It's the end of my second full week of teaching and, to be perfectly honest, I'm plum tuckered out. Some activities went well, and others did not go as well as I would have liked. In either situation, I feel as if I am getting to know my students a bit better -- I am learning what they like, what they respond to, and how I need to structure certain activities to get the best/most responses. I've learned that you can spend an entire evening building what you are sure is going to be a great lesson, only to find out that you overshot the vocabulary, or forgot a step, or missed the target completely. It's very humbling. It's also the nature of the job itself: teaching is such a dynamic, organic process that it's virtually impossible to anticipate how well/how poorly something will do.

And in the end, maybe it's not so much a "failure" as a "learning experience." It's not the fault of the students; it's probably not even your fault as a teacher (although I tend to want to shoulder that responsibility, mostly because I'm the one standing up in front of the room). It's just the way that a real, live classroom functions. Expect the unexpected.

Also. I posted an alternate version of this on my Tumblr, but this has generally been my attitude toward lesson planning this week (in super geeky .gif form):

Monday:



Tuesday:



Wednesday:



Thursday:



Friday:



Here's to the weekend! :D