After an amazing (but far too humid) summer in Houston working for Teach For America’s teacher preparation institute, I’m back in Atlanta deep into my second year of teaching. Last year, I taught 10th and 12th Grade Literature & Composition; this year, my course load has been shifted to 9th Grade Literature & Composition and Journalism, an elective open to 11th and 12th graders; and I am also the 9th grade department chair.
My colleagues at work and the people I interact with at Teach For America all ask, “How is your second year going? Is it very different?” First of all, 9th graders are babies–physically and emotionally. Boys are a foot shorter. Girls are stick thin. On the first day of school, when I dismissed the students for lunch, they remained in their desks, quiet and uneasy. Finally a student piped up: ”You’re not going to walk us over to the cafeteria?”
Yes, my second year teaching has been vastly different from…
I haven’t been here in ages, although I have been writing–hence the deluge of backdated posts that you now see underneath this entry. This is for a variety of reasons, one being that I think the TeachFor.Us community was one that I really, really needed my first semester of teaching, when I appreciated (and was…
read more »11 students from one of my sections of 12th grade rehearsed and performed Act IV, scene i of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” last Tuesday. The students had a lot of fun making costumes and coming up with staging ideas. Their performance was, I thought, a success, and I’ve posted the whole thing online (complete with subtitles). The…
read more »As we approach standardized testing season, I wanted to take the time to reflect on my first year teaching so far–my challenges and my successes. The challenges I’m facing in my school are great, and last semester I was often tempted to (and often did) talk about them for hours, but today instead I want…
read more »Happy New Year! As you may have guessed from this post, I survived my 1st semester of teaching! And came out relatively unscathed and non-disillusioned. My students made solid gains with a 77% average mastery of our standards–that represents a 20%+ gain from the beginning of the semester! Our goal was 80%–maybe this semester we’ll…
read more »Sent an email to “Dear Mr. DeRosa” on TFAnet.org 2 weeks ago, just checked the blog, and found a 9 minute video response. My students are in the midst of the 2nd unit test, and the results that came back from the students who tested on Thursday were not as high as I’d hoped. I’m…
read more »This week the first of 4 groups of applicants to the 2010 Teach For America Corps find out whether they’ve been accepted, and I’m part of the matriculant call team this year. Later this week I’ll be calling accepted individuals to the Atlanta 2010 Corps to congratulate them, talk to them about my current experiences…
read more »The end of the 1st Quarter came and went last week, and my students get their official progress reports tomorrow. Right now about 1/3 of my students are failing my class, which my principal said was an okay stat to have mid-semester. I’m pretty upset about it, though–partly because I feel like it reflects poorly…
read more »It’s the ninth week of school, and this article is describing my current state of mind perfectly, even down to the time period. “Disillusionment Phase: After six to eight weeks of nonstop work and stress, new teachers enter the disillusionment phase. The intensity and length of the phase varies among new teachers. The extensive time…
read more »The Best Dentist—”Absolutely” the Best Dentist My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don’t forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me, and I’ve got all my teeth, so when I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if he’d heard about…
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