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.