Day 7: Bowling and Boba

My friend Nick walking away victoriously... after throwing a gutter-ball.

Nothing too special happened during the morning or early afternoon today. We were going over the company's lesson planning methodology, which was all review for me, so I did my best to stay attentive for most of the training. There were some positive moments: one of my coworkers baked banana bread for us, I got to meet my Instructional Coach (read: teacher who teaches teachers how to teach) for the first time and took my new coffee mug for a whirl.

My IC is very sweet and down-to-earth. She seems like a better fit for me than my coach from last summer, who I found intimidating (perhaps just because he was taller than me and bald). She taught at the program when she was in college, then took an administrative role for three years and has now been an IC for two years. She is also an interesting resource to talk to as she is transitioning out of a teaching role into an assistant principal position next year, but she has to choose between one of two schools: a high-need urban school with low salary and poor benefits or an upper-middle-class suburban public school which pays well. She is in the midst of that decision process right now and has promised to talk through her thought processes with her fellows over the course of the summer as she tries to reach a decision. As a teacher, she also ran a paperless classroom, which I am excited to learn more about.

One of the exercises she had us do which I appreciated was to write a letter of encouragement to ourselves. She filed them away and has promised that at some moment during the summer when things seem to be going badly, she is going to leave it in our mailbox for us as a little boost. I can already foresee myself finding it when stressing out after class one day and smiling. We didn't have much time to write the letters, so I don't think I wrote anything substantial, but just the gesture will definitely serve as a lifeline sometime in the weeks to come.

The beautiful Yerba Buena Gardens... I wish I'd had more time to explore them tonight!

After work, the program paid for all 32 teachers and our 24 high-school interns who arrived today to go bowling and get to know each other after work. They bought us Subway for dinner and helped us find our way downtown to a cute little bowling alley next to an interactive children's museum in Yerba Buena. After what may have been the longest day of instruction so far, our brains were all fried, but rather than burning us out more by forcing us to spend an extra two hours downtown, this trip actually rejuvenated us and brought us a lot closer together as a community. Because of the number of people in our party, I teamed up with another teacher named Jamie and we kicked butt on our lane! I got two strikes, which I don't ever remember happening before, so needless to say I felt very proud of myself. I usually don't enjoy bowling very much, and yet I couldn't stop smiling the whole time I was there. We shed the stresses of lesson planning, danced, goofed around, cracked some jokes, took some pictures and had a fantastic evening.

Jamie and I are the middle N row! I bowled odd-numbered rounds; take a look at 7 and 9!

In fact, it was so fantastic that we didn't want it to end. Thus, after saying goodbye to our wonderful, brilliant, excited and chill new high-school friends, the teachers all decided to go out and get some bubble tea at a local shop called Plentea. I should note that I have had bubble tea once before in my life and I hated it, but something about going with this particular group of people made it seem so much more appealing. The shop is cool because your drinks get served in glass milk bottles which you can wash out, take home as a souvenir and later, if you bring them back to get refilled, you can get a 10% discount. I ordered a brown sugar caramel iced milk with tapioca bubbles. That probably sounds disgusting, and I was hesitant to sip it at first, but when I got my first taste of that silky sweet nectar, I fell madly in love. It was truly sumptuous, lightly sweet and creamy. I even liked the bubbles because they were smaller than the ones I had tried before so I could drink them more easily.

Brown Sugar Caramel Iced Milk with Tapioca... why don't we have this in Philly?!

By the time we were all finished getting our tea, we realized it was almost 9:30 and knew we needed to get home. The PAD-mates (Pedro Arrupe Dorm, which I will abbreviate as PAD from now on) all hopped a bus back from downtown. On the bus, my friend Avery (selfie-stick guy from yesterday's photo) had a lovely chat with a slightly-intoxicated 61-year-old African American man who told us to find our destinies (this seems to be becoming a running theme). He then proceeded to make some slightly-offensive racial comments toward Avery, calling him Korean when he is actually half-Chinese, half-Filipino. Then, after seeing our other friend Tyschell, he went on a rant about how "African women" are the most beautiful women on the planet and that she was the most beautiful of them all. Luckily, when he propositioned us for money and we told him we had none to give (truth... #teachersalary), he got off the bus and we rode the other half of the ride home in peace.

This led me to think a lot about the way black women are objectified in our society and the nature of cat-calling. I know for a number of reasons it was smart of me not to step in, but I am sure Tyschell felt uncomfortable and I wonder on an ethical level if my continued silence in situations like this is merely perpetuating the racist, sexist, patriarchy-driven system of objectification in our country. If I'm not part of the solution, am I part of the problem? What if my becoming part of the solution was a problem in and of itself?

Anyways, sorry for the rant. Outside of that unusual interaction on MUNI, we really did have a fantastic night. I have officially spent a week on my own in California, meaning I am 1/8th of the way through my time here, and I recognized tonight that I actually feel at home here, not only because of my adapting to this new environment but because of the people with whom I am spending my time. My fears about losing friends and being desperately lonely in my post-grad life are being alleviated as I am now consciously processing my own ability to find a niche in a new group of people and become comfortable, a skill I did not really believe I had before now. Of course, it is made easier by the fact that this program only attracts outstanding individuals, but it is making me feel more confident, which is a boost I really needed.

In Downtown SF, there are these two chairs inside ceramic dishes about fifty feet apart from each other.

If you sit in one and speak normally, the person in the other can hear you perfectly! I tried them with Billy and Braden the other day, and the other teachers tested them tonight.

Last summer at my internship, I got really tight with my coworkers, but there were only eight of us and as the summer wore on, we quickly got on each others' nerves and ended the summer on a sour note. That might still happen here, but with there being 32 of us, all of whom are holding ourselves to a higher standard of professionalism and respect, we are growing super close very quickly. I know a couple months from now, most of us will probably never see or speak to each other again, but for this moment, I am so grateful to be a part of this group of individuals and, even if only for fifty more days, to call them my family.

Until next time,
Nate