I’ve been at my placement for a little over a month now. Since then I’ve taught solo lessons and subbed several full days in the class, so I figured “This isn’t so bad. I’m starting to get the hang of this!” (It’s always thoughts like that or phrases like “Clear sailing all the way” when the universe decides to bring you back to Earth.)
Yesterday I crashed and burned. Ironically, it was the first time I was had to turn in a formal lesson plan so I thought (silly me), that things would run even smoother. I don’t know what happened exactly, but somewhere in the middle my kids started fading fast and misbehaving. I wanted a walkie-talkie so I could scream “Abort! Abort!” and wait for someone to come and extract me, but no. I did consider mouthing the words “HELP ME” to my master teacher sitting in the back though…
After the lesson I thought about what went wrong. Maybe the topic was just boring? I mean, how exciting is California’s climate and vegetation anyway? Nah, ANY lesson can be spiced up. Maybe I didn’t plan enough? Maybe the kids were just tired? What else could I possibly blame? NOTHING. I can’t blame anything, really. I tried, my kids tried, but something just didn’t click. It was a great learning experience though! (Isn’t it great how that can always be used to make a horrible experience something positive?) I really did learn a lot, and for that I’m thankful. There’s no avoiding it -you are going to have some of these days.
It’s all good though.
Thank you, universe, for reminding me that this is NOT EASY! 
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It does take awhile to start figuring out where that intersection between well-planned lessons and lessons that engage students is. I’m seven years in and I still miss the mark much more than I’d like.
What was your lesson? Just curious.