Life in the Delta has been fairly good during and after the 4th of July weekend. Cleveland (the town Delta State University is in) threw us TFA’ers a Fourth of July party with free food, $1 drinks, and fireworks! The pulled-pork sandwhiches they were giving out were delicious! And then some fries, a drink, and free ice cream sandwiches to boot? Pretty good if you ask me… and all right across the street from campus, so no driving required!

Yesterday (Tuesday) I ran into a principle of Humphrey’s District in South Delta (but not the South Delta school I thought I might teach Physics at), who remembered me from the interview fair. She is looking for a calculus and geometry teacher. She came and observed me today and the TFA office said she really liked me. I’m not sure how I’d feel teaching Calculus seeing as my high school Calc teacher had a Ph.D in Math and I haven’t taken a math class since freshman year of college statistics! As we’ve all seen though, principles being “interested in hiring” you doesn’t always mean much. So I’m not holding my breath on this one.

I also had the principle of the school I’m working at (Greenville HS) observe me today. TFA people said she was “jealous” that the woman from Humphrey’s was observing me and wanted to make sure she was able to claim “dibs” on me (if she wanted). Apparently she thought I was okay too and is also “interested in hiring me.” As always, where I’m going to be placed is up in the air and I’m trying not to stress over it. I don’t have any say in the matter anyway, so might as well sit back and let TFA put me somewhere.

Plus, I hear that if we don’t get placed by the time Institute is over Morgan Freeman puts you up in his spare house in Mississippi (as an original Mississippian).

I’ve also heard that 2nd year Corps members house everyone while they look for a place… so that might seem a little more plausible. But who knows I guess. I’ll have to let you know when I find out. Five more days of teaching, 1 day to test, and 1 day to “teach about college life” on College Day, and then Institute is done. And then Mom and Dad get to visit. Both of which are great things to look forward to.

Anyway – I should head to bed. It’s 11:11 pm here so make a wish and send some good luck to me with landing a job soon!

Miss y’all a lot a lot a lot. Christmas time reunion?

Love,

KatieFriday night at La Cabana after a few margaritas.

Me, Beth (went to school in WA!), Marisa, and Amber

My right foot, despite a layer of itching cream, is unbearably red, swollen, and itchy. In this picture alone I can see six bite marks, but those two/three that are most prevalent occur on the one inch of skin exposed on my feet when wearing a pair of my dress shoes. It’s ridiculous that these blood-sucking fiends will seek out the smallest part of your exposed feet and ankles and just gnaw away at you. I hate mosquitos. I could stand the weather here in Mississippi… but the mosquitos… they are something I won’t miss when I head back to Oregon.

As for Week 2… thank God it’s over! The new-ness of teaching wore off quickly as students wore us down with “man, why I gotta know this?” and “I don’t care if I pass this class, my Ma making me come here!” The late nights of work and planning and chaos of grading, inputing data, putting up stickers, trying to motivate and invest the students in their own learning, getting supplies from WalMart (and finding a ride to WalMart), making posters and coming up with fun and exciting phrases to help students learn what the inverse of a fraction is… (Flip the Fraction, Switch the Sign!)… it’s exhausting. For me, it is the kind of exhaustion where your emotions are rubbed raw and any little thing can send you on a rant or uncork the tears from your tear ducts. These last couple nights were particularly stressful and the thought of going home was constantly on my mind.

There are just a lot of things I’m literally invested in back in Oregon. All the friends I’ve built relationships with, my family (and my new nephew), my co-workers and staff at Southwest Community Center (and Sean is working there this summer!), the city of Corvallis, and even my fellow JHS grads who are slowly but surely migrating back to the PNW! All these things I’m invested in and now so far away from. It’s hard to start over again in a new place where I feel like I’m working so incredibly hard for something I (a) don’t really totally understand and (b) am not entirely invested in.

It reminds me a lot of my novice year of rowing… practicing twice a day in this new sport that was super frustrating and hard and I didn’t even know what racing looked like or felt like and that first year, and even some of the second year, was really crappy. It was a high-pressure situation for me, and lots of work and time had to go into training to be good. But after the 1st year I still came back, and after the second, and even then for two more years after it. And in the end I fell in love with it and fell in love with my teammates and wouldn’t have given up that opportunity to compete for the world.

So I guess I’m kind of holding out for something similar to happen here with TFA. I’m hoping that as I adjust to the 4-hours of sleep a night, the rude students, the talking back, the simple mistakes (-6 +4 = -10), and the pressure from TFA staff to be better, better, BETTER that I actually grow to enjoy the teaching element and find all the work to be worth it. I have noticed that I am at my peak of happiness during my 2-hour teaching block and the hour or so directly afterward, and that it slowly declines as we hear about how crappy our rough drafts of our lesson plans are, what more work they want us to do, the 2 hours of Culture Sessions, the 3 hour Literacy Sessions, the group work, lesson planning time, writing tests and practice problems and review packets…. all that just sucks the joy out of it all. And it’s super frustrating to feel myself becoming less and less excited and enthusiastic throughout the day.

We have July 5th off (phew!) so next week is only 4 days, and have only 3 days of teaching in the week after because  we are giving them their end-of-the-summer test and having “fun day” of sorts for the last day. So 6 more teaching days, 9 more school days, and in total 14 more days until Institute is over (and hopefully by then I’ll be placed with a real job!).

My Faculty Advisor (my FA… who goes by “Ms. America!”) asked me where I was placed for next year and I said that I hadn’t been placed yet. She asked me if I’d like to work there at Greenville and I said enthusiastically “Yeah!” and I didn’t exactly mention that in reality I’d just like any job, please! The next day my CMA said that my FA had told him she was trying to recruit me for the next school year (so some of my students right now could possibly be my actual students next year!). I’m not getting my hopes up seeing as my last “job offer” was a bust, but it would be cool to work there because it’s a “big” city here in Mississippi and there are a lot of other TFA teachers there that I could live with. Fingers crossed…

I will update more later, but for now it’s a glorious Friday that I should go and enjoy with some adult beverages and funny stories about students. Please enjoy the following pictures:

From when Mom was here and we ate at this great BBQ place in Graceland!

The “Mississippi River” on Mud Island when Mom and I visited Memphis

Standing in the “Mississippi River” on Mud Island.

Dollar Margarita’s at La Cabana? Yes Please.

BB King’s Band warming up the audience before his concert here at DSU! (Video to come later!)

Have a great weekend!

-katie!

But really when my students call my attention it sounds like “Ms. Hmmmmmmm” and when they ask me a question I have to ask 3 times for them to repeat it so I can understand them. And asking their names? Tip: just ask them to write it down on a name tag and read it off that. Tip #2: Call them Mr. / Ms. (Last Name). Firstly, I told them I would call them Mr. and Ms. as a sign of respect as they are young adults, but that they must act as young adults within my classroom. Secondly, it skips the week of offending them by learning their names. Shunquilla, Shaka, Sinca, Unica (unique-a), and Shabarra are some of the ones that tripped me.

So, Day One, all the students and teachers were gathered in the auditorium, and one-by-one each teacher went to the front and shakily read off their roster to the entire congregation. The students wearily stood up, eyeing their friends with “who are these white people?” written all over their faces. And I’ll admit I felt a bit awkward looking around the auditorium watching a TFA Corps of mostly white teachers roaming the isles and patrolling the 99.7% African American students. It was a little eery and a bit uncomfortable.

That first day we simply gave them a diagnostic test to see where they actually were in their math skills. Over half of the students stopped halfway through and left the test blank. Only a handful still had their tests two hours later when I dismissed them (only to a second class and a second two-hour-long test (eek!). The student that did the best on the test simply went through and answered all the questions without even reading them! Highest score: 28%.

Not to drag on about “Day One,” but after school was dismissed for the day some previous HS grads were waiting outside for some of our HS students who were taking classes there but lived across town. Plainly put, they jumped our students and the cops had to come and restore order to the chaos outside of the school. Parents were outraged and upset and very angry at Teach for America for “allowing” something like that to happen. Since that day, police and security have been present for both the beginning and end of the day.

I have spoken to two other Corps Members (CMs) who have had fights occur in their classroom where they tried to physically break up the fight. But don’t worry, no fights in my classroom. The closest confrontation that’s occurred in my class is me standing in front of the door when Ms. Jackson tried to simply get up and leave. Me: One, Ms. Jackson: Zero.

There are a handful of pregnant high school girls, the boys call after girls in the halls, and girls make incredibly suggestive movements and hand gestures that I don’t know why on earth they’d be proud to flaunt. It has very much been an interesting time being a teacher this week.

When the students are clicking with the material, and clicking with me, and when I’m energetic and able to keep their attention, classes go great. Well… besides the fact that they can’t add, multiply, work with negative numbers, or put a coordinate in the proper (x, y) format, they do fairly well. I never thought the equation “Slope = (y2-y1)/(x2-x1)” could be so difficult to understand.

We take so much for granted coming from a background and family that emphasizes education. It was just assumed that I would go to college. There was definitely no question that I would pass my classes or advance to the next grade level. For these kids, though, skipping school is the norm, tattoos on their necks, being pregnant at age 16, fighting in school… these are the things they see as options in life. College is not presented to them as an option, but rather the exception, and, only for the very few, the very smart, and the very lucky.

So hopefully I can make some small difference in a few students’ lives. After a week of teaching, I can see it is going to be a true battle to convince these kids to keep pushing themselves, but I know they have it in them. I can see them desperately wanting to to learn the material for brief (brief) moments of time, so hopefully I can hone into that over the next 3 weeks of summer school.

I’m not anywhere near being a “good” teacher, and have an overwhelming amount of things to work on, but I’m trying to shine here in the Delta to shed some light on some more options for my students. I hope somehow I’m able to help. Wish me luck!

-P.S. Everyone at home — I’m missing you soooooooo much! I’m always checking on Corvallis / Portland weather and trying to send you some of this sun!!

So this Monday we began to be bussed to the schools we will be teaching at for the summer. We won’t start teaching until next Monday June 21st, but we have been working there on lesson plans, investment plans, management plans, vision plans… lots of PLANS! On Monday we were divided up into CMA (Corps Member Advisors) groups and there are 9 CM’s (me’s) and 1 CMA. We are all secondary math. We were divided up further into Collaborative Groups (Co-Labs) that will be in charge of one class throughout the summer. I was placed with a girl named Emily… who… wasn’t there… “Hmmm… I thought… where is my partner?”

My CMA told me she was attending a family wedding and was expected in the Delta on Tuesday. Okay sounds fine and dandy. Until Tuesday, when she’s still not there. “Hmm” I think to myself, “Interesting…” We begin our vision plans (about our lesson plans) that day, so I start in on my half of the work, and when I was done I started in on Emily’s too. Each Co-Lab was responsible for making vision plans for 4 objectives, and then producing lesson plans for those same 4 objectives due this morning (Thursday).

Well, low and behold Wednesday morning my CMA says that my Co-Lab partner had resigned from Teach for America. He said I had two options: be transfered to a different school in a different CMA group, or take on the class alone. And seeing as I had already bonded with my CMA group (and met a guy from Lake Oswego, OR who I never met before this Tuesday! Weird!!), I said I’d just suck it up and teach the class. So last night was quite a whirl-wind to complete my 4 lesson plans for this morning. Each objective required a Vision Plan, Lesson Plan Worksheet, Lesson Plan, Guided Notes, Practice Problems, and a short Assessment (and Homework that I still have to do!)! Everyone was up late working on their lesson plans and I was no exception.

I was done with my first two lesson plans in full before I left my school at 4pm  - they came a little easier to me than some – and we had classes scheduled until 9:30. The computer lab (with printers) closed at midnight – so that was my deadline. I ended up finishing most of it before then, I just had guided notes and practice problems for the last two objectives to do, and headed to bed around midnight….. and then woke up this morning at 4:20am. I know a handful of people who got 30 minutes or less of sleep. I don’t know how those people survived today.

This photo obviously photo-shopped – a boat on the Mississippi at sunset

The air conditioner broke at the school I’m working at this morning, so the lectures were basically in a sauna. We eventually went outside halfway through the day because it was actually cooler out there! Someone came and saved the day by fixing the A/C and we headed back inside around 1pm. We had a few hours to work on an array of assignments, but still don’t have class rosters or class numbers.

I guess this summer school was initially geared toward middle school and elementary students, so today for some reason a lot of busses that were originally scheduled to pick up high school students (my students) were pulled to go get younger kids instead. This is a huge blow because now our students don’t really have a way of getting to the school. Originally our classes were expected to be 25-30 students, but now it could be closer to 10. Although initially I was excited that I’d have less students to teach, after a while I realized I was super bummed out that our affect in the Delta had just gotten significantly cut down. We will now be reaching about 1/3rd of the original number we’d expected, and those students will miss out on the opportunity to earn the Algebra I class credit and possibly have to re-take the class during the school year. Super bummer. I hope somehow we pull some busses from somewhere to get the students in the classroom. If not – a lot of our plans will have to be revised!

I’ll let you know. For now, I’m getting a head-start on my lesson plans for next week. When everyone else has three due on Thursday morning, I’ll have six, so I better get crackin’!

In case anyone wanted it my address is:

Katie Humm
Teach for America
Delta State University
Box B4 (not PO box!)
1003 West Sunflower Rd.
Cleaveland, MS 38733

I still have the same phone number, and my email is katie.rows@gmail.com

Hope you are all doing well! I miss Oregon quite a lot – the mosquitos here are like heat-seeking missiles and my legs make it look like I have measles or something! Gross! Plus they itch a lot! I’m working on uploading a video of a really great thunderstorm we had a couple nights ago. I’ll let you know when that’s up!

Love you all,

Katie

They were super generous welcoming us all to the Delta with fried catfish, baked beans, and coleslaw. I tried everything, but liked the baked beans the best, surprisingly. It probably helped that there was bacon in them! The catfish just tasted like friend breading, which was probably good seeing as I don’t like fish.

They also provided us with some “adult beverages” in the form of a tapped trailer!! Pretty cool if you ask me! There was also a family band of a grandfather and two grandchildren on the drums.

They were playing blues music the whole time, and after the event I found out that they’re pretty famous and played recently in Georgia or somewhere. Pretty cool. I also got a picture of the young gentleman on the drums, but he asked me if I could make sure there was no flash so that his eyes wouldn’t get blinded (he wasn’t even playing at that point in time!). He must already be a little rockstar! I think in reality he was just a little shy. We saw a great sunset over the Mississippi river and I just gotta share this picture with you!

Pretty beautiful, huh? We all lined up our chairs and watched the sunset, then headed out to the see what night-life Greenville had… and… well, let’s just say we became the night life!

In other news, my brother Michael and his wife welcomed their son Connor David Humm into the world on June 11th at 12:30am. I am so very excited for both of them and hope they are ready for craziness. When I come home to visit, and when I’m home for good, I hope they know I’ll always be up for babysitting!!

Wish me luck as I begin to embark on the “hardest thing I’ve ever done” to quote every Corps Member who has talked to us. Just to give you a brief summary: we

wake up in time to catch a bus at 5:45am that gets us to our school on time (1.5 hrs away), come home, take classes on some nights (worst = Monday until 9pm) and then have homework that I’m sure has something to do with the 800 page notebook of text we were given today!

-Katie!

“Excuse me, but can you tell me how I open the door to this building?”

“Oh, yeah, just put in the code and twist that knob and pull.”

“What’s the code?” – ”5134″

“Oh. How’d you know that?” – ”It’s on the back of your card.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

After I explained that I was new and I had just gotten in that morning, people were more than willing to help point me in the right direction, show me how to open doors, shepherd me through the cafeteria, and even try to answer some of my hundreds of questions. I met a good amount of new people, especially other Secondary Mathematics teachers who are in my Cohort, and will need to work hard to remember the names and the home cities. It’s easy to get mixed up around so many dressed up people!

My mom is here through the weekend, so she has been helping me get ready for my adventure by getting the necessary items like the ethernet chord I forgot, or the sheets, or the pillows, etc etc. I feel like I’m a freshman again moving into the dorms at Oregon State. It is quite an odd feeling for sure. Below is a picture of my mom at a BBQ restaurant we ate at down the street. It was pretty good pulled pork, but Mom says she wants to try some catfish before she leaves! Eek!

Tomorrow we interview for jobs all day, so it should be a whirl-wind of activity and nerves and suit in 90+ degree weather (plus the humidity) – I’ll need to make sure to put a little extra deodorant on tomorrow! Ha!

Okay well it’s late here so I better head off to bed. I was hoping if I stayed up long enough I’d get a text message or phone call from someone letting me know that Michael and Emily were proud new parents of a little boy. Maybe a text will wake me up in the middle of the night with the good news. Go baby Humm, go!

For now that’s all, I’ll keep you updated!

-Katie

In 2 days I turn 23 and finish up my college classes. In 5 days I finish my finals and move out of my house and back to Lake Oswego. And in 6 days I will be flying to Mississippi to start my adventure.

There is so much to be done before then, but I seem to be frozen in time, whether with senioritis, denial, or laziness I’m not sure. I’d just rather hang out with friends than work on crossing things off my To-Do list. I’m conflicted between  enjoying my last few days here with everyone and actually completing the work required to graduate. In the end it will all work out, but for the next 6 days I’ll be stressing out a bit trying to fit it all in.

Six days…. wow!

“Hello!?!”

“Hi, is Pedro there?”

At which point I literally “boo-ed” the caller and hung up on them. Talk about disappointment!

We had an end of the year banquet for the team on Sunday and I’ll admit I cried a bit at the end saying goodbye to people, and have been teary-eyed off-and-on since then. Celia, SarJar, Kylie and I had dinner with Coach Kate tonight. We are the 4 remaining rowers from our novice year, Kate’s first year as a coach at OSU. It was a bunch of fun and great to talk with her about our experiences on the team and hear about the coach’s perspective and how her life is shaping up with a wedding coming this summer!

Tonight was especially nice because Celia and I got to hang out and talk about the craziness in front of us and the idea that I’ll be leaving soon and gone for a while. In so many moments like that I regret the decision to join TFA and commit to the 2 years in Mississippi, but in so many other moments I’ve believed this experience is going to be a great adventure and an awesome opportunity to learn about myself and the profession I want to be a part of. And it is also a step toward putting some solid work into a fairly large problem we’re facing.

I know my one little classroom can’t change much of Mississippi (let alone the nation), but I hope one or two (or 30) students are able to gain a sense of responsibility for their own education and also feel empowered to succeed with that responsibility.

As for now I’m fairly certain there will be more moments where I want to bag the whole idea and call up my old work and beg for the summer job I turned down. But I will have to keep reminding myself of the bigger picture, of the days and months past the day I say goodbye (because that will be the worst of them).

So don’t be mad at me for not looking back as I’m leaving… I’ll probably just be hiding my tears from you.

-Katie

Crew is “winding down” in that we have just 7 days until Pac-10′s (and 9 days until the conference call to see if we got a bid to nationals). But the “winding down” part is all a lie and things are pretty crazy and chaotic and almost “on edge” some days. The stress of pulling out an amazing race at pac-10′s in a last-ditch effort to earn a bid to the NCAA’s is eating away at everyone and our nerves are exposed to the world and any unkind word or off-kilter joke really have been hitting people hard. So speak gently at the boathouse, please.

TFA has taken a backseat for the past couple of weeks as I’ve been trying to get back on track with school. I’m a bit off schedule for the readings and will need to find some time to continue trucking on them. Until I get them done those books and readings are like weights on my shoulder (often times literally because I take them everywhere with me in the hopes that I’ll find a second to read a page or two).

As for school, my forestry classes are taking way more effort than I expected. Just last week I had to make up a hypothetical forest (complete with 4 different types of trees that were known to cohabitate, 3 shrubs, and 3 herbs), draw it (yep!) and THEN I had to have a hurricane hit it, then draw it again, then draw 8 different stages as my hypothetical forest moved through succession! YAY! All of that = waste of 8 hours of my life.

I’m going to teach kids people! Not manage forests! Thanks for all the great info though!

My room has been a mess for weeks now as I’m constantly in the “moving out” stage. Duncan was quite happy today when I took my fridge outside to defrost and he found a couple of his yogurt drop treats behind it!

Celia just got a brand new road/cross bike that I’m pretty jealous of. She said I could have it when I came back from Mississippi (right Celia??) so I’m not too jealous as it will be mine soon. I’ll have to make sure to come watch her compete in her duathlon (run, bike, run) after she trains for a little bit and finds one to sign up for!

I found someone to buy my beautiful Jeep – and he’ll be coming by in a couple weeks to take it from me, so I’m making some trips up to Lake Oswego to off-load the past 5 years of my life at my parents house (thanks mom and dad!). I guess when I have time I should look into what type of car to get in MS.

Okay well we have team dessert at Big River downtown then a little joy ride with Celia and her new wheels so I gotta head out. Adios Library!!