John and I were eager to meet Miss Warshaw and “dive in”
head-first on our second day. Miss
Warshaw taught “humanities” which consisted of a Women/Gender class for seniors,
a Societal Business class for three groups of juniors, and a world history
class for freshman. This was Miss
Warshaw’s second year in the Chicago corps of TFA. She taught second grade the year before but
told us she enjoyed teaching high school a lot more. Whereas we had done mostly observing on our
first day, Miss Warshaw had told us through e-mail correspondence that she had many
activities and tasks planned for us throughout the week. ‘Many’ was a gross understatement. Throughout the day, she had us help her in
many ways. We helped make lessons plans,
research articles to include in those lesson plans, pass-out papers, monitor students
to make sure they weren’t cheating; she had us help facilitate class
discussions, search amongst the other teachers for speakers to borrow, laminating
papers, send faxes, and of course we helped her make thousands of photo copies! At no point were John or I ever idle as we
were constantly busy. It was shocking to
see all of the things she alone was responsible for in a single day and we couldn’t
imagine how she possibly was able to do all of these things day-in-and day out
all be herself. She was incredibly
organized and clearly one of the most truly determined and motivated teachers
we had ever seen.
Miss Warshaw taught “humanities” which consisted of a Women/Gender
class for seniors, a Societal Business class for three groups of juniors, and a
world history class for freshman. This
was Miss Warshaw’s second year in the Chicago corps of TFA. She taught second grade the year before but
told us she enjoyed teaching high school a lot more. Because it was our first day with her, in all
of her classes she had John and I introduce ourselves and answer any questions
the students had about college. However,
she told us that her seniors were suffering from “senioritus” and she asked us
to give them a special inspiration/motivational talk about the importance of
finishing high school on a strong note in order to start college off on the
right foot. This was one of my favorite
highlights of the whole week. John and I
had the opportunity to tell our own narratives in a relatable way to the kids
and I don’t know if we actually had an impact, but getting that experience to
share our stories with these seniors was priceless.
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