Placement Transparency

I made my first parent phone calls ever this evening. And while I didn't exactly tank, I was received with much less enthusiasm than I might have hoped. Oh, well. Yet another skill upon which to improve. Delta folk may be coming to observe in my classroom this week, and I would really like to be excellent when they visit because I will be excellent in the fall. Or so I keep telling myself. But as I feel after every grade-level instructional strategy meeting (I went to my first 1st grade one today), I have so much to learn, and I don't know how I'll learn it all in the month-from-this-Friday before I begin teaching.

On another note, I want to be completely transparent about the requests that I made during my interview process (December) and also in my placement phone call in March. Part of the reason I'm writing this is that I hope it will be a resource to other people considering joining the Teach for America movement, especially in the Delta. So, placement.

Interview day, I ranked age levels: elementary, high, middle school. I added that I strongly preferred elementary, noting that it was all I, as a philosophy major, was qualified to teach. I checked off that I was willing to teach everything but PE and Special Ed. I ranked my highly preferred regions: Mississippi Delta, South Louisiana, Bay Area, New Mexico, North Carolina (or something like that, but the Delta was definetely first). I really wanted rural so that I didn't have to deal with learning to be a teacher AND learning to live in a city. I neglected to think about how moving to Mississippi is probably going to be at least as much as, if not more, of a culture shock than New York City. So far (still haven't been to Mississippi) I don't regret that, though. I love my Delta Corps.

In my phone interview, I expressed a preference for 1st or 5th grade, because 1st grade is so crucial (I mean, I know they all are, but READING), and because 5th grade was my favorite (I remember it as the year in which I learned the most, and that was the most engaging, which is almost certainly completely attributable to the fact that I had an absolutely stellar teacher.) I didn't express any preference for city size or for location in the Delta except that I wanted to be close to Lin. They asked if I was willing to pioneer a school/district and I was very enthusiastic about that opportunity.

I was originally placed as a music teacher, which I got switched when I called and told them that although I was willing to teach music, I wasn't acutally qualified to do so. In the end, I got: Mississippi Delta, 1st grade, tiny town, new school/area, an hour+ from Lin. Except for being close to Lin, I was fortunate to be placed almost exactly where I asked to be placed. Granted, however, that I asked for things most people don't want. Another girl in my town got upper elementary when she wanted lower, departmentalized when she wanted self-contained, a new TFA district when she wanted established. So it can go either way...