The "Intro to Quilting" class I've been looking forward to started this week, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm glad the first few hours are over. Not that the ladies taking the class aren't amazing, but there's always something a little nerve wracking about the first day of class.
No matter how well I know the material, how passionate I am about the subject, or how many students there are, I get tense and start talking way too fast. I think back to the very first class I can remember teaching: I was in my 5th year of Air Cadets and had to teach a class on (ironically enough) Instructional Techniques. I think I scripted every sentence down to when I should breathe, in fact there were side notes on the lesson plan that read "breathe" and "smile." I remember holding the page with both hands shaking so much I couldn't even read what I had written. Somehow we got through the 20-minutes, and I swore off teaching as a profession.
Somewhere over the next four years my mind was changed and I moved to Edmonton to complete my Bacc. en Education at Campus Saint-Jean (the Francophone campus of the University of Alberta). With lofty ideas of changing the world one class at a time. Statistically speaking, I shouldn't really be surprised that after a year of teaching High School I was looking for something else, but it was a bit dissapointing.
I've been teaching at a private business college for the last three years, and have really enjoyed it. But it's time to move on again to a career that better suits my family's changing needs. I'll have more details to share next week about that--what I can say is that it will allow me the flexibility to be the kind of mom I want to be, and to take my role in Balanced Needles Knitting & Quilting to the next level while still offering challenging work with a lot of reward.
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