Teaching in a tornado

I recently started teaching some Web Development classes at a local Technical College. The idea really appealed to me, and I thought what the heck. I turned in my "Application" on a Tuesday. The next Tuesday I had an "interview" with the continuing education managers, and they said they would love to have me lead some classes. Well, they assigned me to 4 classes, the first of which started on the FOLLOWING Tuesday! Yikes. The worst part was the class that was to teach is the weakest of the subjects I agreed too.

So, with 1 week of prep time, I show up to my first class a nervous wreck. I had 5 students, covering a wide variety of... variety, i guess. I had an 18-year- old that did nothing but stare at the ceiling, a 30 something that was more interested in the terms of things than using things, a 55 year old that was very eager to learn anything I had to say, a 45 year old professional woman who was obviously sent there by her company, and was in way over her head. And the last was a woman in her late 30s/ early 40s that had taken a ton of classes but didnt remember any of them. Her job pays for them to attend classes, and she was getting every class she could out of the deal.

I did OK teaching. I found myself jumping from subject to subject and hitting a tangent here, and sometimes not coming back to the original topic. But the second night of classes seemed to go much better, and I was not nearly as nervous. I have another class next week, and we will see what that brings.