Monday = Someone Calls Me Ms. Brar (Hopefully)

Sleep deprivation has a funny trick. It makes you more susceptible to laughing at stupid jokes, lowering your inhibitions so you will say the things you think about people without any shame, and makes you feel like lacking showers is acceptable.

Sleep deprivation also makes you reassess your priorities and redefines your view of Maslow's hierarchy. For example, no longer do I have the luxury of engaging in conversations involving mediocre topics. Instead, any opportunity for non-required discussion revolves around either the larger problems our world faces (i.e. education issues, diversity and race relations, etc.) or is dumbed way down to a level that requires very few brain cells (i.e. which boy is looking rather attractive today and ridiculous 'your mom' jokes).

The last week at Institute, the professional training for the Teach for America program, has required just this of me. Every day I wake up in the five o' clock hour. I leave my room at six am and have finished breakfast and packed my lunch in the next thirty minutes. After a half hour bus ride, I am ready to get down to business at South Philadelphia High School, otherwise referred to as "Southern" to the communities around here. From 7:30 am to 4:15 pm, I am absorbing as much about lesson planning, behavior theory, classroom management, investment plans, and overcoming basic social awkwardness in front of a classroom as humanly possible as I sit in rooms without air conditioning surrounded by 78 of my peers praying to do the same.

At 4:30, another bus ride home drops us off at the dorms and we head to dinner at the same hour as only those Americans with AARP cards. After the one hour spent on the low-brain-cell conversations detailed above, we're back at it, writing lesson plans, meeting with our co-teachers to colloborate on everything we've learned, and working into the wee hours trying to single-handedly close the acheivement gap in our classrooms and hopefully, get some sleep before the next day.

On Monday, we see if any of this training pays off when I'm dumped in my own classroom of an unknown number of high school students who failed Algebra 1 last year. This class is sometimes the last stop for many of these students, as statistics tell us that failing Algebra 1 is among the most telling indicators of high school dropouts. My personal goal for the summer? Make sure none of my students affirms that statistic.

Tonight, I nap. I go to see some art shows. I get an evening off. But tomorrow, I'm back at it rehearsing, receiving feedback, and preparing myself for the adventure I begin in just two short days.

~N.