I'm in LA, b*tch!

Last weekend here, and I'm definitely feeling bittersweet about leaving where I've called home for the past 4 weeks.

Night life - amazing, gorgeous and interesting people, the shopping satisfying, weather's pretty good, and beaches that never stop.

But, that's only the half of it. The other half comes with TFA Institute and its many things that are both f'd up and fabulous. The work is hard, draining, angering, and rewarding... and it's all rooted in what we have come to call "student achievement."

My thoughts on institute itself have thus far been pretty negative - institutional racism is a real problem that exists on a fundamentally real level that you can both see and participate in. A participation that makes you wonder what you're actually doing here and also forces you to question how and why so much can be overlooked regarding inequity, race, class, diversity, discrimination... you know, all those things that I learned to unpack in my years as an ES major. And then seeing how colorblindness enacts itself became a reality. The dangers within that have pained me relentlessly, but also force me to survive.

But, as much as I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired here at Institute, there also comes with it 7 and 8 year old 'kiddos' who brighten up the experience with their genuine spirits that are learning to learn in a world that often tells them that they cannot. My fellow corps members and I are all here to change that, and that's an exciting thing. Especially when we get that positive reinforcement of the data we get to see and the drawings they make for us on the back of their assessments (whales, me in my tie... and in a dress, tigers doing math, hands drawn into turkeys, and little love notes here and there... i've been favorited as a teacher by a few of my students), we are made aware again that somehow, the struggle is a little bit worth it.