teaching! sort of. a little bit.

We all had to prepare our second lesson plan for today, and teach part of it to the class. It went really well. Beyond well, really. I got some nice outside validation that I'm kind of good at this.

The really interesting feedback was that Teacher Chris is just like Everyday Chris, only "more so": that I don't have to do anything wildly different. I make everything bigger, like my facial expressions and my gestures, and they noticed that it comes from being a performer, in my willingness to do large movements and to not stand still. That's all just me, though normally I don't bother moving around so much. I don't think the crew knows how much of my ability to engage with people and situations comes from my aikido and Zen training, and I don't have any good way to really convey it, but that's okay. They're coming at it as different people with different resources and experiences, and those differences are a lot of how we can help each other.

At the end, Allyson asked if our actual teaching was different from what we'd written in the lesson plan. It was for all of course, of course, but everyone else was talking about how we translate things differently to and from the page, which we do, and I did too, and we had to adjust our teaching to accomodate people acting like they didn't understand. But really, for me:

"Actually, mine was different because I stole ideas from everyone who went before me and I changed a bunch of stuff right before I got up and taught."

Allyson said, "The other great thing about Chris is that he's honest."