Thursday was my first day teaching. It was fine, but I'll admit - I didn't love it. To be honest, I never really wanted to be a teacher, least of all in middle school. After this week, I'm still not sure I want to be one. I know things will improve and I'll grow to really care about the kids, which will help. After Thursday, though, I was left with a sense of lacking - like maybe this isn't my life calling. I really wanted it to be. I've never really been passionate about much - never felt like I found what I was just supposed to do. I was hoping teaching kids who so desperately need help would be it. I don't know if it is.

That night, I drug myself out for my nightly run, which Thursday was just a walk. As I walked past the baseball diamonds by my house, I found myself reminiscing about summer nights spent at Hope Summer Playground (HSP). I loved being there, whether I was playing softball or whether I was just meeting up with friends. I loved being in the dug-out cheering on our hitters. I loved the Little Debbies that other parents brought for treats after the games, because we never had Little Debbies at home. I loved buying concessions, and I loved sneaking up to the scorekeeping room to catch a glance of whoever I was crushing on at the moment. Good, good times.

Later that night, I noticed a thunderstorm was starting up so I went outside to watch. One thing I really missed while in Utah was the Indiana summer thunderstorms. Those combined with HSP form the perfect image of summer. Throw in some fresh corn on the cob, and you're set. I sat there on the porch thinking about those memories and enjoying the subtle power of the rolling thunder and the startling beauty of the lightning, and for a a moment I felt so small. The power and majesty of the storm was enough to make my life look miniscule. There were thousands of other people watching the same storm that I was, but none of us could do anything to stop it or re-direct it. It was controlled by the most powerful being in the universe, who had created everything that storm touched, of which I was just a small part. At the same time, I felt an overwhelming feeling of importance. I was struggling that day, and my Heavenly Father knew it. Through this brilliant display of power, He was bringing back memories and feelings that made me feel at home. Since I decided to come back to Indiana, I have received multiple confirmations that this is where I'm supposed to be. I don't usually receive quite so strong of confirmations, which makes me think there will probably be just as many, probably more, moments where I will question whether or not I made the right decision. Thursday was one of those moments. Why would I leave my friends and comforts and move across the country to take a job I'm not even sure I'll like? I'm still not sure, but as confirmed to me that night, I am sure that it was the right decision. I'm home. Right where I'm supposed to be.

As I was pondering this, the scripture from 1 Kings 19:11-12 came to mind: "...but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice." For me, the Lord was in the wind. He was in the thunder and the lightning and the rain, but His presence wasn't fierce or mighty or loud. Through that storm, the still, small voice of the Spirit whispered peace to my soul and restored hope to my heart.

"Let us go back to the man who says that a thing cannot be wrong unless it hurts some other human being. He quite understands that he must not damage the other ships in the convoy, but he honestly thinks that what he does to his own ship is simply his own business. But does it not make a great difference whether his ship is his own property or not? Does it not make a great difference whether I am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body, or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord? If somebody else made me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself." -C.S. Lewis

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Truth is truth is truth. It's not relative. It doesn't change, depending on who we are. There are truths that have been divinely decreed and there are things that we cannot change, no matter how convenient it is for us. We are not our own, and we must live our lives according to the rules of our Maker, not because He's controlling or tyrannical, but because He knows better than we do. He made us. He knows how we work and He knows what we need. We need to trust Him, trust the guidelines He's given us, and live our lives in the way that brings eternal happiness: His way.

For those of you who might be interested in hearing about and seeing pictures from my fabulous road trip of the century, I'm sorry. You'll be disappointed probably indefinitely.

I'm a teacher now, which apparently means I do nothing but teacher stuff, even though I have yet to receive a paycheck, though I've been pretty intensely involved with this stuff since the end of May.

In other news, my piece of crap car has some issues which, according to one mechanic, will cost over $1,000 to fix (if you're wondering, that's about a fourth of my car's total value). I have no money (since I haven't been paid in several months), I can get only about a thousand dollars on trade-in for it due to some other issues, and I'm about to start driving daily into a pretty sketchy part of town while hoping that my car holds it together enough to get me back out. I'm drowning in pre-teaching work, I have no friends, and I have no desire to work. Mostly I just want to cry.

It's worth it, right? Right?

The good part of my day: It's National Cheesecake Day and this is how I celebrated.

Half-price Cheesecake Factory pina colada cheesecake.

I am so overwhelmed by all that I have to blog about; thus, I have chosen to put it off as much as possible. The obvious choice.

For now, I will post about a few things that happened a while ago.

As previously mentioned, I spent five weeks of near-hell in the Phoenix area of Arizona. It is hot there. The heat wasn't the worst, though it was impossible to be outside without sweating. The training I went through there was extensive, intense, and just really not fun. There were good parts, of course, but as a whole, I was not sad to leave. Not even a little bit. In fact, this past week I had another training here in Indianapolis (oh yeah, I live in Indianapolis now) and every time anyone mentioned Insitute (that's what the Arizona training was called) I just got an overwhelming feeling of joy at not being there anymore.

Anyway, there were a few good things.

Good thing #1:

I love the Mesa temple. I only went once while I was there, but it was just what I needed. I hated the negative, pessimistic, complaining person I became at Institute and the temple was a great reminder of who I should and want to be.

Good thing #2:







At the high school I was assigned to we were divided into groups of about twelve people and were assigned an advisor who was in charge of supporting us professionally. We spent a lot of time together planning and preparing for our respective classes and I felt like we really became familial. (Is that a word? Like unto a family.) We laughed, danced, cried, complained, and talked together. Pretty much anything other than work. In this picture is (front clockwise) Claire, Devon (our advisor), Craig, Leigh (Craig's wife who was not actually in our group), Alexis, me, Amanda, Kelsey, and Vickie. We were missing Barry, Bryan, Anna, and Rebecca.

Good thing #3:

I have a picture of my students and I want to put that on here as number three, but turns out it's illegal to post pictures of a minor without consent. So...this picture with my co-teachers will have to do. Rebecca, Amanda, Craig, and I co-taught our ninth grade literacy seminar class with Fernando Hurtado as our faculy advisor. The four of us were never teaching at the same time, but we coordinated extensively for our class of nineteen fabulous ninth-graders. After hearing some serious horror stories about clashes within collabs (that's what our group of four is called), I was so, so grateful for how effortless and seamless our collaboration was. Adding Fernando, who was the most encouraging and supportive advisor ever, to the mix made for a really solid team. On top of that, we had a group of really fun, well-behaved, and bright students. Teaching was definitely the best part of Insitute.



Today is Tuesday, though it's actually more like a Friday since we have the day off tomorrow for the 4th of July. God Bless America.

My drive to do just about anything today is non-existent. It's 8:51 pm now and all I've done in the last few hours is watch The Bachelorette (totally worth my time) and spend lots of time on facebook (not worth my time). I need to work out, but I'm having a hard time doing it. I actually got all my workout clothes together about 20 minutes ago and got halfway through changing when I get distracted by my computer. Again.

The one great thing about working out here is that they have TV on the treadmills. Best idea ever. I was so pumped to go watch The Bachelorette last night while I ran and I got there and they didn't have ABC. I'm not even kidding. They had all the other networks plus most cable channels plus like fifteen different Spanish channels. No ABC. I was so mad that I really almost got off the treadmill and went home. I ate a cookie sandwich yesterday afternoon, though, that left me feeling pretty hefty so I pushed through my anger and watched Hell's Kitchen instead. Not nearly as exciting, but it got me through my workout at least.

That reminds me. I should probably check the TV listings before I go so I know what I want to watch while I'm running.

Maybe I'll make it to the gym by 9:30. Here's hoping.

I'm spending five weeks here at Institute in Phoenix and I never take pictures. How am I going to remember it? To be honest, I'm not sure I'll want to remember it. But I went ahead and documented a day in my life. This isn't really a typical day, because it was a Friday, but it was pretty close.

A day in my life as a Teach For America corps member at Institute.

Friday, June 22, 2012.



Yesterday I got up at 4:15, though I usually get up at 4:30 or 4:45, depending on if I need to shower. I get ready with this small little lamp as my light because ASU apparently believes in conserving energy so they don't put overhead lights in the dorms. I'm not kidding. Weirdest thing ever. Then I walk down this dark hallway to go to breakfast. The lights are motion-activated and there aren't many people going to breakfast at 5:15 am. 

My typical breakfast: Special K with bananas and a bowl of fruit. Sometimes if I'm feeling rebellious, I have a small cheese danish because they're sooooo good. Yesterday I resisted, though.

This is Rebecca. You'll see a lot of her because she's in my small group at school (we teach the same kids and work on everything together) and she's funny so I like to be around her. We spend lots of time together.

After breakfast, we go through the lunch line. We have to take our lunch so before we leave, we collect a sandwich (I usually get the turkey sandwich if they have one), a drink (water for me), and three snacks or side items. And an ice pack. Then we get on the busses and ride for about 35 minutes before we get to Westview High School in Avondale, Arizona. There are 650 corps members here at this institute and not everyone goes to the same school, and they don't leave at the same time. We're on the first busses because our kids come at 7:30 am.

We get to school and head straight to our CMA rooms. CMA groups are groups of about twelve corps members who have one Corps Member Advisor. Ours is Devon Lasiter. We meet with her in the morning for a little bit before we get started.

Devon has a dog named Lilikoi who she brings to school with her. I hate dogs, but I actually love Lili. I still don't let her touch me, but I like to talk to her and I like to have her around. She's just so darn happy and she goes ballistic when we all get there, running and jumping around like a crazy dog because she's so happy to see us.

We teach our classes in groups of four - each of us gets about an hour to teach and we rotate every week. Our group teaches English to kids going into tenth grade. This week I taught first so I got to be there when the kids were coming in and I really enjoyed the few minutes to chat with them as they were getting settled in. I love these kids. They're really well-behaved and they're just fun. Yesterday I played Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend" for them as they came in because I'm obsessed with it. I'm pretty sure they thought I was a freak.

After I finish teaching, I go back to the CMA room where I have time to work. Half of our group is in a large group session when I get back and almost everyone else is teaching so Lili and I have some time alone together. I often work on lesson plans but, as you can see, I also spend some quality time on facebook. Working on my computer all day means I check facebook like fifteen times a day. Sometimes I just need a break, ok? Unfortunately, very few people update their facebook as often as I check it so I don't have much to read. Lame.

This is the bathroom. I spend lots of time here, as you can imagine. There are no mirrors in this school, though. Weird, huh? It's very frustrating sometimes.

After work time, I head to a session. Sometimes it's about classroom behavior management, sometimes it's about lesson planning, sometimes it's about literacy. Today it was about Diversity...something. DCA. I already forget what it stands for. The sessions are generally hated by all corps members because they're long and boring and they take away from the time that we could be actually accomplishing something. This is my friend Anna.

12:30. Lunch time. Glorious time. Unfortunately, since we eat breakfast at 5:15, I'm usually hungry before lunch time, so I eat parts of my lunch throughout the morning. That makes lunch pretty disappointing sometimes. I usually bring a few extra snacks, though.

As I mentioned before, Fridays are a bit different in the afternoon. Usually we have more sessions, which are a death trap after lunch. It's so hard to stay awake. Fridays, though, we have Advisory Session with our CMA group, which often turns into more work time or socializing time. I'm sure it's supposed to be more structured than that but our group is cool and we do what we want.

Here's the group. Front from the left: Claire, Rebecca, Anna, Bryan. Back from the left: Kendall, Devon, Amanda, me, Alexis and Lili, Kelsie, Craig, Vickie, and Barry.

Today for Advisory we did an activity called Breaking Boundaries. It was a team-building activity that Amanda had that makes you answer a lot of questions so you find out a lot about your team members. We sat on our desks in a circle. It was impossible for me to not swing my feet. Others had a similar problem I think.

Last thing on Fridays is a school team meeting. We usually do some kind of competition among the groups and share shout-outs for people who we think did great things that week. This week our competition was about Teach For America acronyms (There are a million. For real.). Somehow I got nominated to represent my team. I lost in the second round.

This is when I was so sure I got the answer right. But I didn't. Ironically, the question was about DCA, which as I said before, I still don't know the meaning of. I thought it was Diversity and Cultural Awareness which I think is a pretty good description of what those sessions are about, so I think I should've been right.

Then we have some time to just hang out and dance around until the busses come.

I usually listen to music and fall asleep on the bus ride home. Or sometimes I'm entertained by Rebecca.

Back at the dorms, we have to go through this cage (two locked doors), another locked door to the stairwell, a locked door onto our floor, then our locked room doors. It's more secure than a prison, I think.

Usually, there's a group of four of us that come back right after school (at 4:30) and eat dinner together because we're already starving. Fridays we get back an hour earlier, though, so the dinner group is a little different.

On a typical day, I would spend the rest of the night working on lesson plans, going to the gym to go running, then going to the copy center and printing and copying everything I need for the next day's lesson. I'm usually in bed before 10:00. Last night, though, I came back to my room and talked to Jaime for a while, then fell asleep at 7:30, woke up to get ready for bed, and went back to bed. So I pretty much went to bed at 7:30. And I did no work. That's definitely not a typical day.

My whole life, I’ve based a lot of my self-worth on the fact that things come naturally to me. I know this isn’t a wise thing, since this will obviously not always be the case. In my 26 years, though, there haven’t been many things that have been very difficult. On the other hand, I know myself pretty well and I can see when something is going to be difficult so maybe I tend to shy away from those things so I don’t have to deal with failure. So maybe it’s not that nothing is difficult for me but that I have always chosen not to challenge myself.

To be honest, I can see this in my school work. School has never been difficult for me, but I’ve never tried to go beyond what I thought I could do. A good example of this would be an English class that my school had called Modern Literature. Everyone knew Modern Lit was the hardest class the English department offered. You had to actually be invited to the class to take it. That’s how exclusive it was. The best and the brightest took that class and they all vented about how much work it required but they also raved about how much they loved it. I decided before I was even offered a place in the class that I was not going to take it. I was not about to add stress to my senior year if it wasn’t necessary. I already had my college acceptance locked in at the university I wanted, so why go through the trouble of taking difficult classes I didn’t need?

Looking back, I can see this pattern of complacence throughout my college career, as well. I’ve always been an A student, but I’ve never pushed myself for the sake of pushing myself. I would do the minimum to get my A, which is all I wanted, and nothing more.

Maybe I didn’t know enough about TFA before I started or maybe I overestimated my ability, but this experience has been hard—definitely one of the hardest I’ve gone through. Being thrown into a classroom of nineteen students who are depending on me to help them get to tenth grade English has been surprising. Lesson planning has not come easy to me. Time management has not come easy to me, either. The only thing that has come easy is being in front of the kids. That has been the one redeeming part of this experience. Going into the last few weeks, though, students’ weaknesses are starting to show and I’m realizing that entertaining them will not cut it. They need real, concrete, transformational help and I have no idea how to give it to them.

I’m realizing more than ever that this experience will require my body, heart, and soul, as I give all my attention to these kids and learn to give them individualized attention and help them succeed in the way that each of them needs. It will require a lot of work and it will be hard, but I know it will be worth it. And I’ll know that if I want to, I really can do hard things.