Well the journey began many months ago when my superintendent walked into my room and said, "I need to talk to you" during the middle of a read aloud. He tells me (and the teacher with an adjoining door next to me) that he just received an email about this amazing opportunity and he wanted us to apply for it. He said to look out for the email and don't pass up the opportunity, it could be a huge turning point for us.
Two days later I receive a few emails he had forward onto us. I see the deadline is 2 weeks away and let it sit in my inbox for another week before giving it another thought. The next weekend I open up the email and think, "What's NAATE?" I begin to look at the website and read about the philosophy and what the entire program entails. I close my laptop, call my dad and tell him about the program. His response was, "Have you done the application yet?"
Two days later there was an informational meeting, but I was stuck at work with prior obligations. One of the five teachers who were asked to apply by our superintendent attended and sent us all the information she received. She talked up the program and now I was starting to look forward to it even more.
The follow day was terrible in the classroom, so I went home and didn't want to think about my class, so I opened up my computer and began looking into this application. I realized I couldn't save my work and return so I opened up a document and began answering the essay questions. The questions seemed very natural to answer, and despite my feelings towards my students that day, can you guess what I spent a lot of time talking about?
The application was due on a Friday, the night before I was sitting and staring at my application. I had read it aloud, I had read it aloud to my dad (and he is a wonderful listener but had no clue what I was speaking about and just kept saying "Sounds good" and "My daughter is smarter than me" and "What was that word you used? What does it mean?" And all of a sudden I said to myself, "This is the best I can do and if I change anything else, it won't be 'me'". So I pushed submit and laid staring at the ceiling for hours thinking of all the things I could have wrote or should have wrote.
The email said we would find out about acceptance in about 3 weeks. So I promised I would try to get NAATE out of my mind and focus on my students and my own teaching. About a week and half later I'm sitting in a meeting anticipating a phone call from my dad about his minor operation and recieved a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. I panicked, thinking something had gone wrong. I jumped up, stepped in the hallway, and I hear, "Is this Katie Bruns?". My mind was racing, [gulps] "yes" and very enthusiastically I hear "Hi this is Shana at the Kaufmann Foundation". Not registering what she was saying, I say "Yes?" and she said "Well I'm calling with what I hope is some good News" again all I can say is "Yes?" And she says, "You have been accepted to be a teacher fellow for Cohort XI NAATE program." and I manage to sputter out "That's awesome! Thank you". She goes on to ask me some questions and congratulate me some more. As I was allowing it to sink in, I was mostly glad it was not any bad news about my dad.
There are a few other events that happened before the trip..
NAATE CELEBRATION for all the Kauffman Foundation sponsored teacher fellows from the Kansas City area. A colleague of mine also got into the program and we attended together with our Superintendent and Vice Principals (Soon to be Principals for the 2017-2018 school year). They show up with flowers in hand and make us feel really good about this opportunity. It's official - I WAS EXCITED!
Then we received our hefty pre-work reading book. A 398 page document full of case studies. This took up a lot of time in the summer, but was a good read.
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