Starving in Tulsa

Lies. All lies.

 Let me tell you about my class. My 6^th graders are earnest, devoted little scholars, some of whom jumped up and down when they heard they were going to be in my reading group, and wave their hands wildly in the air to answer a question. Some are shy, some are garrulous. The few who were thinking about misbehaving are bewildered to be treated as though they’re model students, and even more bewildered to find themselves acting like it. The troublemaker backed down after I pulled him aside for a little chat—now he just needs occasional focus reminders to work well. And best of all, I’ve got them all helping each other. They know they get rewards when their partner can explain something they were stuck on the first time I came around. Group work for the win.

The fact that I’m teaching 6^th grade math threw me for a loop at first, but it’s a solid fake-it-till-you-make-it situation, and I’ve got it under control. Eventually my brain is going to catch up and switch off intuition, and help me figure out how it actually processes these math basics. My students like math more than reading, which makes my heart cry but which I have to pretend to be excited about since I’m teaching math. I’ve never stood in front of a class and lied before, and occasionally I trip over my words as I wonder what the hell one does next when converting decimals to fractions on something besides an instantaneous level, but nobody notices except the antsy voice inside of me screaming, “let me out so I can teach them something that sings to my soul!”

We have a reading intervention hour in the morning, and I got both the four most advanced students and the three needing the most intervention. I’ve got a good set going where I start the advanced kids off on high-school level discussion about the book they’re reading, and then tag back to the intervention kids who know to test each other with flash cards while I’m talking to the other group. The first day I had them learn about characters in books (they’re on a first grade reading level) by reading out loud, and snatching the colored chip in the middle of the table every time they came across a character. They were adorably energetic about it, and now I’m their pet teacher—I think they’ve adopted me somewhat. I don’t mind being adopted.

The form of my lesson plans change every day. As I grapple with the short lesson periods, the immense range of my students, and the difficulty of teaching without the certainty my kids know the prereqs, I shift the lesson around. Now I check their understanding at the start of the lesson, give out three different worksheets for each level of student, arrange them into partners for work and have cancelled bathroom breaks. Monday I’m breaking out new manipulatives. In only a month, I have to try everything I can, so pretty much every day I change something up. My students are responding more and more as I hone my skills on them.

I could pretend that having a lot to do in very 
little time is hard. But the truth is, I love it.

TFA has proven immensely helpful in some of their pedagogy sessions. My CMA (advisor) is a wealth of ideas for math lesson plans, and we walk through execution clinics and behavior management sessions brimming with new knowledge. Some of what they do is merely to waste our time and up the ante on time management, but I have no qualms about lesson planning right in front of a lecturer when they’re blabbing—if they’re bold enough to talk about student engagement, they’d better appreciate the irony if they fail to keep our attention.

The parts of Institute that are supposed to be hellish—the time crunch, the students’ behavior, the discrepancy between what our students are supposed to already know and what they actually know—is quite manageable. Perhaps because it’s expected. But what nobody talks about in those useful email blasts on “how to survive Institute” is how to handle being micromanaged. Simply spending 12 hours a day in other people’s company is quite difficult. And there’s one other thing that’s been my own personal hell.

Last week TFA decided to cancel the debit cards they’d been giving me to buy my food. Because of kashrut, I can’t eat in the dining hall, and had been grocery shopping for cereal and milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, nuts, sandwich materials, and raw fruits and vegetables. I was doing really well—eating healthily and contentedly. They put a fridge in my room, and upon occasion I bought a double-wrapped meal from chabad. However, on Thursday they decided that all my meals –breakfast, lunch, and dinner—will come from chabad. This theoretically makes my life much easier. I no longer have to go shopping or keep track of receipts. However, my diet of dairy, nuts, and raw fruits and vegetables has been transformed into half-warmed micro-nuked plates of mushy carbs. Protein and vitamins are out. I attempted to explain this to the TFA dining director even before I saw what I was to be given. She had, like an ace, completely ignored the fact that the other kosher corps member in Tulsa institute has been starving on salad for the past week and a half. Anyhow, I’m now blitzing her with an email for every meal I eat—if I’m expected to survive on white bread, almond milk (alas, chalev yisrael! All of my protein is now nuts), and boiled tomatoes, she can expect to hear about it each time I have to eat it. TFA for the fail on sensitivity to religious needs.

 

The funniest part of the week? When my roommate came back from the grocery store with a bottle of Manischewitz. She was really proud of herself. I still haven’t told her how cloying the stuff is. Maybe we’ll open it tonight.

P.S. If you’d like to send me food, email me for my address. If you’d like to mail TFA a nasty letter about feeding their corps members, email me as well.