Home Sweet Home South Dakota

Sunset behind the Rosbud Casino and Quality Inn. 25 exhausted but happy TFA corps members arrived back in South Dakota Sunday night after two looooooong days of driving from Houston. I don't think you could find another TFA corps more thrilled to be home. This place is beautiful/amazing/magical/otherworldly.

Yesterday I went to St. Francis where we found out that our trailers are not actually here yet, nor have they actually secured them yet. They are supposed to be getting unused or unneeded FEMA trailers leftover from Katrina, but apparently lots of other people want them as well, so we'll see. What they do have at St. Francis is a BRAND NEW high school building which we got to go inside and it was so exciting! I actually had goosebumps looking in at a classrooom that could be mine in the fall and seeing myself in front of that white board delivering excellent lessons. There is so much potential in that building, so much learning and growing that can happen in there. It's going to be a great two years. Today we started our sessions which we'll continue tomorrow and Thursday. The orientation sessions here really focus on creating a vision for our class and setting goals and planning the first few weeks. Reading the South Dakota 9th grade English standards makes me a little bit giddy. I kind of love English :) I have so many ideas and thoughts on what we could do in that classroom with those standards--projects and books and essays and presentations oh my! so much fun and yet so terrifying and overwhelming because now I have to actually decide what we're going to do and how and what my students are going to come out of my class with at the end of the year. Wow. Me. I have to do that. My students' learning in my classroom is all up to me now. I can't even express how happy I am to be here doing this right now or how enormous this challenge is or how happy/scared I am to be taking it on.

More goal setting and unit planning to come...

AND- Three days to Minnesota!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!