Hello Everyone!
After four weeks of getting into the groove of my new life, I've realized that I need some way to communicate with everyone. I've been getting several emails, texts, and voicemails from friends and family that ask questions like, "Are you alive?" What this tells me is that many of you are interested in what is happening in my life, but I don't have the time right now to respond to everyone in a timely fashion. So, let me respond to all of you at the same time through this blog.
I am teaching freshmen Algebra 1 at Cleveland NJROTC. Cleveland is a magnet school in St Louis Public School District. Magnet schools are still public schools and are publically funded but students apply or opt to go there. There are not kids zoned specifically for magnet schools, instead they come from all over. Magnet schools also tend to be smaller. Our school has under 400 total students and right now in the freshmen class we have about 82. My school is also a naval junior ROTC school, which means that we are big on teaching discipline and teamwork. Both of these two priorities play out in using things like push-ups, standing at attention, or sit ups as discipline. My kids also wear naval ROTC uniforms to school every day. Throws me back to my private school uniform days. Those of you from Country Day can appreciate the way my students feel tortured, especially since almost none of them had to wear strict uniforms like this in their middle schools. The other big deal for my kids is that the girls have to wear their hair up or it must be short and the black shoes all students wear must be shined. Structure is the name of the game at Cleveland.
I teach 3 periods of double dose Algebra which means that I have the same 65 kids every day in a block schedule. So, my kids come to me every day for 90 minutes. Trust me, they did not/do not consider me entertaining enough to see me every day for this long. On Friday's they come to me twice, once before lunch and once after because Fridays all students go to their entire schedule (8 classes) in the day. My school starts at 7:10 am and ends at 2:05. We eat lunch halfway through our day, which is 10:21! Saturday's are weird for me now because I'm ready mentally to eat lunch at 10:30 but I just ate breakfast at 9. Well, every day my alarm goes off at 5am!!! Hello real world!
I live in Shaw, the neighborhood just north of Tower Grove, a park in St Louis. My two roommates, Ashley and Anna, are also teaching in St Louis for TFA. We have a fun three bedroom, one and a half bath house that we love! With one shower, we have perfected our shower schedule. Bedtime in our house is around 9:30-10 because we are all up by 5:30 and all out the door by 6:45. It makes getting up way more fun when you know that two other people in the world are up and going too.
Well there is so much more I could write, but for now I will leave you with this Introduction. Until next time!
