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As I watched Erin explain cows, color and light to a crowd of wide but tired eyed children I psyched myself up to talk to give them my speech. Millions of things were shooting through my mind as my time grew nearer and nearer. Am I prepared well enough? What would they think? How should I talk to them? And finally what will Mark think of my presentation?
It was finally time, as I directed the children to come and look at my first piece I got nervous and excited, this was a feeling I was not used to. I was used to the wrestler’s preparation, the feel adrenaline rushing through my veins and the mental visualization of me being great.
Well, no time to worry about that anymore, I was already presenting and managing not to choke too much. Wow, this is exciting in a kind of weird way, I am asking questions and getting good answers most of the time.
It’s over now and I am physically exhausted from presenting, and I am looking forward to going home and just relaxing. I had no idea that this would be so exhausting, I had been a teacher’s assistant in a Junior High School and it was nowhere near and tough as this was.
I don’t think that many students, myself included, realize what it takes to teach a class no mater what the age. I never knew how much planning went into even a simple Junior High PE class lesson plan, the amount of preparation was astonishing to me, and I was beginning to have a new found respect for teachers. It is with every experience that we get smarter and have new ideas. This experience has been so much different from what I had done in the past. Some may say that I had an easy task. Lets face it, all I did was do a little research on three paintings and then just talk about them for five minutes apiece. I will admit to its simplicity and ease, but I urge anyone to try and describe Claud Monet’s Water Lilies to fifteen or twenty small children on a warm summer day after they had had a long day of walking tours. It is not as easy as it sounds and it is certainly not a relaxing thing to undertake. But as corny as this may sound it was all made worth while. It was after the end of my final work of art on the last day when I over heard a small boy talking to his teacher and explaining how much he enjoyed the museum and how anxious he was to return with his parents, and show them all that he had learned. This was all I needed to hear to just make my day a little better. I was still exhausted, and I still was looking forward to relaxing at home, but I now think I have a little better of an insight to why people teach, and why they love it so much.
It is with practice that one gets better and it is with much practice that one becomes great at what one does. I know that I did better the second time I presented then the first, and it would be a safe bet that I would be better on the third and fourth times. I would love to do this again and I think that it is a good learning experience for anyone who is a student. I know that I need to be more relaxed with the children and that I should let them have a large part to do with where the conversation goes, and if I were to present again that I would work on that a lot more. But over all I felt that I did a good job and would love to do it again.
