TGIF

It’s Friday!!! And it’s TFA day, which meant that we got to have a free afternoon! Went to The Den after work, which is U of H’s campus bar. It was packed with TFAers. $2 drinks + tired, loopy teachers-in-training = good time. Unfortunately, I’m now studying for my TExES (certification exams) that are tomorrow morning. But hey, it definitely beats lesson planning!

So today was college t-shirt day at Davis HS. My fellow Bruin and I definitely rocked out an 8-clap. I told my students to ask me anything they wanted about college and/or UCLA. I love how all of them were so interested and hanging on to every word. I think that’s the most focused my class has ever been. They asked about paying for college, if it’s hard to get in, if UCLA was hard, and of course, the partying. Each and every one of my students wants to go to college. Which is positively love. These kids may have terrible spelling and even worse grammar, but they are clever, and they are quick. And they have the right attitude (most of the time). One girl came in early to work on subject-verb agreement with me, and we had a great talk before class started. She told me about how she works at McDonald’s right now, but she doesn’t want to work there her whole life like her mom. She told me about her boyfriend, and how he’s helping her with English, and how she was held back because of her “mental problem” (actually just a learning disability, but she said it was a “mental problem, or something wrong with my head”). Mel can be such a pain some days, putting on her makeup when we’re supposed to be reading, but then other days I just want to hug her and take her back to Dallas with me. Like today, I was looking at the “How on Target Are We?” poster in the hall during my lunch duty – it has a dart board looking thing for each class, with each ring representing a certain % of growth. Ours was blank – not because we didn’t have improvement, but because our data was messed up. So Mel comes up. “What’s that Miss?” “It’s how much each class has improved.” She finds our target. It’s not colored in at all. Her face falls. “Looks like we’ve gotta work hard, Miss.” Instead of telling her that it was actually blank because we didn’t input our data correctly, so they couldn’t calculate % growth, I just nodded. “That’s right. We’ve gotta work really hard, but we can do it. Ms. Chen’s students are the best, remember?” She smiled and nodded.