When I decided that I wanted to try my hand at teaching, I had a feeling it was going to be hard. I knew that it would be a mentally challenging profession, which would lead to a series of late nights preparing lessons, and marking papers. However, I never would have thought about how physically demanding it can be.
This past week was my first week of teaching as a pre-intern. For the first two days, I did not teach. Instead, I had a series of meetings and opportunities to observe professional teachers in their element. Then, on Wednesday, I thought my first lesson of this three-week block. It was a Creative Writing 20 class, and overall I believe it went pretty well. Since this was an elective class, the students want to be there, and have a genuine interest in creative writing. In that way it was different from teaching a core English class, which students have to take in order to graduate. I was also assisted by team-teaching this class with my partner. I must say, I am blessed to have a fantastic partner who has a great interest in the field of writing. So, all in all, I believe the Creative Writing classes have went well for the first couple of day, and I look forward to what the next two weeks will bring.
However, my week took a turn on Thursday. It was on this day that I picked up my co-operating teachers ELA 9 class. This class came right after the Creative Writing 20 class, so that means, for the first time in my experience as an Education student, I have to teach back-to-back classes. In my mind, this did not sound like a big problem. I don’t believe it would be controversial to say that many, if not all, teachers have to teach many class in a row. So, how hard could it really be? Well, I can now say, it is really difficult. This is especially true of my first day teaching two classes.
On my first day teaching ELA 9, I made one major mistake. I forgot to being water. When I was leaving home that morning, for some reason, I did not want to bring a water bottle with me. It would just take my extra room, and I would probably look like a bigger dork than I already do if I was carrying a water bottle with me. So, I go to school with no water, and two classes about to be taught. I started the day with Creative Writing, and I believe it went pretty well. The students were working on re-imagined versions of fairy tales, and I think I was able to give the kids a good amount of advice on how they can progress their ideas. However, things took a bit of turn as the second period came around. As I got halfway through the period, my throat began to get very dry. I was finding it difficult to talk and I was rushing through what I wanted to say. I believe some of these problems may have come from not having anything to drink all morning.
By the end of that second period, I was exhausted. For the rest of the day, all I wanted to do was sit and try to recover. I was pretty happy by the time third period started. Then I was able to take time to observe my partner and reflect on what I did in my lesson. It is far to say, I have never thought of teaching as a physical act, but it really is. My weariness was not helped by the fact that when I got home I was not really able to relax. My time had to be spent planning the next lessons. However, I have not a such a good sleep in a long time.
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