Surprise Visit!

I flew home to San Diego this past week for a mini vacation, and got to surprise my dad for his birthday! My mom and I pulled it off perfectly, and his face was priceless when I surprised him at the restaurant he decided to go to for his big day. My week back home was wonderful, and it was so nice to just relax, spend time with some amazing people, and not think about work for a week.  My week in San Diego made it almost harder to come back to the real world, aka my life in Houston, but I know once I get started with training again on Monday I'll feel more ready and energized for the coming fall!

In other news, I get my first paycheck on August 15th and have to save pretty much every dime and penny for rent and utilities until then.  But for now, I am dying to buy these off etsy.com once I finally get paid!

To go with my room's color scheme of navy and white--which is currently just white,

because my lack of paycheck has left me with little spending for decorations

I want a necklace with 3 pendants--California, Oregon, and Texas,

 the 3 states that have had the most impact on me so far in my life!

This picture of California, in navy, to go with my room's color scheme. 

 I love Texas so far, but I will always be a California girl at heart!

Just Call Me Miss Cooper

I can't believe I'm already moved into my new apartment in Houston and done with Teach for America Institute!  I was incredibly MIA this summer, and promise to be better at blogging about my life from here on out! I blame my lack of blogging on my average 3 hours of sleep a night, living in the dorms with 800 other TFA corps members, and overall just having an amazing and very time consuming Institute experience.

I met some pretty amazing people this summer, and got to teach some absolutely wonderful kids who I fell in love with immediately.  I taught 5th grade reading and math, and even though I only had my kids for 4 weeks, each and every one of them had such a huge impact on me as a teacher and as a person.  My class was really small--only 5 students--but Estephaniea, Joseph, Domingo, Alexis G, and Alexis S were the most amazing kids I could have asked for this summer, and I know they can do anything they put their minds to.  I just hope they left summer school knowing that about themselves!

I unfortunately am legally not allowed to post pictures of my students without parental permission, but here are a few pictures from my summer that sum up why I've loved living in Houston and working for Teach for America:

I got an amazing apartment with two awesome girls--Briana and Jennifer.  We love our new place, have an amazing location, and despite the fact that we can't figure out how to set up our internet or cable, we've still managed to keep ourselves extremely busy with post-Institute work, organizing our apartment, and making one too many phone calls to Comcast!

I'm still catching on up on the lack of sleep I got during Institute and have one too many things to get done before my summer trainings start up again, but teaching here in Houston couldn't feel more right.  I am 100% confident in the decision I made to move to a new city and start a new career, and even though I know it's only going to get harder, I'm so ready to take on the challenge of making sure that one day, every child will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education! You can officially call me Miss Cooper, or "Miss" as most of my students like to refer to me as.