JOURNAL: October 18, 2006

Today I felt like my classes got a little away from me, as though activities were sort of happening by themselves and I was just following along. I had carefully planned the lessons, as I always do, but, nevertheless, on many occasions I felt like the lessons were running me instead of the opposite. It wasn’t a good feeling. I felt like things were out of my control, and I most definitely felt like a failure as a teacher. Later, I thought to myself, “I have to get control of things tomorrow!” – but then another thought came to me, an opposite one. Maybe, I thought, I need to willingly give up control of things instead of struggling to regain control. Perhaps the learning that occurred in my classroom today was deep and powerful, only I didn’t notice it because I was too engrossed in my own personal issues concerning control. While I was worrying about keeping track of all the pieces of my lesson plan, maybe the students were quietly benefiting from the lesson. Sometimes, when I’m flustered and frustrated in my teaching, I see myself as someone standing in a meadow trying to control the winds. He’s wildly waving his arms and racing here and there, and, of course, the winds constantly elude his grasp. That was me in my classroom today. Perhaps I need to stop all the nonsense about control and just relax and enjoy whatever’s happening in my classroom. I always make a meticulous lesson plan, and maybe I just need to let the plan do its systematic work. We trust the wind to blow where it must, and maybe I need to trust my lesson plans, too.