Tales from New Orleans...

Sorry to be posting so much... feel free to read, skim, skip, whatever suits your fancy. Just thought I'd keep y'all up to date on my wanderings.=)

Leaving the Big Easy tomorrow- it's been an adventure to say the least. KIPP summit is a yearly gathering of all the staff from KIPP schools (This year over 1,000) to network, refresh, learn, and otherwise professionally develop. I've met some of the coolest people- a guy who did TFA straight into the Peace Corps then back into teaching and now to KIPP, people who have taught as many grades as the average american youth completes, people who are so friendly and giving because they're really focused on just doing the best we can by our students. The summit has been awesome- one of the sessions I went to this morning was Students as History Makers and there have been sessions on pretty much anything imaginable. Favorites include Using Hip Hop Literature to Teach and Reading, Writing and Democracy, etc, etc. I'm really starting to love the Diamond staff- the motto of "Team and Family" feels less like a euphemism for coworkers now and more like truth. Down to the silly squabbles and sports analogies.=)

Monday was our first day here, and over 200 of the KIPPsters participated in the community service project of going out into the community and gutting houses that hadn't been touched since the hurricane last year, complete with Hazmat-esque suits, gloves, masks, etc in the 90*+ heat. It was amazing to see teams of teachers ripping out rotted sheetrock and insulation, carrying refrigerators of liquefied food and shorted out appliances to the curbs, and refusing to stop even after they had sweated through their suits and were covered in insulation fiber and mold. The city looks worse than I ever could have imagined, and I foolishly thought it would be significantly better by now. You can still see the water lines on houses, fences, stop signs, street lights- from a few inches to covering buildings. We drove by a temporary shelter, "temporary" in the sense that it had been a school or firehouse or something, where the outhouses and showers were tiny squares of space with uncovered pipes running to them, walled by plastic sheeting and people cooking in plastic buckets. I remember two houses next to each other, one with a smashed grand piano left in the middle of the torn out house, and another where a motorized wheelchair sat on the porch, obviously unused for a great amount of time. I couldn't help but wonder where those people were now. It's surreal to drive by homes and see the inspection markings outside with "cat found" "two dead dogs" or just the numbers of people rescued or found dead in each house. If you have some free time and are willing to put in some sweat, I'd really recommend getting a few people together and coming down for a weekend- anything helps. KIPP went through Acorn, they're one place to start.

Tomorrow we're on the bus all day and then back to Memphis, where I rejoin with TFA folk, most of whom should be back from visits home. It's so strange to have at least three distinct groups of people who I'd consider good friends after being through insanity together- institute friends, Memphis corps and the Diamond staff. I suppose mostly so in light of the fact that I barely left Kansas two months ago. It's been cool to run into a few people I worked with at institute here at the summit- programs like TFA and KIPP seem amazingly small worlds when you get down to it. Insanity and chaos. But all in the best possible way. Well, that's all from me for now. Best to everyone, and I'll be back online from Memphis in a day or two. Ciao.