing ties every day. Yuck. I can appreciated being professional, but in this heat I might get to me a little bit more than it normally would.

Getting to know people

Well I don’t plan on updating the blog quite this frequently in the future, but right now there is so much going on that I feel like is worth sharing about. I am meeting new people constantly which is exciting but also draining. There are only so many times that you can ask the questions before they get dull. What is your name? Where are you from? What school did you go to? Do you have your placement yet? You get to a point where there is just too many people to try to meet. My new favorite thing to ask is for people to remind me of their name because I have forgotten. Along with the joys of learning all about TFA and the grad programs we also get the chance to have fun. Last night after a quick run to Rite Aid, a group of us played word games. I’m glad that there are other people here who get giddy over boggle. One other highlight of yesterday is that I found someone to go to church with this coming Sunday. She is a great person and I would love it if I was sure what her name was. I think it is Rosie, but to be perfectly honest today I will probably be asking her my new favorite question just to be sure.

Day One

I love NEW YORK!!! We just finished a meeting on one side of the St. John’s campus and when we came out it was pouring down rain and when I say pouring I mean this rain was a significant upgrade from East Hall showers and it was even more environmentally friendly. I am pretty wiped out right now from lack of sleep and going for most the day, but it is happy hour and TFA folks are going so I figure I should enjoy the free time while I have it.

I may have been a little bit over zealous in saying that I love NYC. While I am enjoying the weather I am finding the whole experience to be quite overwhelming. The first TFA person that I met is a guy who just graduated from Stanford, I had lunch with a guys who just graduated from Harvard and Princeton, our neighbors went to Vanderbilt, my roommate graduated from University of Chicago and he just spent the last year on a Fullbright scholarship to some little country that I have never heard of between France and Spain. It makes me feel a little bit self conscious about the fact that pretty much no one has ever heard of Whitworth. I did however get to have dinner with a girl who graduated from Whitman and we had a short bonding moment over Washington State.

The people here are great, however I do certainly feel that I am in a whole new world. This is not the cozy lovey dovey Whitworth community, there is no hello walk to greet people on and while we are all trying to get to know each other, it seems as though there is not a strong desire to be there for each other. I think that this next five and a half weeks in training will give me a good idea of what life would have been like had I gone to a large state university. I don’t anticipate that I will be a wild crazy student, that just wouldn’t be me, but I never really had to deal with the fact that the first thing a lot of people want to do is go out drinking an see who is single.

When it comes to the program I am excited to see what they will teach me and what I will be able to do with my students. I certainly see a place for God in all of this and how he can shine through the decisions that I make. The more I meet people the more I have the opportunity to show them were I am supported from.

The Day Before

Well I'm not quite sure how I feel about the whole blogging experience, but since I do know that I follow my friends on their blogs I figure it's only fair that I create my own as well. The goal in this blog is to catalog my future adventures as they unfold. I will be flying to New York City tomorrow night to take the first steps towards teaching this coming fall. My hope is to have at least a brief update on a weekly basis. In reality, I am hoping to stay in contact with friends outside of this blog and not through it.

I started thinking about Teach For America back in October of this year. I originally dismissed the program because I was focused on other options and the representative that I met with rubbed me the wrong way. Through my experience in South Africa during January and a number of conversations with people who I respect greatly, I chose to apply for the program this spring. I applied without thinking that I would actually get accepted and when I received my acceptance I yell at my computer. My frustration in being accepted had more to do with my desire to not have to make a choice than it did we with me not wanting the job. After prayer and conversation I chose to accept the offer I was given by TFA. My original placement is in (1-9 Special Education) but I am also being considered for (1-6 General Education).

Today looking at leaving home for the foreseeable future I am beginning to second guess this decision. I don't know what to expect and that scares me senseless. I love being in control and knowing what is going on around me. I guess that this is probably a good time to learn. My prayer is that God will help me as I enter this new environment in finding friends, support, housing, and just about everything else that I am not anticipating at the moment. Inductions start on Tuesday and training begins next Sunday. I am excited and terrified about this adventure.