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Today we worked with Habitat for Humanity, mainly putting up walls and nailing things down. It was a fun experience and I feel almost comfortable with a hammer now... We got to hang out with some locals and have one of them slightly creepily follow us to starbucks after, but overall it was fun. We went into 'town' for lunch- some amazing potatoe soup.

So far at the school I've done a lot of grading- precalc exams which was great because I think thats what I want to mainly teach. My teacher is a second year TFA (Teach for America) teacher- most of the teachers in the highschool are TFA. She graduated from Michigan with a degree in psychology and something like organizational planning or... something. Now she teaches precalc, AP stat, and topics in contemporary mathmatics. That was kind of a trend we found with the TFA teachers we met. Most of them were history or english majors that now teach science or math. I guess it just goes to show you how many math/science teachers we really do need. The teachers are crazy cool and amazing and I understand how much more conducive to closing the achievement gap teaching at a school like Pride High is. Everyone is on the same page with dedication and goals for their students. I know teaching at a non-KIPP school would be completely different and much more difficult.

One thing I don't understand is teachers always talk about how much time they spend planning- my teacher said when she started she would spend about 12 hours planning for every hour that she taught. I don't know if thats just the type of teacher that we've met, but I feel like its not that big of a deal if your lesson isn't perfect.

In other news I'm really excited at how close our team is getting. I think maybe because its my first rural trip and theres nothing else to do besides hang out together, or that we are all girls so we ask a lot of those questions about boys and stuff. Everyone is really starting to come out of their shell and I'm really excited for when we get back to see if we all stay really close like someeee previous ASB trips I know of.

Just wanted to write down some stream of conciousness thoughts. Time to eat some amazing stirfry.

Sophie Tullier