And I haven't even taught yet...

Wow. What a week... everyone's definitely already pretty frayed but we're hanging in there. Sort of. I still am suspicious that Lord of the Flies will break out anytime.

We start teaching summer school on Monday. For me, that means first grade bilingual, and it means that I'm supposed to teach a bunch of English-language objectives with a class of whom half don't speak any English. Interesting. It's a three-person team exercise, and at least I am bilingual and the other two understand some Spanish, better than the kindergarten team in my group, only one of whom speaks any Spanish. We don't understand why they asked us to teach objectives to these kids in English; it doesn't make any sense for them. It might be good for them to hear the English, but their ability to meet the assigned standards is probably questionable at best. (Not, of course, that I doubt my ability to get them to meet those standards; that would be a TFA sin).

Other things here... everything is really inconsistent as far as assignments go, it was a mess of paperwork until today when our CMA made us a summary of what we're responsible for. We've been doing things in a order that seems haphazard and it seems like we started actual planning really late and had a ton of things dumped into our laps. If they're organized enough to get all this set up, can't they be organized enough to better explain our timeline and responsibilities? And the joke in all this, it seems, is the kids, especially since (as previously mentioned) we're doing bilingual with some people who are less than that, and using strategies that seem more suited to a regular school year than to a summer session.

My fall placement is now up in the air. I thought I was going to be doing fourth grade bilingual, which is older kids and mostly in English; but the placement form I got today says second bilingual, younger (obviously) and mostly in Spanish. Huh. Of course, I'll be expected to accept the second-grade placement, since I am a flexible TFA corps member with no incoming abilities or preferences except a strong desire to close the achievement gap. I'll find out for sure shortly what the story is, and if I am indeed switching to second. The plus side is more Spanish-language experience for me... the minus is that the littler they are, the more foreign they are to me, and I was really hoping to get to work with fourth-graders. If I complain, what will happen? Maybe I'll get to go through the placement process again... but I'm already in a good school, so do I really want to take that chance? Or wait around without a job, and have to interview again in a month?

Finally, we saw the legendary Wendy Kopp on Monday night at our welcome. She delivered the same speech that she's undoubtedly delivered thousands of times--it's about the same as her quickly-written account of TFA's creation that I read after getting it at the regional info meeting. It was surprisingly dispassionate (and not without some "you know"s), although there were motivating speeches from others, including moving speeches from three alumni about the effects that they had on individual students.

Well, it's time to try to get my last classroom procedures done... so I will be back with everyone to report when I have the chance.