One of the most interesting things that I have done in my internship was found in the lessons themselves. Part of my job as an intern is to give weekly lessons based on excerpts from the bible and how it can apply to the daily life of a teenager. This requires me to speak publicly to this group of teens, which has not been the easiest part of the internship. Even though I am speaking to teenagers, I still get really nervous when it comes to public speaking. In the past, whenever I had to speak publicly, I began to sweat, stutter and just get really nervous. I have only given three lessons so far and the first one was not the best. No one told me how well or poorly I did but looking back, I know it wasn’t done well. However, I know that it could’ve been done better. For my next lesson, I decided to record myself speaking and afterwards look back and see where I can improve. I noticed that I tend to get lost in my notes often so an improvement I made was to make my notes clearer. I looked back at some of the notes I wrote from my first semester when I took a public speaking class! I applied them to my next lesson and it turned out better than the first time around. Never would I have thought that they would come in handy but I’m glad they did! Overall, I have really been enjoying this experience and understanding how, aside from the setting I have been placed in, the skills I am learning can translate over to other areas of my life that contribute to my professional development for the future.
Abraham – If I may, the nerves just tell me that you care about the work; I’m glad the experience is driving you to self-study after your lessons and make adjustments to your process. Good on you for digging out those old notes! So rewarding, isn’t it, when those forgotten studies reveal themselves to have been worthwhile after all :). I’ll stay away from cliches of teaching like “the real sign of knowledge is that you can teach it”, however true they are (and they are). But what I do imagine is really interesting intellectual work is the process of thinking about framing and application: how you are experiencing this text that is important to you in a new way by applying it to the stuff of real life, and thinking carefully about how to present or frame it’s ideas so that your students are also taken by them. – LBN