Can I get a freebie?

About the title:
So we've been given the liberty to free write for this post and while titling it I thought of a freebie. It's like you're walking down the street and see a group of girls (or guys, though very rarely) jumping double dutch and you want a turn, you say "Can I get a freebie." If you have been following my blogs from the beginning, you'll find that I have random titles for most of them (unless I'm really lazy, then I'll title it something boring and generic).

Inspired by one of my fellow interns, I want to talk about our dinner party last Wednesday. So one of the first years made dinner one night and we volunteered to make dinner another night and different people jumped on the dinner rotation. Wednesday Shanika used her brilliant artistic talent to make a sign that pointed our guests to either side of our apartments. The final menu was corn on the cob, barbecue chicken, biscuits, pasta salad, plantains, and mashed potatoes. (mmmmmmmm!) And Buck brought brownies for dessert :-)

A lot of people managed to make it out to our party; first years, second years, staff, program directors. It was actually great to see that we can all get along and talk to one another in a social setting without feeling a power hierarchy. Ben asked us if we think the ways in which we all interact with each other affects our job performance, not the interns but the teachers. In the program, third and fourth year teachers (maybe even higher) are staff hired to evaluate the first and second years. But with us living in such close quarters and interacting so much (whether through volleyball, dinners, outings, etc) a potential problem arises. Can the staff accurately evaluate the teachers or will they slack off and "be nice" because they are friends with them?

To answer Ben's question, I don't believe that our close-knit environment necessarily breeds inadequate evaluations. Members of the staff are still professionals and know when it is time to work. If anything, I think they would be more invested in doing a thorough evaluation because they want to see their friends improve and become the best teachers they can be. They also have a better understanding of how to best talk to their "mentee".

The main point I am trying to make in this post is that we are a very close-knit community of MTCers and I don't think that breaking us up or encouraging certain people not to interact with certain others would be more detrimental than anything. When the president of our college asked first year teachers why they chose MTC over other programs like Teach for America, many of them said it is because they feel like MTC had a stronger support system. Many of these teachers can't make it through their first summer without the help of the veterans. So no Ben, I don't think that allowing staff to interact with teachers is a bad idea. I actually think you made a really good decision to allow all of us to be together.