Post mortem

Steve's a sweet. We meet today to do a post-mortem of the last class he attended, the one that I totally "efed" up. He didn't fire me today! Instead he sat down with me and told me that all new teachers do have some problems while explaining grammar at the beginning of their careers and that he really think I'll get better.

My little monster inside me whispered: "oh, boy, he really is desperate for teachers then". My little angel slap the monster off my shoulder, while remained me that it wasn't that bad.

He then went on (Steve, not the angel), to give me a few pointers and "how-to" and I'm very grateful because I'm actually learning on my feet here and all input from a pro are very welcome (and needed).

Now that I can analyze what went wrong with that blanking out in the class I think that there is, after all, such a thing as over-prepare something. That is a first for me. I never really though that such a thing as "over-prepare" actually could do any harm, it was in the same league as when those (usually thin) people say "I forgot to eat sometimes!". Yeah, sure! I could never forgot to eat, quite the opposite: I may actually forget that I already ate and go and munch some more! And I certainly never, ever, studied or prepare something so much as to ruin it. But I did this time. I over-prepare it, in the sense that I really wanted to do my best in front of Steve and prepare the class as if it was a play, so I had this sort of script in my mind and when the students didn't give me what I expected as a cue... well... I shut down.

From now on, I'll prepare my lessons well but I'll strive not to be Little Ms. Perfect.