Nerves

So in class we have been talking about how in three months we will be student teachers and, unlike the last three years of prep work, actually be expected to teach. And most of the people in class seem to be pretty nervous about this.

And on some level I can understand their level of nervousness. It is a big difference between being in a classroom with children with the teacher and four of your classmates and being in the classroom with just you and the children. So we have been talking a lot about how we feel (which is a common theme in Elementary Education) about the upcoming semester and what is making us nervous.

And all this talk about being nervous has brought to mind two different quotes from two different periods of my life. The first comes from high school.

As the people reading this blog probably already know I ran cross country in high school and I remember one time we got onto the subject of being nervous about racing. And, it had to be Coach who said this first, we seemed to agree that being nervous was an acceptable thing because we all knew that we had a chance to run really well - we were not nervous about the pain or the struggle of running, we were nervous about letting our team/coach/selves down because we did not perform up to the expectations that our team/coach/selves had.

And again this seems like a perfectly normal and OK thing to experience, it makes sense because we wanted to run well and to win. But then I read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King and this line only stood out to me on my third read through* of the final book:

"Nerves are for people who haven't made up their minds"

And it strikes me, especially in the context of beginning your career, that this quote actually does apply. All of us in my cluster have made up their minds; they want to be a teacher. And now they are finally getting a chance to do that.

It could easily be argued that my first quote also directly applies because, as teachers it is safe to assume that we do not want to let down our students/administration/selves. But that argument only works if you want it to - it only works if you let it. I would rather not even consider it and just focus on being the absolute best teacher that I can be - and in three months we will see how it goes.


*proving again that re-reading books is a very valuable thing to do.