I’ve been cleaning out my apartment these past few days, in final preparation for my upcoming move. Despite not owning too much, I will always be amazed by the sheer volume of stuff that accumulates in an apartment if left unchecked. I found all sorts of stuff wedged under my bed, behind my desk, and…

A few months ago, our class read Bud, Not Buddy (an excellent book, I must say) together. Looking back on it, this was one of the few brighter spots of my classroom experience, since a few of my students told me that this was the first story that they really got into. It was also…

Us TFAers are a pretty data and goal orientated people. We’re here to close the achievement gap, which we define as the gap in ability (as measured by test scores) between rich and poor, white and minority, in public school classrooms. We accomplish that getting Significant Gains (more than 1.5 years growth as defined by…

`Even though I have a degree in Political Science, I don’t remember too much from my political philosophy classes. For some reason though, Hobbes’ “State of Nature” really stuck in my mind. Hobbes’ described a world without a central power, where every man wages war against every man, and life is “nasty, brutish and short”.…

So over at the REAL RPOA blog (relentlesspoa.wordpress.com), I’ve started a new series of posts ,called Corps Member Stories. I’ve been interviewing CMs from all over the country about specific aspects of their experience with TFA. We’ll have stories on how teachers find their own definitions of success, how we stay emotionally healthy (or don’t!),…

I’ve been doing a lot of listening to my ipod lately, with my daily running and my recent long car trips. One can only listen to Tenth Avenue Freeze Out so many times (believe me, I’m surprised at how high my threshold was), so I decided to give podcasts a try. I tried out about…

My move from Columbus to New Orleans back in June brought a lot of uncertainty in my life. When I left, I technically had no job (I hadn’t been placed), I had no apartment, almost no furnishings, and my closest friend was over 300 miles away. I was at least a little apprehensive about just…

I felt like I had started to find some sort of rhythm. Intensive practice for the LEAP (the first section is in less than three weeks), certification class and church work pretty much took over my life. We would follow our scripted curriculum, do a reading intervention, do some practice LEAP exercises, and call it…

One of the big Ed Reform stories of the past few days comes out of Central Falls, Rhode Island. CFHS has been struggling with their test scores for some time. They were taken over by the state in 1991, their dropout rate hovers around 50%, and tiny fractions of their student population score in the…