Crap. What a day. The class turned out to be a bit of a debacle, mostly because I seriously overestimated how much material we’d get through. I figured that since I’ve taught people to knit before individually, teaching a half a dozen wouldn’t be that hard. I was so wrong. Each person could only manage to follow the pattern for about thirty seconds before yelling for help. And it wasn’t that the pattern was hard, it’s just that they needed to be shown every little thing. Me, I’m a book learner, so that’s why I spent hours writing down explicit notes on everything for them. (Mental note: Don’t bother next time.) By the end I was apologizing all over the place because I felt terrible that we’d only accomplished so little. Most of them seemed happy though, and a few actually managed to “get” it before they left. I guess it was a good learning experience for me, huh? Next time I need to remember not to be so ambitious.
So what did I do afterwards? I came home and flopped on the couch, hoping to clear off some TiVo and do some knitting. Two hours later, just as I’d started The Princess Diaries, the f**king television exploded. Yes, you read that right; our TV just exploded. So now there’s no telly. This sucks.
3 responses
The TV story makes me cry, but as for the rest, welcome to teaching. 🙂 You were still right to over-plan, though. It’s better than finishing way early and twiddling your thumbs. Your experience makes me think of the times I take my students to the computer lab to type papers or something like that, and I think everyone will be fine and I can get some papers graded while they type. No dice. No matter how much material you’ve given your students, a hand will go up every thirty seconds and you never stop moving around the room. So just use all of this to make for an even better class next time and you’ll end up being quite the kick-ass teacher. 🙂
If you want to go TV shopping tomorrow I’ll have the car all day. Just ring me in the morning if ya want.
Aw, thanks! But will any place be open? We figured we’d try the manufacturer first and see if it can get repaired. Technically the “picture tube” is still under warranty so it might be free. (I doubt that’s what ‘sploded though. It looked more like some power thingy from the spark.)