As soon as I had finished my very first lesson, my initial thought was that I had officially become a teacher. But the thought left just as quickly as it had arrived, and I began to question whether or not there was any truth to it. Since I don't have my certification yet, I definitely wasn't a teacher in the technical sense, but more importantly I just wasn't a teacher. A teacher is someone who commands authority, someone who captivates an entire room, someone who actually knows what they're doing at the front of a classroom. I am none of these things. I impersonated a teacher today, and yes, many of my students were fooled. Most of them left having learned something new, and in the end that is the primary goal of what we're trying to do. But not everyone was fooled; I definitely wasn't.
I know that no one ever performs a task perfectly the first time around, and I wasn't trying to say that my lesson went exceedingly poorly either. I think things went really well actually, all things considered of course. I'm pretty sure the point I was getting at was that there is always another, more distant goal to pursue. Even those who are great can still find areas to improve. Sure, celebrate the victories along the way, but it's important to keep in mind that there's even more to come. I taught my first lesson today and if I look past the stress and anxiety, it was pretty awesome. But by the end of the summer I'm hoping that I'll actually be a teacher.
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