Stepping Up

My role at the school is to be an assistant gym teacher. But sometimes, like today, the head gym teacher is gone and I fill his shoes. In those times, I tend to see the gym class differently. I tend to feel more resposible, so I take care to make sure everything is as ready as it can be before class begins. I also am more aware to the realities of what certain age groups are capable. This doesn't happen so much when I am serving as an assistant because it's not my decisions that determine how class will go, but rather the head teacher's.

Stepping up for a day has a way of either boosting or diminishing my confidence. This morning when I found out for sure that the head teacher would be gone, I had a small amount of stress because I didn't know how it would go. But then I realized that I would just do the best I can and that things would work out OK. As I write this entry, my confiidence is bosted because I realize that nothing serious went wrong during the day. Also, we played a certain game with second grade and again with first grade. I found out during second grade class that I needed to be a little more specific in giving instructions, so with the first graders, I improved and they understood the directions great. Seeing improvement is always encouraging.

I'm not sure whether I would want to be the head teacher for a whole schoolyear. For all my life, I have felt most comfortable in roles where I'm a leader, but not the very top leader. I guess I lack the confidence that I could really head up something big. But hey, there's still plenty of time to get better at that. There is always a learning process which involves making mistakes and growing from them, no matter what the goal is. For now, I am thinking about setting the goal of becoming confident as the top leader of something. I'm probably qualified in more ways that I know to "Step Up".