Tick, tick, tick.....

I start teaching in 20 days. I'm trying not to panic - there's a lot of deep breathing and meditation involved here - mostly because I only have a cursory understanding of what I'll be responsible for in terms of classes. I know for sure that my Deaf class will be an "English for the World of Work" class and will contain two students - both boys, God help me, and both very spirited and mischievous. UNH is requiring that I teach a Hearing class as well, but an email to the teacher who's working with me on that part of my internship revealed that even SHE doesn't know what she's teaching next semester, so she can't give me a heads-up on what I should prepare for.

I'm rolling with this uncertainty remarkably well given that I'm a Capricorn, which means that I'm a mild-to-moderate control freak. Though while I love order and predictability, I don't NEED it, necessarily; strangely, I have an innate talent for "winging it." A girlfriend of mine is also starting her internship in September - she'll be teaching high school in Durham - and is already armed with folders and binders and at least a month's worth of lesson plans. Me? I've got nothing.

There's a quote from the movie Top Gun that goes something like "you're only happy when you're going mach-10 with your hair on fire." While I hate to admit it, given my control-freaky tendencies, I think that might apply to me. Besides, I would hate to put all that time and effort into lesson plans that could well turn out to be irrelevant to me once I get into the classroom. Still, I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING. Planning, writing, making a syllabus at the very least. My plans for this afternoon fell through at the last minute, so I think I'm going to spend that found time putting together some lesson plans for the World of Work class. Now, if I can just figure out how to start.....