And then there were two...

Ok so I am officially a horrible blogger. I think my last post was sometime in my 2nd week here, and unbelievably, I am now about to enter my 9th and final week here in the Delta. I am completely confounded that this summer is wrapping up. It is especially surreal because everyone except for Kimi and has left, so I am in limbo. Part of me in is reflection mode thinking about the whole summer and preparing to leave, but I still have a week left with my students.
Last night was our awards ceremony at the Freedom Project. We presented certificates of completion, class awards and LEAD awards (one each for Love, Education, Action and Discipline).
In addition to giving out the awards, we were lucky enough to meet one of the founders who came for the awards night, Shawn Raymond, we gave staff remarks about the summer and the students surprised us with their own homemade awards for the staff. (I got most talented!).
We also wanted to give the students something to remember the summer by, so we made a mix CD with a song dedicated to each individual. The gift we are most excited about though is we are giving each student a book. The past few days have been hectic and choosing the right book for each student was a large part of that, but we are really excited because we got to pick a book that we felt really spoke to each individual student.
I'm not even going to try and make this a final wrap-up, reflection post, because A) I'm not leaving yet, I still have the Civil War trip next week and B) I won't be good at it.
I will say that so far, this summer has been one of the most intense, immersive and absolutely unforgettable experiences of my life.

Sorry it's been so long

I was just searching the web trying to find the schedule for the Mound Bayou Founder's Days blues festival which is tomorrow (no luck, all I found was a number with the name Mamie Tate) and I happened upon the blog from the Robertsons who were here last summer. It was great to read what they had to say, but it also reminded me how horrible I have been about keeping a blog, so I thought I would at least try to give some sort of update since I haven't posted since the beginning of my second week here.
This summer has been a blur, and I can't believe that I only have 3 weeks left. It seems like I just walked into the Freedom Project yesterday, but it's been 5 crazy, lesson planning, mistake making but mostly amazing weeks. We are done with the 5 weeks of Freedom School in Sunflower and this Monday we are taking the students to Ole Miss for the week of "college life" there.
In defense of my horrible blogging skills, I have to say that these weeks have been incredibly work intensive. Coming into this I knew that teaching would be hard work, so I wasn't surprised, but it has been hard trying to balance work, with some sort of free time and making sure that I get to spend time with all the great scholars who are here.
These past weeks have been incredible. I am so happy that I ended up at Sunflower. I was extremely nervous about teaching when I first decided I would come here, and I wasn't sure it woudl be something that I enjoyed, but it has been the perfect placement for me. The mission of the Project and the teaching have been a great fit. I think that I have really discovered a new part of myself. There have certainly been challenges, and there are so many things that I wish I had done differently in terms of lesson plans and teachign methods, but I also feel like my students and I made great progress over these 5 weeks and I'm very excited to go on these next trips with them.
My students have absolutely been the highlight of my time here. I have never met and more hilarious, bright, energetic, amusing and exhuberant group of people. They keep me on my toes, make me think about things differently and fill a room with laughter.
This summer has been marked by an incredible amount of laughter. Whether it's at school with the students, or Erin Kimi and I rolling on the floor about something that happened, I can't remember when I laughed as much and as often as I have this summer.

Now I have to research the history of hip hop for the elective Kimi and I are teaching at Ole Miss, but I just wanted to do a quick little post.

A Wonderful Monday

I want to give you a taste of Sunflower life to quick recap of the day

6:30 roll out of bed when Erin yells at me.  Stumble to bathroom, get dressed in my all beige ensemble (monday is beige shirt day, which just looks splendid with my khaki pants). Eat breakfast and pack lunch.  Realize that once again we are out of almost everything even though we just went to Super Walmart 3 days ago.  Wonder where it all goes.

7:15 Matt comes to pick us up.  Pile into his car and watch soybeans, corn, rice and catfish ponds go by as we drive

7:50 Pull into Sunflower.  Print all the quizzes, homework and lesson plans for the day

8:15 Morning meeting.  Freedom songs (videos to come), announcements, and we introduce the grammar challenge of the week.  This week are students are not allowed to say "real".  As in "It was real bad"  Or "it was real hard" or "it was real cool"  or any other circumstance where it is not only grammatically incorrect, but also the least descriptive word for the situation. Also today I had the quote of the day which was a little Bob Marley action "None but ourselves can free our mind".   

8:45-12:30 Reading Class

• 2nd year reading class.  After editing their essay we have a lesson on the slave trade.  I somehow manage to fit triangle slave trade, the middle passage, slave auctions and run away slaves into 30 minutes,  I hope they actually got some of it.  I even had them them lie down and imagine what the trip middle passage would be like while I read a description.
  
• 3rd years- we began to explore symbolism in A Raisin in the Sun.  I'm going to brag a little about my students and let you know that all of the 3rd years got 4/4 on their reading quizzes today!  I also got the chance to expose them to a little Ben Harper while they worked on their character mapping.

13:30-1:15  I was in silent lunch today, and unfortunately two kids had it as well, but I have to say it was actually quite nice.  It brought me back to my Quaker education roots.

1:20-2:20 Public Speaking.  All of the students impressed me.  They gave self-written speeches about a trip they once took, and all of them improved from last week, taking our specific advice to heart, and also doing a great job of encouraging and supporting one another.

2:20-3:20.  PLANNING PERIOD!!!  I was only so excited because I got to make poster that we will use tomorrow to introduce.... GRAMMAR GRANNY!!!  She is an old but firm granny who watches out for your grammar because "Good Grammar is the key to success".  In reality she is any one of the staff dressed in a granny outfit, and last night we had a photo shoot, so we now have posters with great angry granny faces.  Now anywhere the students look they will see those faces constantly pointing a finger to correct their grammar.

3:20-4:30- Study session.  the kids study, I help and when they don't need me I print an plan.  But today, continuing on my artistic streak I created the "Reader LEADers" poster that posts all the students averages on their reading quizzes and creates a competition between the years.  Just to let you know, the 3rd years won last week, I know you were wondering with anticipation.

4:30 Afternoon meeting, which is great.  More pump up freedom songs.  the video that I will put up later is of an epic dance party that exploded during afternoon meeting today.

And then we drive home.  Now last week we drove home only to collapse, possible nap, but more likely plan lessons until very late, but I think we have discovered one of the first upward moving spirals (as opposed to the many downward spirals that exist in my life).  After last week, during which we worked 18 hr days and lesson planned constantly, we decided to spend the entire weekend planning for next week.  After two full days of reading, creating quizzes, reading guides and trying to figure out the difference between mood and tone so I could teach it (i'm still confused, so if anyone would like to enlighten me that would be terrific) I successfully completed a weeks worth of lesson plans.  I have to add that I did all of this with out my own computer because I managed to crack the screen earlier and it is currently in Durham being repaired by the wonderful people at Duke Computer Repair.

Anyways, the point is, that now I can actually use my planning period to get ahead, so tonight instead of stress, I had no lesson planning to do!  Kimi, Erin and I were able to have a wondering reminiscing conversation about our very different high school experiences, eat half a pan of brownies, go swim laps as delta state and then hang out at the other scholar apartment.

All in all a wonderful start to the week.  Now I just have to get to bed so I can continue these good feelings.

First Day of School

This post is going to be short and sweet, but I wanted to give a quick update after our first day of teaching the students.

We started our day with a bang. We rewrote the words the Paper Planes, by MIA and performed it in our morning meeting. Rewriting popular songs is something that they do a lot, and they seemed to really like it.

Overall, the day was good. I didn't have the problems that I expected I would have, with discipline, but we all encountered some different issues. We didn't have as many students as we expected, but we are hoping that more students will be coming in during this week.

Instead of discipline, my biggest concern is engaging the students and making sure they are interested in what we are doing. I finally understand the reason for all those exercises and activities in my Language Arts class because students this age have a hard time sustaining a conversation without a lot of prompts.

As much as you try to prepare for it, it is a surprise how much these kids have been through and the variation in their academic capability. We are having to rework our lessons plans to make sure that they can understand them, while at the same time trying to get them up to speed in all the topics. I'm very excited for the summer, but it is going to be challenging. Our days are very long. Today we woke up at 6:15 to leave by 7 and get to Sunflower at 7:30. The students arrived around 8, and we taught until we lefts at 4:30, so we got back to the house at around 5:30. Then I passed out and took a nap until 8:15. Hopefully I can get myself undercontrol so a 3 hr nap isn't necessary everyday, but we will see.

Also, very good news, today I walked with Hilary down the street to the Teach For America house (a house on our street where a lot of TFA teachers live) and I got some great advise for my reading class and just spent the last 2 hours revising my lesson plan.

Basically the day was good, the first day went by without any huge problems, mostly just that I need to make my lesson plans as interactive and accessible as possible. I'm really excited to get to know these kids better and keep working with them.

5 feet from BB King

I need to write a post before anything else happens and I can't keep up anymore.
I just need to tell you all that Friday night I was about 5 feet away from BB King at the BB King Homecoming Festival in Indianola. Yes. I said it. It was absolutely incredible.
This whole week I have been constantly amazed by the intense depth and breadth of history that the Delta is made of. I feel like everywhere I turn I see/hear/taste or meet a historical landmark or character.
On my first day of work I met a man who was a SNCC field coordinator in the 1960s and coordinated the Freedom Summer of 1964 in Sunflower County. He told us about the young people, mostly white, who came into the area and how one of the most effective tools for breaking down the fear that was paralyzing the civil rights movement was that these white young people stayed in the homes of black families. For the first time in their lives these black adults were able to call a white person by their first name, and were addressed as "sir" and "ma'am".

After this conversation we walked past the courthouse where Blacks were consitently denied the right to vote, and where Fannie Lou Hamer cam to register.

I watched Fannie Lou Hamer's speech to the Mississippi DNC as an example for my public speaking class, and realized that everyday we drive through Ruleville, her hometown where she lived as a sharecropper.

I went to what they say is the last authentic juke joint in the country, Po Monkey's, which is located right in the middle of a field, what used to be a plantation and then sharecropping land.

These are just some of the things that stood out, in a very full week. The Delta has consistently surprised me, it is a land of extremes with more variation than you woudl expect. I hope I can explain myself better next time.

It's Like Riding a Bike...

Picture of our house. That large bush is a huge fig tree. Yum!

I don't want to enter Wal-Mart for a very long time. I think that realistically I can probably put it off for about 4 days, but I'll hope for longer that that. We live down the street from what is apparently the largest Wal-Mart in Mississippi. Erin, Kimi and I were playing mom and went on a massive shopping trip. I felt like I was in Jon and Kate plus 8. I have never bought that much food, or been so conscious of budget buying, but I have to say that I am very proud that we not only stocked our kitchen with copious amounts of food, healthy food at that, but we came in under budget. Also, in addition to buying all this, Erin and I organized and labeled the entire kitchen, with separate shelf space for everyone's individual food and communal food space. It is beautiful. So mother, be proud. I've posted pictures so you all can admire our work.

The other monumental event was Kimberley Goffe's "first" bike ride. After Mississippi she is traveling to Europe to visit and they are going to be biking over 500 miles. Very exciting, but the only problem is that she hasn't ridden a bike in years, and never many miles. So to fix this problem she bought a bike at Wal-Mart today. Apparently riding a bike "is like riding a bike" although she has a little far to go to get ready for her 500 mile bike ride. You can all partake in this experience in the video I've uploaded.

We have our first day of orientation tomorrow, so then the real work begins. We'll report back.

Kimi's Bike Ride:

One of the shelves in our newly organized kitchen. Notice the labels:

The Mailmen of Cleveland

After two days of driving we've finally arrived in Cleveland Mississippi. So far the postal service of Cleveland has been more than satisfactory. After driving into downtown Cleveland, passing 3 framing stores within 1 block, but still no food, a wonderful mailman asked us if we were looking for food. We were and he directed us to Senators place and told us he would be there in a few minutes. Senators place is an all you can eat soul food restaurant that has $6 Monday special. So Erin, Kimi and myself sat down to large plates of chicken and dumplins, barbeque chicken, sweet potatoes, collard green and the best rolls we've ever eaten. And sure enough, our mail man was sitting down in the restaurant 5 minutes after we got there. This was one of the most delicious meals ever and everyone showed us true southern hospitality, and we got the very southern look that says "you are not from here, because I don't know you, and I know everyone who lives there". We decided that we would be back many times, but in order to accommodate that food, we are only allowed to eat healthy food in the house.

So after making our first friend we were of course excited when we saw the mail truck pull up to our ouse as we were sitting digesting our delicious meal. We all ran out, to discover that we in fact have a different mail man, but don't worry, he was just as friendly, and possibly more entertaining. After signing for our friends' packages, he asked us if we had met the neighbors. When we told him we had not, he decided he needed to prepare us . According to him the man who drives a white truck is fine, but apparently we need to watch out for the man in the "purpley-blue" truck because "the bones in the brain don't work right".

We were fully prepared for him to tell us that he was a really grumpy old man, or perhaps aggressive, or maybe he had a dog that bites, but in fact Mr Mailman was worried for us because as he said "he is what they call a deviant... I don't know if he's gay, or straight, sometimes there are men, sometimes there are women, so you know, just watch out" We thanked him for the heads up, and then walked into the house.

I would say my first few hours have been thoroughly delicious and entertaining