for the next 24 hours, i'm older than you, midg

oh, my brother. what a guy. starting june 30 and for the following sixteen days, we are the same age. are we twins? no. are we related? unfortunately. when people ask me if i know him, i usually claim him as a first cousin. he's hilarious. he's irrational. he's great at accents and making most situations awkward. if i ever run for prez, i'll probably ask him to be my vice. he can't say worse things than joe biden... oh, wait... yes he could.

happy 22nd!! love ya midget!

he thinks he's really cool...
he constantly amazes me with his wisdom and maturity...

he says that i am the weird one....

in a former life he was john wayne....
he pays pretty girls like this one to hang out with him...

his friends are awesome - he probably pays them, too...

he constantly tells me he thinks i'm cool and wants to be just like me when he grows up....
he has not always been quite as dashingly handsome as he is these days... but he has always believed it...

can we call you miss spaz??

where shall we begin??

a) i have survived what is reputedly the hardest week of institute - week 3. i averaged 4.5 hours per sleep each night and hours and hours of working.

b) youtube. its such a great study break. take 3-4 minutes, laugh til your face hurts so much it might fall off, rejoin your collaborative members and back to business for another hour or so.

c) fourth graders. there's nothing quite like 'em. the things that come out of their mouths...the behavior they think they can get away with...the bold hopes most of them have for their futures...all of it is pretty breathtaking. AND yours truly got a note saying i was one student's first favorite teacher - i teach with a group of 3 other girls and they had equally nice notes saying they were the second favorite teacher, or third favorite, and so on.

d) michael jackson is dead. this is terrible. one of my students as i walked into class after doing my morning duty: "miss robinson, miss robinson!!!" yes, --- insert name here, i asked. "did you hear that michael jackson DIED??? i am so sad." odd how much the entire school appeared devastated, since most of them were born after the turn of the millennium in 2000. but we jammed out to his songs before the 8 a.m. bell and one of our students did the thriller dance so well she may have taught michael himself. RIP king of pop! -love wainwright elementary.

e) miss robinson. i have discovered the love/hate relationship i have with my name. first of all, at USDA i was just "courtney." everyone used first names. rarely a reporter called me miss robinson, until i corrected them. so hearing it makes me feel both old and respectable, authoritative and old-maidish, cool and antiquated. i think, honestly, i grew up expecting my last name to have changed by now, and though i have nothing against my name, i would prefer to me called, oh, i don't know, mrs.jim halpert. or something like ms.mccool or dr. mccaughney.... but anyways...

f) i miss my friends. i have such little time for phone conversations or random emails or just knowing how people are doing. my life is bus rides at sunrise, teaching and professional sessions all day, busrides, dinner, usually work while dinner, group meetings, lesson planning, usually an hour or two of more professional sessions, sometimes a run and slushie break, a shower, and bed...with five-ish hours before the alarm goes off again. the people i'm surrounded by are hilarious and keep my energy high, as does our mission statement and the staggering statistics thrown our way, but, seriously, a nap sounds really good.

g) its flamin hot down here. heat wave over the entire month of june??? i thank the good lord daily that my job is not outside for hours on end. god bless the construction workers, gardeners, mail delivery people, and whoever else swelters all day.

h) i have a job placement! but this is enough typing for now. details coming soon!

"can we call you miss spaz?" boys asked me on the first day while i was on lunch duty.
i smiled. "only if you can define the word spaz."
they giggled. "clumsy. funny. silly. goofy. funny." they came up with a pretty good answer.
"well, fine, you can call me that. but only in a respectful, we wish we were as spaztic as you miss robinson, kind of way."
"whatever you say, miss spaz."

apparently fourth graders are more insightful than i gave them credit for. happy monday!!! love!

mad, beautiful carousel

Life is spinning faster than I ever thought imaginable. My head is filled with thoughts of diversity, lesson planning, curriculum development, executing lessons effectively, collaborating properly, management and professional development, investment strategies and plans, shocking statistics. Life is a carousel – full of bright lights, pretty colors, excitement – and yet you can’t help but feel a little lost, a little sick at your stomach.


Each time the carousel makes a full rotation it seems to speed up just a bit more. As I tightly grip any steady objects I can find, the view continually changes. It passes beautiful outdoor scenes, dinner at sunset with good conversations and new found friends. It takes me past highways and freeways and falling down buildings. I love the silence and comfort I feel as I ride with the other passengers past the Houston skyline just as the sun, that bright orange ball, rises every day. No matter how fast or crazy the ride, I know each day…that sun is coming up. That sun lives to shine again, and I must also.


I haven’t seen them much, or returned many of phone calls, but the ones I love are here, in the background. Positive words, voices of affirmation, friends who check in and family who comforts.Their smiling faces as I try not to get thrown off this carousel keep my fingers from slipping off my grip.


This carousel I happily climbed on is stuck in the heat. In the wee hours of morning, in the darkness of night, all through the day – the heat presses in on us. It is unusually warm here, no rain, no relief. I wonder if this heat wave isn’t coincidence. It seems to represent the heat in my heart – the warmth is good, true. But intense heat, a burning of sadness, hope, and realization, can’t be good forever. I long for the days of naps and rain and simplicity. I long for rest.


But maybe there isn’t time for rest. These riders that I’m with, fellow souls clinging to and searching for sanity together a few weeks more – we are all on this ride to bring that rest to others. Our carousel wants fairness and equality for everyone. Our carousel knows that in the land of the free, some are not free. They are bound by the chains of their education – they cannot break free because it is a repeating cycle. They try hard. They bring energy and smiles every day. They are smart. But the system passes them to fourth grade before they have mastered simple addition.


They are bound by the chains of their education, and we are riding this mad, beautiful carousel so that we can break their chains. Though I feel on the brink of a meltdown sometimes, I have never felt quite so fulfilled, joyful, or blessed as I have in the last fifteen days. I think a little meltdown might do everyone some good. I find myself tilting my head to the sky, grabbing hold of a pole and dangerously hanging over the edge of the carousel as it spins round and round. Laughter fills the cracks of the brokenness. I have embraced the ride. That mad, beautiful, bright ride of the carousel – I am loving it.

Our Nation's Greatest Injustice

They're calling education inequality the civil right's movement of my generation. I think that's probably a bit of a stretch yet it also rings very true. Just as life in America was pretty absurd prior to the work of MLK,Jr and everyone else, white or black, that worked relentlessly to have rights based not on skin color, there are a lot of people being called crazy for their efforts to have great education available regardless of race or class.

I was driving down the freeway in Houston after happy hour with a group of fellow TFAers from our summer school site. I coudn't stop smiling. I have met a ton of great, fun, smart people this week. I have learned a lot about management, marketing, diversity, and myself. I have gone running as the sunset over downtown several times this week. What I am doing with my time is going to (fingers crossed) drastically impact a few children's lives. I'm not as tan, I don't see a million stars each night, and we don't play in a lake all day, but in a lot of ways, it is safe to say I love being a part of Teach for America as much as Camp Longhorn.

Let me say this: if it were not for an established, prestegious program like TFA, I wouldn't be involved in this. I might be working for a non profit or somewhere in politics where changing the current situation of education would be a focus, but that would be it. The praise and the high fives shouldn't be going to me or my fellow TFA members. Wendy Kopp (who spoke to us last week, the camera flashes going off around me made it feel like a major celeb was speaking. and in the world of education, Wendy Kopp is a major celebrity. google her.) Anyways, Wendy Kopp, the two dudes in Houston who founded the KIPP charter schools instead of making millions in business, the list is a lot longer... I find myself in awe of them. Because they are awesome.

So I thought I'd share some facts because typing things out myself really helps me memorize things. I used to retype notes in college all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean, whenever the mood hit me and I remembered I should study while in school.

About 50 percent of students in low-income communities will not graduate from high school by the time they’re 18 years old.

By the time they're in fourth grade, children growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities.

Of the 13 million children growing up in poverty, only 1 in 10 will graduate from college.

42 million adults in the United States can’t read well enough to read a simple story to a child.

The link between literacy and being a contributing member of society is so strong that some states use third grade reading statistics as a factor projecting future prison construction.

I.E. – The state of Mississippi bases their prison construction on the number of 3rd graders boys who are not reading on grade level.

Hence the term, close the achievement gap. We are going to bridge the gap between the academic success of high-income children with low-income children. Why should the zip code where you are born dictate the quality of your education, and therefore how far you go in life?

they weren't kidding when they said this was intense

well, teach for america (TFA) wasn't kidding when they said institute would be intense. i could type for days about the things i've already learned at induction, the three day crash course on TFA principles, life in Houston, and chance to meet fellow Houston "corps" members. Corps is the word for group of TFA teachers--kids like me.

Houston rocks. I have had my eyes opened to the city - as we drive on buses past downtown, into Herman park, around the three fountains near the Sam Houston statue- it is as if i am seeing this city for the first time. And I love it.

We had a professor come speak about a survey he has been conducting in Houston since 1982 - he has his PhD in sociology and developed the urban planning center at Rice University. He is awesome! I'll try to share more of his findings later. For now...

Quick update/terms you need to know:

Bouch: term used for the beds in the dorms here at UofH. Because its a bed AND a couch. That's right, it slides under a little shelf thing to become a couch during the day, with pillows on the back, and pulls out to be a regular twin bed at night. Bouch it up, baby!

6:35 a.m.: that's what time my bus leaves for my summer school "site" - where I'm teaching 4th & 5th grade this summer!

Delta!: The Mississippi Delta is what we call a "rural region" - 280 new corps members have been assigned there and are training here in Houston. I am bonding with the Delta because of the 12 people in my small group - for our teaching site previously mentioned - I am the ONLY houston member. on the bus ride today someone asked me if i could get a microphone or headset and just be our tour guide of all things Houston. Yay Delta!

College Athletes - they are everywhere in this group of uberachievers. My roommate for induction, held at J.W. Marriott in the galleria (very different from UofH Bouches)- my roommate ran track all four years at a top university. Yesterday I took a new friend to run Memorial Park, a 3 mile loop, thinking surely we'd run at different paces, I'd finish in about 35 minutes, fine. No, she kindly says, she'll just run with me. Then she tells me how she was a college athlete, a crew/rowing person, and they used to run 5 miles on off-days. Oh. Oh Crap. Gotta watch out for those college athletes.

That's enough for now, I'm off to dinner and our night session. Tomorrow we are in sessions from 7:10 a.m. until 4 p.m., and then 5:30 til 8:00 p.m. with dinner "to-go" and twenty minutes for lunch.

They were so not kidding when they said this was intense!
*But for now I'm still really pumped about everything and pinching myself that I'm actually here!!!

Blessings! -crob

Teach for America is Finally Here!!

goodbye, freedom. hello, summer of teach for america. but i am so excited! it feels as if i have been waiting in line for oprah tickets or something, and now i'm finally going to the show!! just kidding, i'm over oprah. scratch that and write in ELLEN DEGENERES.

but i'm off topic. - it feels like months that i've been talking about teach for america training and just waiting. that's because it has been months! i found out in december i'd be a part of TFA in Houston, and here we are, six months later, and training starts- TOMORROW!

i know my schedule is going to be grueling but i'm sure it will be so worth it. the mission statement and goals of Teach for America are so thrilling and inspiring that i'm sure i'll just be more fired up as each day passes. i'm excited about meeting new people, challenging my way of thinking, and learning new things.

i think i'm a little nervous about living up to the hype or getting a big head. so many people say that TFA is very competitive, and although this is true, i am no extraordinary person or really awesome compared to my peers. i think that God really wanted me to be in this role for the next two years, that He has some things to teach me, and I also think that my leadership from Camp Longhorn helped me seem qualified in the application process.

Tomorrow I'll be meeting 249 other TFA Houston kids. A lot of them are Ivy Leaguers or GPA geniuses. I just pray that I'm not in too far over my head here.

I signed up for a daily bible verse email recently, and it has been such a blessing in such a short time. (Heartlight.org if you're interested.) The verse today was so applicable to me:

"Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Proverbs 16:3

When I did work crew with Young Life years ago, i was getting very little sleep and putting in long hours of physically tiring work, but I loved every minute of it. A lot of this was because of the fun, holy people I was surrounded with, but most of it was that we had to be commited to Christ daily. We had morning devotional time, prayer constantly, and nightly worship.

I think these next six weeks will be good if for one reason: when my time is less flexible, I am usually more diligent about reading the bible or going to God in prayer. And I know I can do none of this on my own, so I'm sure I'll be looking for unearthly strength alot.

Thanks for reading! Peace. Love. Education.

my dad is old

my dad is, in a word, awesome. he lives life on the edge, is hilarious and adventurous and just...an awesome dad.

but he's also old. he turned 50 less than 7 days ago, and though we missed marking it here on the blog, we did celebrate with ninfaritas with good friends, depends (adult diapers) and golf tournaments.

so, happy late birthday to tom, but that isn't the point of my ramblings.

have you ever heard of dupuytren's disease? (du-puh-trens)

well, if my dad was your dad, you'd have heard of it. basically what happens is the tissues in the palm of your hand begin to shrink and thicken, and your fingers become pulled down towards your palm. my dad has had evidence of this for at least ten years, but it has finally gotten so bad that he is having surgery tomorrow in florida. (florida, because there are not many doctors in the US that are awesome at this procedure, so off to florida he and my mom will go.)

its not that serious of a surgery, but it is a painful and annoying condition, and i know my dad will be thrilled when his hands are back to normal.

i'll give an update after the surgery, but in the meantime thanks for happy thoughts and prayers!!