BEST MONDAY IN A WHILE

Hello!

Despite being Monday, everyone felt energized from the relaxing weekend for a hard day of work at KIPP. Everyone seemed to divide up the tasks ranging from the usual grading and teaching, to planning  actual teaching lessons, for later in the week! Ann Marie, Ali, and Idara will all be teaching tomorrow. Ann Marie is teaching 4 classes of 6th grade Civil Rights History (wow, good luck!) and Ali and Idara are co-teaching a high school Spanish class (although they seem a bit conflicting over teaching the class...in a loving AB manner of course).

I (Nicole) did a lot of math today! In addition to talking to Mrs. Coke about teaching 7th grade pre-algebra later in the week, I graded 5th and 9th grade math assignments. I try to give students thorough feedback about where they made errors and how they can improve their work. Chris and I had lunch with 7th graders today. While quiet at first, they warmed up and told us about their music tastes and favorite, and least favorite, teachers at KIPP. In addition, I helped Mr. Bills to "beautify" his classroom, sprucing up the bulletin board inside the classroom and making the room more aesthetically appealing. I ended the day by helping with the usual Algebra is Power class from 4-5pm that I have been doing since the first day. I really enjoy working one-on-one with 9th graders in this class, answering their math questions and encouraging hard work at the end of the day.

Ya here, it's great to finally blog and contribute to this diary of our adventures in Gaston. It's been wonderful here the last few days, and I've definitely become more comfortable with the other participants and students and teachers at KIPP. Shout out to Grace and Chemia for their creative bulletin making skills. Meghan and I also spray glued new year's resolutions inside the student lockers. The cool thing about their lockers is that they're lock-less, in order to build trust among the students.

When the school day ended, we met with two KIPP moms who shared their experiences with us. It was clear that at KIPP, teachers and parents communicate extensively to better the students' education. For example, Mr. May calls each individual parent the summer prior to the school year to start building the relationship between parent and teacher. It was inspiring to see two mothers who were truly invested in their children's success and how that was made possible through a KIPP education.

THEN. We came home and vegged out! We ate a taco/burrito dinner made by lovely Olivia and Aditi, followed promptly by a thorough discussion on our day and how we could continue our relationship with KIPP after returning to College Park. Some awesome suggestions were to start a pen-pal exchange with interested students and coordinate some college info sessions/counseling for the high schoolers. We hope to continue learning the next few days, especially when we meet several KIPP administrators tomorrow! Look forward to more exciting blog posts in the days to come.

Love,
Nicole and Ya :)