What Works and What Doesn't

About 24 hours ago, I was putting together a lesson plan for a class I teach. For the first two days of this class, I tried to create my plans from scratch. This was clearly not the most efficient way to do thing, as it took me three or four hours to do one fifty-minute plan. But I was determined to do it on my own so I pushed through it. I was also completely miserable. I finally put my pride on the shelf and asked a much more experienced instructor for her lesson plans. Now it takes me half the time to examine the prepared lesson plans and tweak them to my own style and preference.

Lesson #1 from this experience: most people (and certainly God ) are more than willing to help if you just ask.

Back to 24 hours ago.

The lesson plan was going a little bit slower than usual this night, even with the help of the already-made plans I used as a base. For the big activity in the middle of the lesson, I decided to just copy and paste the original activity since it was already "clear enough" and easy to explain without my making adjustments to my own way of teaching and explaining.

The next day--today--my lesson was going quite smoothly The class was engaged and participating. I came to the middle activity, the one I stole, for lack of a better term. As I tried to ask questions and explain the concept, I found myself fumbling. I was trying to make sense of the graph that the experienced instructor used. I paused and tried to figure it out while the class waited expectantly. Time slowed down and I'm sure my face started to redden. After I got things figured out, the students started asking questions from the chart I drew on the board. Still trying to recover, I had to think and think and think about their questions. It was a small disaster.

Lesson #2 from this experience: you really need to be yourself and do what works for you, because what works for someone else won't always be the best thing for you. If I had taken the time (24 hours ago) to revamp the chart in a way that made sense to me and a way that I could easily explain - in essence make it my own - the awkward pauses and silences and regroupings today could have been avoided. My students need me and my style to learn, not someone else's, just in the same way that the students of my instructor/benefactor needed her and her style to learn. This is a lesson that is easy to learn in this situation but a lot harder to learn in real life, I think. The feelings I had today after class were very similar to the ones I have after an experience where I knew I was trying to be someone else because I thought that would work better. But in reality, it just makes things harder and worse. It sounds really campy, but people really are basically different for a reason.

Back from Summer

This summer I took an unintended sabbatical (which is getting pretty uppity: it's not as if I'm paid for this or as if my blog has a widespread readership), which resulted from several things in including laziness, lack of stimulating topics I wanted to put my two cents in about, and.....laziness. I had some goals I achieved this summer and some that failed miserably. But that's ok. I'm sure that the summer's lessons and experiences will filter in slowly as I start writing again.

The school year starts as of today and some new adventures are starting up. I've changed jobs and have a whole new set of responsibilities and commitments. I hate change and transition, but this time I'm telling myself over and over that in a week or so, this will be the new normal and I'll be happy with it. This first week could be a doozy though.

Here's to a new school year, new goals, new people, and new experiences!