Hi everyone,

 This is my first post so I just wanted to give a brief intro before diving into the juicy stuff.  I will be teaching biology in Baltimore starting in August 2009 and am very excited about the new opportunities to come.  I went to college in California so adjusting to the East Coast may be challenging, but definitely not as challenging as teaching.  I hope to keep you updated on my life as a teacher and will hopefully share the positive experiences as well as the negative.  Feel free to leave comments and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have.  Enjoy reading!

Because most TFA teachers have no experience in education, we have a lot of pre-institute work to do to prepare us for the intensity of institute.  This includes reading hundreds of pages about setting goals, classroom management, lesson planning, and the basics of teaching.  We’re also required to make two classroom observations before institute, one of which I will share with you.  Reading the required texts has shown me that I truly know very little about teaching, but I am confident in TFA’s training and believe it will prepare me to be an excellent teacher.  However, multiple questions have been racing through my head.  Will I really be able to motivate and inspire my future students?  Will I be able to effectively control my students’ behavior?  Will I be able to teach effectively?  Going into my first classroom observation these doubts quickly diminished. 

I went with a Program Director and another incoming corps member to a high school chemistry class.  We sat in the back and watched as students filed in the class after lunch.  They picked up a “Do Now” worksheet and immediately started working on the assignment.  All of the students were silent and the teacher began explaining the problem on the worksheet, and then the bell rang to begin class.  Throughout the lecture, the students were completely silent and seemed to listen to every word that the teacher said.  When he asked a question, at least five students’ hands shot up wanting to answer the question.  This picture-perfect lesson continued throughout the class period.  One thing to note is that these were not hand-picked students; the teacher had set high expectations for their behavior and the students met those expectations.  To give you an idea of how these same students behave in a different setting, I also visited a classroom where a substitute teacher was standing in for the regular teacher.  These students were talking on their cell phones, dancing in the class, yelling at each other, and doing anything but learning.  The sub was sitting at his computer checking his email, paying no attention to the students while a stack of biology books sat in the corner of the room untouched.  I want to emphasize that these two classrooms held the same type of students–  there was nothing special about the type of student in the first classroom.  With this inspiring classroom visit under my belt, I looked forward to learning all I could during the pre-institute work and especially during institute.  I imagined myself as that chemistry teacher and decided I will do whatever it takes to get to that level.