Meine wochenende

I went to NYC this weekend for a TFA placement kickoff event. I arrived noonish on Saturday, met up with a friend from Madison, and spent the rest of the day and evening studying with him and a couple of his dental school friends. It was a wild time had by all. Actually, it was a much needed reality check for me. I took a practice English CST, (a 4-hr. NY teacher certification exam I have to pass on June 25) and my performance was pitiful. I have forgotten a remarkable amount of material that I once knew inside and out. I remember what free verse is but forgot what blank verse is. Alliteration is cake, but I'm rusty on allegory. And so on.

But those were not the questions that concerned me. I can easily brush up on those terms and concepts. What's really causing problems though, is the fact that I was a JOURNALISM major, NOT an ENGLISH major. This means that the last time I really read and analyzed a lot of classic literature and poetry was my senior year AP English class. So I have my work cut out for me in studying for this thing.

Also, I realized that three years in "the j-school," as some liked to call it- really trained me to believe that journalistic writing is the ONLY correct writing. (Disclaimer: My blog is very informal, and I know my writing here is not exemplary, so don't judge after what I'm about to say.)

Some of the multiple choice questions asked you to choose which was the correct way to write a given sentence. I noted in several of these questions that I thought all of the given options were terrible. Yes, one was grammatically correct, but it was often awkward, wordy, and unclear, and I strongly felt while reading it that I would never encourage one of my students to create such an atrocious -albeit grammatically correct- sentence.

And my last soap box rant about the practice test was that I've really grown to know and love AP (Associated Press) style editing, and I'm having a tough time using anything but. But I'll get over it. :)

But those are obviously not excuses for sucking on the practice test. So I'll be studying a lot of English lit and nitty gritty grammar over the next month.

The placement event took place all day Sunday. It went pretty well. Well organized, informative interesting.

I had a mock interview with an NYC junior high principal. He was one of the most negative, jaded people I've ever met. Phrases like "these kids just don't..." and "you can't expect much..." filled the majority of our conversation. I don't consider myself a starry-eyed idealist anymore, after having worked in some really struggling schools, but I definitely do have faith that a lot of students really do have a ton of potential buried within them in hard-to-reach places. This guy seemed to think that every kid in his building was a lost cause. Which is unfortunate because I'm sure that comes across in his work as an administrator. But no big deal. I'm ready to deal with not liking my principal if I end up working with one like him. You just have to wonder what keeps him coming to work if he think it's hopeless. Maybe it's the $100,000+ salary? But I don't know. I think you'd have to pay me a much more outlandish salary to stick with something that I didn't like and had no faith in. I'm stumped.

Anyway.... Overall, a good weekend. I met some pretty cool TFA people, and that was fun.