A Nearly Perfect Day

Sorry for my prolonged absence! Fell ill a few weeks ago, so it was difficult to blog, but I’m back and hopefully this’ll be a good one.

Today was a great day. Sometimes, you need something to lift your spirits a bit, and today was one of those days. The kind of day that it takes some time to process, but when it hits you, you realize that progress is possible.

After some phenomenal work planning from my wonderful, dependable, and enigmatic team, we started to teach our most rigorous content yet today. We began to use a curriculum, Investigations, that we’ve taken from North Star Academy in Newark, one of the most successful charter schools in the world.

Today was a modest start, one routine where we counted attendance, and some time exploring manipulatives. But it’s the hope of what’s to come that’s really positive. They did so well with today’s start, that I can’t wait to see how things progress in the future. When you see low-income students engage with rigorous content, it makes you realize why teaching and trying to close the achievement gap can be so rewarding. Why we do what we do.

The day went on after math, our literacy block was really successful too. My highlight was certainly doing a read-aloud of a wonderful book aimed to teach children how to read books without destroying them. I wished I had had it for my kids the previous two years!

Then our co-curricular block included two fun activities, one for identifying the colour red, and the other to teach kids to start to understand themselves and use sentences like “I have eyes” and “I have a nose.”

The highlight of the last block though, was the visit of Ishaan and Navisha, two of my high-school aged volunteers from last year. They were with me for the first three months of last year, and without them, I don’t think I would’ve achieved much success with my students. What’s better, is that they plan to join Teach for India (in about 5 years when they graduate from college). And after that I’m sure they’ll join as teachers at 321, though they don’t know that plan yet.

Right now I’m just finishing a really delicious meal of quinoa taboulleh, salad, and yogurt and fruits, feeling pretty excited about pushing these kids even further.

Why is it a nearly perfect day? I’m not sure if any day can be perfect, in school, or in life. Something’s always missing, something that could make it even better. But for now I’ll take nearly perfect and hope to improve tomorrow.