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Teaching Diary 15
Dec. 7th, 2021 11:13 amI had a tiny anxious breakdown in front of my sophomore writing class today. I'm teaching the research methods unit, and I had a lesson planned on writing an annotated bibliography. I wrote the work up yesterday, made PPT slides, found videos and tutorials, and planned an "I do, We do, You do" activity -- I model the process, then students work in pairs or small groups, and then they try the skill independently. It's one of my favorite methods to teach, particularly if I'm working on a specific, repeatable skill.
Then class started and I couldn't find the work. We use Teams a lot, and I use it pretty much exclusively as a way to distribute and collect work and class materials. It's convenient, and if I pre-load work, I can be ready when we have to go online for distance learning because there is very little prep time when that happens (we've done it twice this year already). I pre-loaded all the assignments for the whole 4-week unit back in November, but when it came to teaching today's lesson, things were off. I couldn't find the practice work I made yesterday. I forgot that I made the practice work until I was halfway through teaching the lesson. Once I realized I was missing something, I went to look for it and had a moment of panic -- did I just dream this lesson prep? I have dreamed of lesson prep before.
I finally found the work, so I sort of started the lesson over. Then one of the websites wouldn't work, which just knocked me off my axis further until I was a wobbly top about to fall off the table.
I told the kids that it felt like my brain was just three squirrels fighting over an acorn. And that clued me in -- my anxiety was spiraling, so until I could get that under control, I had to sit down and stop teaching because it was like trying to steer a car on an icy road. If you're not calm, you end up in a ditch.
Stopping was really, truly fine. Messing up one lesson in a hundred is fine. Students will practice this skill again and again. Messing up today does not equal messing up their entire academic future. Plus, one of the skills we hit over and over again is how to look things up, so if they go to university and need to make an annotated bibliography and can't remember my lesson from their sophomore year, they can look it up!
But anxiety convinced me I had ruined their education. Which I did not. I have not. I will not.
I talked through it in front of them, a little, because I think it's good that kids can see adults fail a bit and get back up again, that it's normal to be overwhelmed sometimes because we're humans. On a logical level, I think that seeing me stop and regroup and try again is a more important lesson than proper MLA citation format.
On an emotional level, it sucks and it's draining, and it's thrown off my whole groove for the day.
Then class started and I couldn't find the work. We use Teams a lot, and I use it pretty much exclusively as a way to distribute and collect work and class materials. It's convenient, and if I pre-load work, I can be ready when we have to go online for distance learning because there is very little prep time when that happens (we've done it twice this year already). I pre-loaded all the assignments for the whole 4-week unit back in November, but when it came to teaching today's lesson, things were off. I couldn't find the practice work I made yesterday. I forgot that I made the practice work until I was halfway through teaching the lesson. Once I realized I was missing something, I went to look for it and had a moment of panic -- did I just dream this lesson prep? I have dreamed of lesson prep before.
I finally found the work, so I sort of started the lesson over. Then one of the websites wouldn't work, which just knocked me off my axis further until I was a wobbly top about to fall off the table.
I told the kids that it felt like my brain was just three squirrels fighting over an acorn. And that clued me in -- my anxiety was spiraling, so until I could get that under control, I had to sit down and stop teaching because it was like trying to steer a car on an icy road. If you're not calm, you end up in a ditch.
Stopping was really, truly fine. Messing up one lesson in a hundred is fine. Students will practice this skill again and again. Messing up today does not equal messing up their entire academic future. Plus, one of the skills we hit over and over again is how to look things up, so if they go to university and need to make an annotated bibliography and can't remember my lesson from their sophomore year, they can look it up!
But anxiety convinced me I had ruined their education. Which I did not. I have not. I will not.
I talked through it in front of them, a little, because I think it's good that kids can see adults fail a bit and get back up again, that it's normal to be overwhelmed sometimes because we're humans. On a logical level, I think that seeing me stop and regroup and try again is a more important lesson than proper MLA citation format.
On an emotional level, it sucks and it's draining, and it's thrown off my whole groove for the day.
