Disaster....

Our group wasn't affected by the chaos that everyone else seemed to experience. Our night actually went incredibly well. We got our kids to the rock climbing wall. I was actually so happy and impressed with B.V., because he actually got up and climbed and really seemed to enjoy the experience. So far in CAPES I haven't had a chaotic night. Plenty of stressors, mostly in the beginning with trial and error, but still nothing I would consider chaotic or even close to disastrous. I teach a Sunday school class for 2/3 year olds, and the very first time I taught it was actually really chaotic, super stressful, and very much on the verge of what I considered disastrous. I had my lesson planned out, and it was going to be great. I had never met the kids before though so I wasn't sure what to expect, and I naturally expect all kids to act similar to my nephew (he's almost 5). I just figure all kids will be like him, which makes me confident because I know how to react to him and what to expect from him. This was not the case at all on my first Sunday of teaching. These kids were easily distracted and their attention spans were about ten times shorter than what I expected. I was a mess. The kids wanted to talk about their own topics, do their own activities, or even just start babbling nonsense for no reason when I was trying to tell a story. I was so stressed out, even more so about what the parents reaction would be. I was afraid of failing at this "simple" task. It only took a moment or two for me to switch gears and completely change how I got the kids to interact with the story, but in the back of my mind I was still stressing about "this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing..." I realize now that sometimes lesson plans are only good for rough outlines, and sometimes the approach is going to be completely different from the original plan.