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....