Teaching: I might actually be starting to enjoy it!

Today I taught a fishing clinic for a county 4-H group that I also worked with last year. Being at the same location and with some of the same kids and teen counselors as last year certainly brought back memories, and these memories were anything but fond. This was one of the first full-length fishing clinics that I taught last year, and I am willing to admit that I did a few things wrong. I was still in the process of discovering the ways in which I can best manage a group of 30 kids at a fishing clinic and still keep things fun and engaging. Of course, I am still partaking in this process, but I feel that I have come much further along. The spark that really ignited my desire to change my methods occurred at this very event last year. I had spent the whole day frazzled, unable to keep the group's attention, frustrated because we were off schedule, and disappointed because the kids didn't seem to be enjoying themselves. At the end of the day the kids filled out evaluations. One of the questions on those evaluations is "My instructor was really good at ____________." I remember going through those last year, and one child had filled in his blank with the word "yelling." This is when I knew something had to change. I could blame my attitude on the kids' misbehavior all I wanted, but the truth was that my approach to the fishing clinics needed to change. I did not wait to make these changes; in fact, they went into effect the very next day. I began to realize that it was not necessarily important to stay completely on schedule and squeeze in every activity. Although it is important to keep the programs educational, they also must be fun. The point of the fishing programs is to get kids into fishing, hopefully as a lifetime sport. If their early experiences with fishing are not fun, they will not have a desire to fish again. So I began to be more laid back in my approach to fishing clinics, allowing myself to change lesson plans to fit the dynamics of certain groups. I also began to treat the kids with the same respect that I expect from them, which I find really helps with group behavior issues. With these changes made, today's clinic went much more smoothly than the same clinic a year ago. I am now realizing that a personal teaching style is an evolving learning experience that can be tuned with each trial. As I develop my teaching style, I am beginning to enjoy teaching more and more. If you would have asked me last year at this time whether I enjoy teaching, I would have probably said, "Definitely not!" But today I actually did enjoy myself. And I am proud to say that all of my evaluations came back positive, with the blank that was filled with "yelling" last year filled with things like "explaining," "teaching," and "helping me" this year.