it won't always be like this

I taught my first two classes today. I got blocked on this lesson plan, so it got to be 10pm yesterday, I was falling asleep, and had neither an effective lesson plan, nor the important classroom decorations like the rules and the Class Competition as part of classroom management. But the first class was half of section H, and they're pretty chill, notwithstanding my own anxiety and having to expand on a very vague lesson idea. They seemed to have fun and they learned stuff.

In between the two classes, in the miserable feeling of diving into piles of long-untouched emotional issues, I realized:

I came to South America to increase my mental suffering.

I don't mean that in a pessimistic way. That's actually what happened. I knew I had this load of unresolved stuff, and along with doing something useful in the world, this seemed like a good way to bring it up. I might have glossed over or delayed the fact that it would mean many, many moments of unhappiness.

Then came half of curso G. G is the distracted, bored class. I took two cell phones, shouted once (not useful), and wrote a bunch of names down. One kid made it to the Ladder of Consequences on the board, which did settle him down. And I don't blame them for acting up--it was pretty tame by Chilean standards, and it was not a well-designed class. (Though it doesn't bode well for how I have to design all my classes.) They ended up enjoying themselves once we got into "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", and they definitely learned some stuff.

Anyway. It sucked for me. Except for explaining the rules more clearly to start with, I'm not sure how to make it suck less in the time available. Luckily I've only got a half week this week, because of the school's anniversary celebration.

It'll get better. And it could have been a lot worse.