Author Archives: Caroline

About Caroline

Entering my third year teaching 6th grade Language Arts in rural Arkansas. Often referred to as a "tiny human" and most frequently described as enthusiastic or abrasive or both. I've worked for TFA & my district in a number of positions, including ELA Learning Team Leader in the Delta (for TFA) and 6th grade chair (for the district).

Relationships: How To Understand and Respond To Community Context

If you're anything like me, when you first heard "community context", you were a bit overwhelmed. Keeping humility in mind, and not wanting to treat our new towns like zoos, we're cautious to go prying into new things, asking questions ...

Posted in Teaching Tips |

Peer-to-Peer Relationships Give This First-Year Horror Story a Happy Ending

A first-year horror story: A group of sixth-grade girls, all in my fifth period: boisterous, conniving, and full of energy. Always. Because they were smart (smart enough to steal literally a crate of notebooks; smart enough to "go to the ...

Posted in Corps Stories | Tagged

The Thing We’ll Never Admit Out Loud

We like to brand ourselves as transformational, as change-makers, as the best and brightest. We enter the profession with huge hearts, high expectations, and blind faith that we will be what we know we can be if we just work hard ...

Posted in Perspectives | Tagged

Advice: Find your surrogate Institute

It's summer. You're in Arkansas; it's hot. Trucks spray something awful to ward off mosquitos when you try to fit in a run at 10pm. The sun sets later than it did in December, and it throws you off. You ...

Posted in Teaching Tips | Tagged

Take note.

"What are we doing?! Why do we need to be Confident Communicators?!" Knees bobbing me up and down, fingers wiggling into jazz hands, these are questions I pry out of my sixth graders as often as I can, desperately pulling meaning ...

Posted in Perspectives |