I have been applying to be a teaching fellow. Have you had this experience?

Please share any advice or personal experiences... I have been offered interviews in NYC, Chicago, Oakland, Austin/San Antonio, D.C. and Dallas. Please offer up both pros and cons of the experience (and please don't answer with a question) Thanks!!

I have been applying to be a teaching fellow. Have you had this experience?
I was a DC teaching fellow for two years. It's a long, tough road, and some of us dropped out. People who are used to doing everything well (this kind of program does attract overachievers) suddenly find themselves with days so full they have to do a crappy job at everything. We also find that the teaching culture and administration of DCPS is ridiculously illogical.





As far as working conditions, I taught for two years in a leaky, moldy annex that was designed to be used for five to ten years and had been used for more than 25. There were asbestos tiles in the floor and ceiling that needed to be removed. A pipe above the ceiling of my classroom would freeze and burst every year. The first year, the leak poured into my classroom library until the whole annex was flooded and a ring of dissolved ceiling material was left about a half inch around the walls in every room in the annex.





One day, I was trying to teach in two pairs of pants and three tops. My colleagues pointed out to me that the parents of our Ethiopian and Salvadoran children did not dress their children the way I dressed myself. They also put a thermometer in the hallway which showed a temperature of 45 F. That was a "light bulb moment" for me. We doubled up in temporary classrooms with better heat, but when the time came to demolish those classrooms to make way for new construction, we had to teach 6 classes of fifth and sixth graders in the cafeteria for a couple of days before we were ordered to return our classes to the original, nasty annex.





We had chosen to lose the vacant librarian position in a budget cut, and they moved a class into the school library, cutting off access for other students. We walked our students a mile and a quarter to the public library and a mile and a quarter back to school from time to time.





A water outlet in the building tested at 3 times the EPA's safe levels for lead, and I still believe it was the water fountain across from my classroom.





Most of us are still in teaching, and a few are still in DC even. The ones who are most successful in the DC Teaching Fellows are usually the ones who grew up in DC. I would say that the people in the DC Teaching Fellow office are fabulous people, but there's been a lot of turnover in that office, and I don't know who's there anymore.





I became a DC Teaching Fellow because I wanted to make a difference. I don't know if I did. I felt like I'd been banging my head against a brick wall for two years. I did earn my certificate, but--much to my relief--my job at DCPS was one of hundreds lost in a budget cut.

innia