Monday, October 22, 2007

ONE YEAR WITH AN ENGLISH TEACHER

Day 32, October 22, 2007

Today, for several reasons, I fell behind in teaching my planned lessons, and I also found a few careless errors in the written lessons I passed out to students. These are just a few of the reasons why I would not call myself a particularly good teacher today. I felt sort of ineffective all day, like a car that's barely managing to move down the road on low tires and a lousy engine. At the end of the day, though, I did something that always helps me recover from feelings of ineptitude: I performed some ordinary actions in a thorough way. I slowly and carefully stacked the chairs in my room, and I did it perfectly. I may not have been an excellent teacher today, but I was an excellent stacker of chairs. Then I walked down the hall, and I did the walking flawlessly; I was a first-rate walker-down-the-hall. Also, no one can drink water from a fountain better than I did, and outside, I turned my face up to the warm sunshine in a faultless manner.

After a day of what seemed like substandard teaching, it felt good to do a few simple things with excellence and grace.

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