Last few sessions and baseball...

Starting off the day bright and early, my roommate and I emerged from our slumber at 6:45am. The sleep deprivation starting to really creep up on the group, the girls and I brushed our teeth in a sleepy silence amid a few attempts at "Good morning."

Half of the group went to processing today (which I did yesterday) while the other half rotated through sessions on the importance of advancing our students more than one grade level, adapting to the Charlotte community, and TFA's diversity mission. The defining moment of the latter came when a young Black man answered a plea regarding how people of color in the room could help the White future teachers in the room relate to their students of color with, "As much as your students might think, 'Who is this White lady, I don't have to listen to them, the same students will likely say of me, 'Who is this guy, he might look like me, but he doesn't come from my background.'" It was fantastic to participate in a conversation about race that was really the conversation - as opposed to side conversations that might occur afterwards.

Our next activity took us to downtown Charlotte to an exhibit entitled, "From cotton fields to sky scrapers." It broke down the history of race in NC from cotton, to 'colored' drinking fountains, to the founding of the new Bank of America in modern Charlotte. A past corps member specifically designed this exhibit for teachers and their students and it is therefore very interactive, including real cotton to see and feel. If you are ever in NC, check out the Levine Museum.

In the evening we headed over to the local Knights Baseball stadium for some hardball action. Thinking I was the only Californian in the group, I was feeling a little regionally lonely - until...I spotted a young woman with a Cal baseball hat, however! I immediately inquired as to her place of origin, and she responded that she has recently lived in Berkeley and San Francisco. Overjoyed, I sat down and enjoyed the game with my new-found friend. Needless to say, even without this comforting discovery, I am certainly feeling at home among the heavily Southern and female-dominated group with whom I doubted I would find real connections only a few days ago. Off on a scavenger hunt of Charlotte tomorrow!