M A R C H 0 3
Hey, welcome to the March archives; you're in for a veritable HTML treat. During this month, Dave wrote Chapter Two of his TFA chronicles. He got the new Gamecube Zelda game, beat it in a week, and loved every minute of it. After a quick reflection on concept art, there was a colored treehouse sketch that really got Dave interested in drawing again. Hilarity ensued when Andrew visited Dave and they watched the trailer to Shaolin Soccer. There were five photos that summed up February in Baltimore pretty well. Dave had too many girl scout cookies one night and hallucinated about music of the future. Don was excited about his Jamaica vacation. Dave got a great birthday present from Andrew: Battlefield Earth en espanol. And finally, another great Brass Monkey show was recounted by Dave; the story of when he and Mike won a Battle of the Bands by themselves!
Dave's Teach For America Chronicles / Chapter Two: Road To New York
There was a small reception at the Biltmore (a popular Charlottesville bar and restaurant) for those students accepted into Teach For America. I got to meet the three other UVA'ers going to Baltimore and have some questions answered by the same guy who ran the first info session I attended. Almost immediately after graduating in May, there was a three-day pre-induction in Baltimore. The Baltimore directors asked us to bring up some completed forms and resumes along; we would be visiting a Baltimore City job fair during our stay, as well as checking out possible places to live and getting acquainted with the schools. I drove down one afternoon, checked into the hotel, and watched that show for several hours where the guy talks to dead people. I was pretty early.
Slowly but surely, more people started settling in. I went to dinner with five other guys and I was silent for the most part, taking in the conversations around me. Kendall was moving in with his girlfriend, Dave went to college in New York and Jesse was engaged at one time. When we went back, a TFA crowd had formed in the hotel lounge area and we joined in. The crowd got bigger through out the night, and although I don't really remember any of the conversations, I met most of my future Baltimore friends for the first time that night. I went back to the room early, borrowing a cell phone to give Jasmine a call and calling it a night.
I'm not sure of what order the other pre-induction activities went in, but I remember a few highlights. We went on a fairly boring "Live Baltimore!" bus tour of the various city neighborhoods, but not even the exclamation mark could liven things up. Andrew Newman continually asked the tour guide if there were any good Mexican restaurants, the only bright moment in an otherwise long and confusing trip. The job fair was a disaster - only certain schools were partnered with Teach For America, and only certain certain schools needed Language Arts teachers. It's interesting - I put down elementary as my grade level preference when I applied to TFA, but I just assumed they needed more middle school teachers when I was sent my assignment. I observed several teachers teaching at Robert Poole Middle School, including my future Program Director, Camika Royal (remember the name, she plays a prominent role later on in this journey). The classes were seemingly small and under control, and the teachers were excellent.
But it was at the Gin Mill bar and an after-party where things got interesting. One guy took my wallet from my pocket without me even realizing it. And so I met Nick, my future roommate. By the end of the night, we talked about trying to find a few other people to live together with. Nick then proceeded to continue his soon-to-be-infamous magic antics by levitating David-Blaine-style on the sidewalk, making up a story to this girl about being trained by monks. I was pretty sure that we would get along just fine.
When I came back home to Virginia, I went on a week-long vacation to St. Maarten with my family, only to turn right back around and head up to New York via train. The Teach For America Summer Institute was a five week "teacher boot camp" where we walked in as normal college students and would walk out as motivated save-the-world teachers. Headquarters was Fordham University in the Bronx. I walked from Penn Station to Grand Central and took the subway to Fordham (Dad had shown me numerous times how to get there on a map). It was a pretty cool feeling walking through the crowded tunnels of New York with 3 suitcases strapped all over me. It sank in that I would be a city kid for five weeks. Figuring my way around Grand Central was like a rite of passage or something.
I arrived at Fordham late that afternoon and picked up some forms, an ID tag and free stuff. I ran into Kate, a friend from UVA who was assigned to the Washington D.C. corps (New York was the training ground for about half of TFA; Houston held the others). I met my institute roommate, Akshay, and my old UVA roommate, Chris. Many of the Baltimoreans were housed in the same hallway of one dorm building, so I got to know a lot of them much better when we had to share a dorm bathroom. It was the first year of college all over again. I ran into Nick, who informed me that he'd added Mike and Tammer to our list of roommates. I was excited, especially after I actually met the two of them. Splitting the rent four ways was going to be helpful, and everyone seemed like they would get along well.
New York training was about to begin. On Monday I was reporting to to C.I.S 22 Middle School (hereafter known as "the double deuce") in the Bronx. The reality of having a job in the real world was sinking in. After a few days of training, I would be teaching a group of summer school students. These five weeks in New York were probably the most fun I had with Teach For America - and I was a changed person when I left.
(Dave's TFA Chronicles are eight short stories about Dave's job as a Language Arts teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools from 2002 to 2003. Read the other chapters: one two three four five six seven eight)
Monday, March 31 at 1:02 PM
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