butterflies

School starts in a little over 24 hours, and like a lot of teachers, all of the “what if I’m not good enough” self-doubts are running through my mind. I know rationally that I did a decent job last year, and that there’s no reason I can’t do the same this year, but the rational part of my brain isn’t the part that’s pestering me. This year I’ll be teaching AP chem and organic chem, neither of which I’ve taught before. As I was thinking and planning and researching on the web, I visited , a site put together my Mitchell Charity at MIT. One of his quotes, which kind of sums up the nagging fear, is “If you can’t explain it to a nine-year-old, then you don’t deeply understand it yourself.” I’ve kind of caught myself thinking the equivalent of “What if I can’t teach organic chemistry to a nine-year-old?” “What if I can’t teach a nine-year-old enough chemistry to get a 5 on the AP test?” It seems silly when I think about it that way, and yet seeing how silly the whole thing is doesn’t make the nagging worry go away. :-/