Things Just Been On My Mind

ok so I am going to finally vent what has been on mind since I have been here. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO IF I DON'T PASS THE PRAXIS II? Like can I get an emergency certification...NO. If I go home..what will I tell my friends and family. What will I do...I am not ready to work in corporate America and the end of July would be to late to apply to grad school. I would be one year behind in life and I would have felt like I was letting my parents down...the expect a LOT of me. So when I got here I began studying EVERY dang day, because I have not seen this high level math since 11th grade of high school and freshman year of college. I want to thank Houng for ALWAYS keeping my mind off me passing the Praxis (lol) and I want to thank all the study session people who explained things to me and the second year teacher (forgot his name) who hosted the sessions. And last but not least I want to thank BEN GUEST. Who believed in my enough to accept me into the program conditonally and kept telling me everyday that I would pass the dang test. And after the day I took it I FINALLY went out...Beale ST of course and had fun on that light drizzle night. And I DID PASS. This is all for now because I am too blessed to be stressed!

Birthday Thanks

I would like to thank all who came out to celebrate my 22nd birthday with me. Adryon, Mason, Lilly, Jess, Aaron, Mason, Evan, Lily, G & T, Huong, Amy, Ruth, Joel, Anderson, Tiffany, MEredith, Dave J, and the couple...Lee and KateIt really feels good to have new friends who might have not known for a while who care. MOST of my friends and ALL my family are in the North and I do feel homesick sometime, but when you have events like this it makes you feel like you have people outside of them who care about you. But um...I had a great time and the cake was good...I SWEAR everytime I swear off sweets more always come at me. Its cool, enjoyed the RED and WHITE cake Torsheta and Ginny thanks for the music. I thank A**** for my drink, it was my second one since graduation, the cosmoplitan at dinner was my first. Lily the card was a nice touch, it fits my personality :)

Jake and Group

you will be a great english teacher. You are going to keep the class interested in the topics you bring to them. Shouts out to my group...the COOLEST student teaching group in the 2005 teacher corp.

Video Critique for July Student Teaching

I feel like I am getting better at my teaching. I did however enjoy teaching "real kids" in June than teaching my peers in July for my taped presentation. It is the "real deal" that I got on the tape in June. I do enjoy the benefits of peer evaluation and stuff during the student teaching we did in July. As I watch my video I am also look at the evaluation that Mrs. Cornelius gave to me that day. I noticed on this warm-up that i had 8 problems, and she stated that this was too much. I agree with her from looking at the video, though I beleive since it was the begining of the school year I wanted to give them that many problems, because this was basically level Order of operations stuff that I wanted them to know 100% before we moved on in the class. After this lesson, I did change my warm-up to less problems. She also docked me for not restating my objectives, which I did DO after looking at my video. My class seems a little boring to me. I need to think of something to spice it up. I think the kids will do that, because my kids from this summer bought energy to the room. the room was just too quiet for me. I think during the school year like I did for the summer time, I am going to have kids individually come up to the board and work out a problem. It gets that out of their seat. My closure was good and I had good classroom management. Of course, like I will during the school year, I had a "special child" we will call Jake. He doesn't do his warm-up, yet still doesn't know why her understands it. He calls out all the problems loud and so I have to keep constant watch over him so he doesn't disrupt the class. I do see why Mrs. Cornelius wrote in my evalution that I "picked" on him to much. But I figured to keep him on task I was going to keep calling him to make him pay attention. The assessment I did this day was good and my closure was good. All in all I am pleased with that lesson, except I do need to bring some excitement to the classroom, but I guess the students will bring that.

MTC Reunion weekend

For this to be the Mississippi Teacher Corps first reunion, it was actually organized really well. Even though there was a LOT of dead time, but I figured it was because it gives the people coming from out of town a chance to visit the schools in the Delta that they used to teach at.

Will I come back in 5 years for the next reunion in 2010? Probably.

The event that I enjoyed the most this weekend was the dinner on Saturday night with the former Governor of Mississippi Mr. William Winters. Everything he had to say was helpful and insightful. He kept my attention the entire time he was on the mic. He was first introduced by Dr. Andy Mullins. Gov Winters speech was awesome. He first talked about him being homeschooled by his mom who had no high school diploma and having to pick cotton during cotton picking season. He reinterated the fact that "Raise the income gap in Mississippi you have to rais the quality of education in the state of Mississippi"and that the only way out of poverty is education- this is something that my dad has instilled in me and something that his mom instilled in him. He said that MTC teachers are known for raising the standards of their students and that they give the students who feel like they have been forgotten about a feeling of hope. He told the story about a girl whose father had left her, her mother and her siblings at a young age and whose mother eventually ended up on drugs. They were homeless and living in a checken house and she sold drugs to make money, was eventually busted and sent to foster home (somewho I think it was probably The Lord watching over her want to help her turn her life around). She ended up at Jim Hill HS in Jackson and when asked by the Gov how she made it? She responded, "because I had ONE teacher that cared and say qualities in me that would make me successful oneday." She ended up going to Tougaloo College, Brown MEdical and is currently at Northwestern for her residency. She has plans to return to MS to open up her practice. The Gov also amazed me when he said he has had Myrlie Evers Williams (the wife of the late slain Medgar Evers a field rep for the NAACP) as a dinner guest at the governor's mansion. He told her that at the dinner all Mississippians over her for her husbands death because he set us all free!!! The current Morehouse College president, Dr. Walter Massey, has also been a guest at his governor's mansion. At the time of his visit he was VP of the University of Chicago. He is from Hattiesburg, MS and an internationally known Mathematician. When the Gov asked him the same question as he asked the girl who is now in her residency, he also replied, "because I had a teacher who convinced me I could do anything". He gave the new MTC teachers a charge...TO AT LEAST CHANGE THE LIVES OF ONE CHILD A YEAR WE TEACH WHILE IN MISSISSIPPI.

National Civil Rights Musuem

DISCLAIMER- I love history, especially black history. I was raised between DC and Baltimore and there is a lot of Afro-centric influence in all aspects of life and education there. Festivals, education/schools and museums.

Even before coming down here I wanted to go to the National Civil Rights Museum. I knew about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but then who doesn’t? But I wanted to know more, I wanted to see the exact place where his assassination happened. So I went on Saturday afternoon with my friend from Howard University who lives in Memphis. We went in at 2:14 pm and left at 5:27 pm and we talked about the museum and its exhibits all the way home. The museum was broken down into different sections that span Black and African-American history from Slavery to the Assassination of MLK, Jr. The exhibits that I especially liked were The Civil War, Migration, Jim Crow Laws, Booker T Washington, Little Rock Nine, Montgomery Bus Boycott (where we were able to sit on a simulation bus with Rosa Parks), Student Sit-Ins, Project C Birmingham, The March on Washington (of which I was fortunate to be in DC and attend the 40th Anniversary of the March in August 2003), The People of Memphis, Rooms 306 & 307 and the boarding house across the street from the Lorraine where his killer stayed and shot him from. When going through the exhibit of Rooms 306 & 307 where Dr. King stayed at in the Lorraine Hotel I almost cried. While reading the step by step chronology of what was going on leading up to his assassination I could do nothing but picture it and him actually there. To know that I was standing right there was a privilege. I even was able to look over the balcony where he stood and saw his car (I model of his car) SIDENOTE- I saw a paper that had all the motels that blacks could stay in during the Jim Crow Law time and the Lorraine Hotel was one of them. Like on this piece of paper, it had the name of the motel, the city, a phone number and the street address.

I know I will be going back in the near future. Anybody want to join me?

Fourth of July Cookout

Mrs. Monroe- The cookout was excellent! Your house is pretty and the food was good. Amy and I got lost on the way back to campus. Some how we ended up in ABBEVILLE!!!! Oh NO...NEVER again! Next time we will just get directions from your house back to campus.