Ok, so after about 3 weeks of the DC Teaching Fellow Training Institute, I finally have time to write about how it's been going!  Last time I wrote, I was just ready to get started with training, now I'm ready to be finished! Desperately ready to be finished!  Institute is all I ever heard it would be.  Stressful, hectic, and draining...insane even. Everyday there's a work product due, there's practice teaching from 7:45am to 1p.m. then Framework sessions(usually lecture style) from 2:30-5:00, sometimes 5:30.  Every now and again DCTF brings in cookies and juice boxes to try and ease the pain of it all, but it really doesn't work.  It's still painful.  However, I don't come bearing ALL bad news.  All of the lectures that drag on hour after hour are actually very helpful.  I have learned SO much information over the past 3 weeks and I can only imagine I'll continue learning over the next (last) 3 weeks of Institute.  I was blessed to be paired with a great Cooperating Teacher(the DCPS teacher who I will work with for the duration of my practice teaching) at my practice teaching site and she has been amazingly helpful in providing feedback and suggesting instructional and classroom management techniques.
Thus far, DCTF staff has continued to be really helpful.  Some of them are downright annoying(maybe I'm just mean), but they do their jobs and try to be as accessible as possible, so we'll give them a pass(for now).  We still haven't had much interaction with DCPS specifically, so I don't have any words on that yet, but I'm anxious to see how that will go, especially since DCPS is actually the machine that will be pumping out our paychecks.  We have, however, heard lots of negative feedback from various DCPS teachers (and former teachers) who encourage us to "get whatever we can out of DCPS" and then go teach in PG County or a local public charter school.  Let's hope they are just bitter minimally effective teachers who are about to get booted out due to IMPACT...and aren't actually telling the truth.

More in a few days....

1 week till Institute.

So, if you're reading this, you're probably either curious about DC Teaching Fellows or you've been accepted and want to know what other cohort members are thinking, feeling, saying, etc. Well, I'm a Summer 2011 cohort member and I'll be teaching Special Education.  I interviewed in early March and was accepted into the program at the end of the same month.  Since then, I've been completing all kinds of requirements (Praxis 1, Praxis 2, a LOT of "pre-work" that must be done prior to Institute, visiting schools, etc).  It's been a bit much ( the Praxis tests were stressful and evil) and I'm ready to just start the damn Institute already!  So far, DCTF has been really responsive to any questions and concerns and they have been very communicative with any expectations, assignment due dates, etc.  I'm hoping that this will continue during and after Institute, but from the looks of some other DCTF blogs I've seen, we might not be so lucky.  I'm happy with my decision to enter the program thus far, however, I'm not yet sure how I'm going to pay 4,000 to the program for "tuition" within just a few months of entering the program, especially if DCPS is as sketchy when it comes to paying staff as I've read.   Other than that, I don't have any outstanding concerns and I'm ready to start training!  Got just under a week left.  I'll update after the first day.