Institute, Week Five
Framework sessions are pretty much status quo. Hallway conversation is getting kind of harried… people are irritable, tired of working in the same groups week in and week out, and now little things like the pitch of a group member’s voice or someone’s habit of thinking out loud is really starting to grate on other people’s nerves. I guess it’s normal in a way… so far, we’ve been up under each other for almost 25 straight days, and we’re approaching our personal ends with the little things that we hardly even noticed before. To top that off, people are starting to get written up left and right. Late assignment (and by late, I mean 5 minutes, not days), accruing absences for being 15 minutes late to a Framework session or workshop, etc. Some survive it, some don’t. In one day, we lost 4 PTs for various reasons. Another day, more of them are gone.
Then Praxis Scores come in, and oh, Lord… our numbers take a serious hit. Suddenly, people you’ve been sharing rides with and having lunch with and emailing, encouraging, bouncing lesson plan ideas off of, getting to know their stories and family members, etc., etc, are GONE. They’re here this morning and gone this afternoon. And the funny thing is, everything just moves on as if they were never even here. It’s kind of weird in a very real way. Like, we all know we’ve lost x amount of people in our own group today, but Framework session starts and nothing is mentioned. We just start the day as usual, with the only real acknowledgement coming from us as PTs. I guess I knew that the hundred and something people we started with a few weeks ago would decrease for natural reasons along the way, but never in my wildest dreams did I think people would start dropping off like flies this quickly. And the machine keeps moving on.
You can’t help but really feel for these people, too. I mean, these were friends. We got to know these people, talk to them, spend time with time, teach with them. We know about their girlfriends at home and husbands and children that they couldn’t afford to bring with them right now, we know who’s worried about a sick parent at home, who’s planning to get married in a month or so, who just quit their job and sold their house to come here, etc. And the sad thing is, these PTs have been working for FIVE WEEKS NOW, and have nothing to show for it. They didn’t finish Institute technically, so they don’t get paid. They literally get nothing for the time, effort, gas and other expense money they’ve spent toward Institute and student teaching thus far. Everything’s just lost. Some of these people picked up and left everything, moving here from places like Ohio, Georgia, California, Florida and beyond. All that to be kicked out in the fifth week??? Wow. It’s seriously disheartening, to say the least. I think at this point, we all feel like a deflated balloon in a sense… like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach. When we first started Institute, you had to get to the main site early just to get a good park. Now you can pretty much park wherever you like. We used to have to leave for the all-cohort meetings early too so we could get a seat. Now… it’s hard not to notice that whole sections are empty. Really, really discouraging time.
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