Decided to start up the blog again - I wish that I had kept it up last year as it would have been nice to have looked back on my first year of teaching (and be able to learn from my mistakes).
Still suffering massive tension headache from first day of classes. I hate the beginning of the semester as I have to do a radical re-adjustment of my expectations of what will happen in the classroom; I'm somehow expecting the collaborative, comfortable environment that I left at the end of last semester but what I find is a disjunctive room full of strangers who I don't know and who don't know me - not the best atmosphere at all for learning to take place. I did see a glimmer of what I'm looking for at the end of my classes yesterday as my students settled into group work, so I'm already thinking how to start off my first day next year with group work vs. me lecturing. I'm nervous about tomorrow's lesson as I am exploring a somewhat controversial article and really going "off track" - let's see if I can remember how the good professors I had handled this. Thinking now of short lecture to sum up the article that I assigned (as I am guessing at least half of the students won't read it) and then guided group discussion, so I'll be developing some questions for the groups to tackle.
Next week will be easier as I'll be using last year's lessons. And I'll have the weekend free - no homework to grade yet.
Wish the headache would go away.
Does this ever get easier? Maybe it's better that it doesn't because it is very possible that it is the feeling of never being good enough which will compel me to keep working to evolve and improve my teaching practice.
