Terrified And Excited

In little more than 2 weeks, I will be standing before a small class of 4 or 5 middle school students. For the next 6 weeks, I will teach them planetary science. I will have to come up with innovative, hands-on, interactive, participatory, and exploratory methods to teach and learn the basics of planetary science. After lunch, during "Exploratory Electives," I will be teaching "Movement: Dance, Martial Arts, and Fitness."

I am not a teacher. I am a student. And I a student trembling with fear, anticipation, uncertainty, excitement, insecurity, and a massive dosage of curiosity.

I will be working through Breakthrough Collaborative, a program in which I was once a student. Breakthrough is an educational program that prepares disadvantaged students to become more engaged in the world of academia; the program will prepare them, and actively help them enter and graduate from college preparatory high schools, and then university. They have an amazing rate of success, with a rate of college entrance double that of the original demographics from which the students come.

I am afraid.

I do not know if I am ready for this. I am not a teacher. The day begins at 8:00am. It ends at 6:00p.m. Then I grade, prepare, and consult. I am afraid that I am not sufficient, that my strength is not enough.

I am excited.

I know I will grow enormously from this experience and just as important, I will contribute something I consider incomprehensibly valuable to individual students, and the social web to which we all belong.

And I will discover whether or not I am strong, in a sense that I am unable to convey, but value more than anything else.