Teaching Terrors

I grew up with a mom who was a teacher. When I was little I aspired to be just like her. I wanted to grow up to be a teacher too. She wisely talked me out of it. She spoke of the disrespectful little brats students and their careless/incompetant somewhat supportive parents, the curriculum that you couldn't control, the pay that never changed, the benefits that went down, the non-supportive administrations, etc. You get the idea. She was a great teacher. I know this because years later she still has students who love her. Plus she taught me everything I know, and we all know I know everything. (Stop laughing...)

So, when I was adequately persuaded to look into other career options, I headed another way and never looked back.

Until I started teaching piano. Then I remembered the lessons of my mom. Not the lessons mentioned above, but the lessons of how, when you're teaching, you're holding minds in your hands and are molding them.  I sort of freaked out. I'm a really, really crappy artist. Sculpting is not something I'd trust me to do, with minds particularly.

So, I'm described accurately as a nervous teacher. Never sure that I know what the crap I'm talking about, yet I'm spouting information that is filling (and molding) my students heads. Some people would rise to the occasion and welcome the power. I shrink from power, it scares the crap out of me.

Then, I got called to teach a class at church. Every week. I welcomed the challenge of learning more about the gospel. But, here we are months after receiving this calling and I still get nervous every single time I open my mouth to teach the girls. Sure, like piano, I know what I'm talking about. I just doubt that the words are going to come out how they should to embrace and explain the thoughts in my head. Plus, it doesn't help that you're preaching to youth who are staring at you with blank eyes and no comments. Even worse, there are often other adults in the room who I KNOW are much smarter than me. I just wait for one of them to stand up and say, "You know, I think I'll just take over, I'm pretty sure ANYONE could do this better than you", but they're too nice to put me out of my misery do that.

Then, even better, I was asked to do a class on photography. Seriously.

So, I'm proud enough of my pictures to be able to state I can take a decent picture or two. But I've never studied photography. Ever. I've read a little bit here, and little bit there. But I prefer to just play around with my camera settings and so I had to school myself a lot on F-Stops, Apertures, Shutter Speeds, ISO speeds. A lot. I wrote it all up, nearly verbatim, because that's how I roll. I had lots of example photographs, I had lots of information, I felt I was adequately prepared.

Then I stood up in front of the 8 kids, 3 adults and I froze. It was an epic fail, I tell you. Epic.

I'm totally blaming it on the three terrible nights' sleep beforehand, as well as the potential illness my body is fighting, and let's throw in the fear of teaching other adults (and children too).

I'm certain the other adults were laughing inside that I couldn't stream a sentence together without confusing everyone in the room (yes, including myself) even more. I'm pretty sure I've gotten myself out of any further speaking engagements. Whew.

The one consolation? Lincoln was there and he said he liked it. I'm not sure if that's because he likes to see me fumble around, or that if he believed that I wouldn't feed him if he said it stunk, either way he made my evening.