Becoming Mr. Tran

Hello friends & family!

First off, I have to apologize if it seems like I've fallen off the face of this Earth over the past month and a half. I know I've been terrible about keeping in touch with everyone. Rest assured, I'm still alive and well, and finally (though with some delay), I've found a moment to create a blog, as I promised I would. I'm hoping through this blog, I can both reflect on my own experiences, and keep everyone updated on my new life as Mr. Tran, 7th grade math teacher.

As most of you know, I recently made the move from Seattle to Houston, Texas to begin a two-year journey with Teach For America (TFA). As a member of TFA's 2010 corps, I've been tasked to serve as a teacher in a high-needs, low-income school, with the overarching goal of closing the achievement gap. To this end, ever since I touched down in Houston in early June, I've been immersed in a completely new life, which has pushed me to find my inner teacher. So much has happened in the past 6+ weeks, but I'll do my best to capture the key points...

When I first arrived in Houston, I was greeted by relatives and had the opportunity to spend a couple days with them, before checking into TFA's summer training. If you were wondering "Why Houston?,"the primary reason I chose Houston was to be close to my extended family, especially my grandparents. Choice #2 was Hawaii. I have to admit that I've caught myself daydreaming about what could have been if I had been placed in Hawaii. My mom has convinced me though, that I would be a terrible teacher in Hawaii, because I would spend too much time at the beach. At any rate, after spending a couple day with my relatives, I checked into what TFA calls "Induction."

During Induction, everyone has the chance to meet fellow TFA corps members from their region (in my case, Houston). There were 3 days straight of events helping us get acclimated to Houston, and several sessions grounding us in the mission of TFA. At 303 teachers strong, Houston has the largest corps in TFA's 20 year history. Most other regions have closer to 100 corps members. From what I understand, there were originally 230 of us placed in Houston. However in May, there was a school district in Houston that was taken over by the state, and all the teachers there were fired, because the district had been performing so poorly. As a result, the district sought out TFA to fill in this huge void. 70 or so teachers later, Houston had over 300 incoming TFA teachers! Since the Houston corps is so large, we are probably not as close-knit as some of the other regions. However, I've still had the opportunity to meet so many great people. It's an awesome feeling being surrounded by a group of mostly recent college graduates, who are so intelligent, motivated, and who share a like-minded commitment to social justice. After getting to know my fellow Houston teachers at Induction, I began TFA's summer institute.

Institute was a five-week intensive training, where we were basically given the foundation to start our new careers as teachers. Institute was like nothing I've ever experienced before. Challenging, exciting, exhausting, and crazy are just a few words that come to mind when I think of my institute experience. If I could draw comparisons, I would say institute was either the equivalent of being in college finals for 5 straight weeks, or being in teaching boot camp. The Houston institute brought together corps members from Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Rio Grande Valley, Miami, and Jacksonville. Together, there were over 800 of us training together.

Once I checked into my dorm room at Rice University, where I stayed for the five weeks of institute, I was told I was to catch a bus the following morning at 6:30. No further detail was really given. The following morning, in my business casual attire, and my TFA-provided lunch bag in hand, I boarded a yellow school bus in-route to what I was told was my "school site." After a 20 minute bus ride, 2 buses full of teachers arrived at Black Middle School, home of the Panthers. Yes, the same thought went through my mind as well...really, the Black Panthers?! Upon arriving at Black Middle School, we were broken into 4 groups of 12. Each group was for a different content area. There was a social studies group, a reading/writing group, a science group, and then my group, the math group. Within my group, 4 were assigned to be 8th grade math teachers, 4 for 7th grade and 4 for 6th grade. I was very fortunate to be assigned as a 7th grade math teacher for summer school, because that is exactly what I will be teaching at my school in the fall. My group of 12 math teachers had a corps member adviser, who basically served as a teacher of math teachers.

The first week of institute consisted of day-long sessions of essentially Teaching 101. We learned about everything from crafting an effective & coherent lesson plan, to classroom management & disciplinary procedures, to finding our "teacher voice." All the information was extremely helpful, but it was definitely information overload, since I have no teaching background. The craziest part was that after only one week at institute, we began teaching summer school. I had my own class - real students, real lessons etc. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around be given so much responsibility so quickly.

Teaching summer school was quite the experience to say the very least. My class size was fairly small, at only 14 students. However, even with the smaller class size there were still many challenges. For one, the students at summer school were there because they had either failed the TAKS (Texas's standardized test), or they passed, but were absent to many times to receive credit. This meant that many of my students were below grade level in math. Additionally, many of the summer school students presented behavioral problems. I think a lot of the misbehavior issues stem from a system that has set such low expectations of students, and has consequently left them feeling like school doesn't matter. My students, in general, were pretty well-behaved for duration of summer school (with the exception of one incident that deserves a separate blog entry). I felt pretty lucky that none of my students was completely out of control, because I certainly heard lots of horror stories from the other teachers at my school site. Having a fairly well-behaved class definitely made it easier for me to teach the material I had planned each day.

Once I began teaching summer school, my daily routine at Black Middle School included going to 3-4 hours of sessions to gain more knowledge about effective teaching, teaching my 7th grade math class, lunch room duty, and then collaborating with my fellow math teachers about the material we had to teach. We didn't have a math book, so a lot of the time, it felt like we were creating everything from scratch. We taught about anything from adding/subtracting negative numbers, to scientific notation, and basic algebra problems. It was challenging to break everything down to small, simple steps, because a lot of the material has become so second nature to me. Then each day, when I got to Rice University, I had to make all the material the following day (notes, worksheets, quizzes, PowerPoints) and rehearse my lesson. Classes were 75 minutes long - in many respects, I felt like I was preparing for a 75 minute presentation everyday. And the difficult part was that every single minute had to be engaging in order to keep the students in check. Add on top of everything, I had to make phone calls to parents, debrief with my adviser about my lessons, turn in future lesson plans drafts and before I knew it, I was consistently up working 19 to 20 hours a day. Day after day of this type of work schedule was physically and mentally exhausting. Yet despite this, I still appreciated every bit of the institute experience, because I knew I was being pushed to become a better teacher, and I believed that I was making daily gains in my own teaching abilities.

By the end of my four weeks teaching summer school, I was happy to see that many of my students had gained something from being in my math class. I came into institute unsure of whether I could really make a difference in the short four week time frame of summer school, but I was pleasantly surprised of the progress that was still made. From that, I have a greater sense of confidence and excitement for what I can do with a full school year. I'll close by sharing some notes that my students wrote. Some are pretty funny, and refreshingly honest:

"You are the best teacher!"
"I think you're my best math teacher ever. Well not the best teacher ever, but you are a cool teacher. The thing I like about you is that you explain stuff in sloooow steps."
"You are the next best math teacher I had."
"This summer I had a pretty good teacher and I really enjoyed your class and I had lots of fun."
"I want to thank you for making me become smarter and better at math. This summer it feels like I've learned a lot. Thanks for teaching me well in class and being patient."
"Thank you for spending your time to teach me everything I need to know for 8th grade, and the rest of my life."
"Mr. Tran, you are the only teacher that has taught me how to divide and I even made a hundred (on 1 quiz). Thanks so much for being patient with me."
"Have a great summer. Don't get injured Mr. Tran!"

I really enjoyed reading those students notes, even the one where the student retracted her statement about me being her best math teacher. Little things like these notes have reaffirmed my decision to join TFA, and give me hope that I might be able to make a difference as a teacher.

I'm sure I forgotten many things that have happened in these past few weeks, but I will leave this blog entry at that, and will be more diligent about updating once I start teaching during the regular school year!