I was walking on the ASU campus the other day when I overheard a brief snippet of conversation that articulated brilliantly everything that I’ve been thinking for the past week and three days:

“There aren’t many people who have been through this kind of thing. There is literally no free time, ever.”

We started teaching summer school on Monday. We thought we were teaching kids who were going into Kindergarten, but they’re actually going into first grade, which threw our whole curriculum for a loop. There’s been a weird relationship between what TFA wants us to teach and what the school wants us to teach, and the whole administration has been freaking out about the fact that this is a new summer school relationship and we’re basically defining their TFA experience.

Which brings me to my kids.

They’re amazing and adorable and so, so smart. And, according to the Teaching as Leadership model, apathetic and unruly, which is hard to swallow, but it’s getting better every day. Which is good, because it’s only been three of them. Still, I feel like I already know them really well. Today in our writers’ workshop I was writing about how I’m curious about reading and they all insisted that I draw every one of them in my picture because we’re all friends who read together. It was actually the sweetest thing ever.

My experience at institute so far has been massively frustrating because every single TFA person I’ve met is wonderful and warm and welcoming and the vast majority of the TFA procedures I’ve encountered have been, in some form. incredibly frustrating. There’s a weird disconnect between the people and the insanity they’re carrying out, and everyone is walking around in a haze.

I had to teach double what everyone else taught this week because I was covering for a member of my group who dropped out day 2 of institute before we switched to a three-person group schedule. It’s been insane to lead teach for actually the entire morning (minus 40 minutes for lunch, which is at 10:30, what?) but I can already feel myself getting better.

I had three drafts due tonight and the final drafts for tomorrow’s lesson plans. I am, miraculously, done and it’s 10pm and I’m going to bed.