Butterflies

So aside from being waaay behind on blogging this semester (I don't have a lot of free time, go easy on me!), I've decided that graduate school gets exponentially better when student teaching is thrown in the mix. I haven't done a lot of teaching up to this point, more helping out in the classroom, handing out worksheets, collecting homework, grading the occasional assignment. BUT! I taught my first lessons last week, complete with a round of applause from my 4th hour class upon hearing that I was going to be the one teaching the lesson. Although I was a nervouss wreck previous to the class, it was not at all as scary as I had expected. In fact, it was AWESOME. I don't want to say that teaching is a power trip, but it kind of is! Apparently, however, on my first day teaching, I appeared rather nervous, because I had a student call me over to his desk and ask to make a comment. I replied, "of course," walked over and listened to what he had to say..

"Miss Davis, are you really nervous?"

"Um, well yeah, I am pretty nervous."

"Because you say 'um' a lot."

"Um, I think that's because I am nervous! I mean, I have never done this before..."

"Well you shouldn't be nervous. We are just normal kids."

And from that point on, I wasn't nervous anymore. He had made such a simple, yet legitimate point. These kids aren't going to laugh at me, give me a hard time, or harass me for not knowing everything. They understand that I've never done this before. And his comment made me realized that this is definitely something that takes getting used to. And I am definitely looking forward to doing more.