heading into the week!

Thank you to family and friends for your support! Especially to my parents, aunts, and baaalllllllers! (good luck on the fitness test.) Shout out to Lani for rocking classroom management as well as for starting a blog!

As my students say, I have to be "hard" tomorrow. No room for disrespect or wasted time. This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship - I still have to frame this essential and inspirational phrase.

Homecoming back at school has come and gone and how I wish I could have been there. True, it would have been full of crazy debauchery and mayhem among recent graduates; but it surely would have provided a needed break from my life here. As school consumes my soul.

I made my own escape from reality this weekend, traveling to the mountains with my visiting aunt to meet another aunt for some much needed R & R. The leaves were reminiscent of a fall in Vermont - yes, ok, I do miss school. I was darn ready to leave even an entire year before I graduated, but as I mentioned at dinner tonight, sometimes I would trade thinking about the challenges the next day at school will surely bring for a night in the Middlebury library writing two essays.

On another note - I fear I have been placed on the "suicide-watch list" for TFA. At the end of a recent survey I noted that TFA was likely unaware of the extent to which many 08 corps are seriously considering quitting. The very next afternoon I received not only an email, but also a personal phone call from the Charlotte retention director in regard to my comments. After a program director meeting last week I was escorted to the retention director's office to "share my thoughts." I expressed that the way TFA often comes off to corps members when directors discuss retention concerns is that TFA wants to retain its corps in order to preserve its image and respect as an organization. The director responded by sharing that this was not the way they intended to come off and was sorry that their words have been interpreted in this way. After a 15 min meeting, both she and I better understood the other's side and we began to come up with some good ideas for the future. It was fantastic to see the organization so responsive to only a few, though sharply worded, comments at the end of a survey.

Onward!