Caveat: Somebody’s Confused

Lately I've been feeling pretty negative about my teaching ability. I suppose that doesn't help in terms of my overall affect, either. It's hard to say what is cause and what is effect, though. It becomes a vicious cycle because my self-doubt about teaching seems to lead to lower-quality teaching – I make more mistakes or mis-judgments; I get more "lazy" about tasks that I perceive as needing to be done; etc. Which of course later reinforces my frustration, too.

Earlier this week I made a terrible mistake. I told my HSM반 that I was mad at them that they hadn't done what I'd asked them to do for homework. In fact, I lectured them and harangued them for about 10 minutes.

It turns out, however… that I'd mis-remembered what their HW assignment was – mixing it up with my HST반. Further, the students… they just sat there, looking sheep faced and repentant. Not a single student made any effort to correct me or expressed any confusion over their "failure" to do the right homework. It's kind of a mess of a teaching screw up, because I only realized long after the class was over, that I'd made the mistake. They've already begun doing the "new, revised" homework assignment. It leaves them questioning their reality, and I'm not in any position to be able to "recover from it" with any grace whatsoever. I'm not even sure, if I tried to explain my screw up, that the students would understand – after all, I doubt they're really accustomed to authority figures admitting error, nor would they have a clue what to make of such information. 

I get paranoid that this is some early indication of the onset of some kind of dementia or mental breakdown. The hypochondria kicks in. 

Sigh. Bleagh.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

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