Happy New Year! Our semester starts early this year – classes begin tomorrow. Half of our prep week was spent celebrating New Year’s Eve and Day, and since I am teaching a class I am not very familiar with I am feeling most definitely under-prepared.
But that discomfort is more than outweighed by the pleasure of knowing that I am starting fresh with this new batch of students. I can teach differently, teach better. Maybe this will be the semester when I figure out how to get everyone on board. But whether it is or not, it is a fresh start, and I love that about teaching.
We don’t have to carry our baggage with us when we start a new semester. My mentally ill students and the damage they did to my confidence are in the past. I learned and hopefully I have moved on to a better place should I encounter such troubled students again (ah, the equanimity of those final days before classes start and reality sets in!)
I am teaching study skills, which can be a fun class to teach. I am excited about the creativity that is encouraged by the textbook, which is full of diverse ways to teach and learn each topic. It is the new pencil/new notebook syndrome: everything is fresh and new and full of possibility. That is the gift of teaching – no matter how badly you screwed up last semester, the next semester is a new beginning. I am so thankful to have this opportunity to perpetually be able to begin again with a clean slate. I wish you the same – an ongoing supply of second chances.
