Teaching when you're not on your game

I live in Northern Ireland, but I go to Edge Hill university in Ormskirk, England. It was only natural that after returning to placement after Christmas it was one of the most emotionally draining experience I have had to date.

It happened that first thing on the Monday morning I was to be teaching a maths lesson, however, as you can imagine after being at home for three weeks I was in no fit state to teach a class for the first time. I will never forget waking up the morning of my lesson and the the knot of dread in the pit of my stomach; I ended up begging another trainee to do her lesson first before mine. The first thing I did that morning was cry and text my mum to tell her how I was feeling!

I didn't think those feelings of nervousness and dread to teach a lesson would go away as quickly as they did! I'm not sure they truly would go away at all. I guess over the past few months of uni I've discovered that I'm more of a home bird than I thought I was… however within only three or four lessons I got into the swing of things and began to absolutely love teaching! (Which I always knew I would)

Yes, for observations and certain lessons I still got nervous before I started teaching, but before I started, I took a deep breath, prayed to God that he would provide the wisdom, enthusiasm and patience for the lesson and off I went. It's so interesting how normal it becomes to teach the children, to hear them responding to your questions as if you'd been their teacher forever.

And now, as I sit and write this on the aeroplane on the way home back to Northern Ireland, I cant really believe how far I've come over the past few months. I know for a fact that without God in my life I wouldn't have got even an inch of the way, and every day I thank him for being with me and ahead of me every step of the way. I cannot wait to go back and visit my class and to get a new class next year, even though there will always be days when I'm not teaching on top of my game…