By Eleanor Kazdan, October 1, 2020 — I just taught my first formal Zoom class yesterday and I was so nervous I can’t tell you. That’s why was doing a lot of screen sharing in [this storytelling group], because I needed to learn screen sharing, video sharing, and all the ins and outs of Zoom which I haven’t totally mastered.
Anyway, I was really nervous that everything would go wrong, but it didn’t! It really didn’t, and again I had ten students which is kind of funny because that’s the exact same number I had a year ago. Although, fourteen people registered for the class, some of them didn’t show up. One person had a reason, the others just didn’t show up and didn’t say anything. But I feel much better today because I got through my first class and it’s very intimidating doing something on Zoom when you don’t know the people.
I did teach some casual French classes, I was teaching in person before the pandemic. I only taught three classes before everything shut down and then I continued on Zoom for a few sessions, but I knew those people you know. I met them all in person. But this, I knew four the people from other French classes, but there were six people I’d never met before and I found that thought very intimidating to be dealing with new people. It’s kind of isolating doing things virtually. I mean in the classroom you’re talking to people, you’re writing on the blackboard, you’re trying to replicate it on Zoom, but it’s really…anyway, it went well. So that’s the bottom line. I feel like I gotta get with the modern age. You can’t get too comfortable, as stressful as it is. You just want to be in your comfort zone and this was not in my comfort zone at all.
A little glitch happened yesterday. I was on my third screen share, I’m talking about the screen share and all of a sudden a woman says, “Are we supposed to be seeing this?” and I was like “Oh, I forgot to share it.” Because when you’re the host, you see it, but it did not share. The first two times I said, “Can you all see this?” The third time I was so confident and I just was like talking about the screen share and French pronunciation and all of a sudden it’s like “Are we supposed to see this?” I forgot to share it, and you know, my mind was somewhere else. Anyway, that was really the only glitch.
As long as you can correct your mistakes, the nerve-wracking thing is what if something goes wrong? Which it did at the beginning. I had just gotten a laptop and for one time I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and my tech person, namely my husband wasn’t there and I was just tearing my hair out. Now I know what I did wrong but at the time my heart was pounding and I was like, “I can’t fix it.” Then I ended up going to my iPad which is way easier to use in a lot of ways than doing it on there.
But I’m getting there, getting with the modern age, you know. It’s a struggle but practice makes perfect, that’s all I can say. I honestly went on Zoom and did screensharing almost every day for like a month or six weeks just to be comfortable with it. The people like Bill Gates, these tech wizards, spent like twelve hours a day throughout their whole teenage years. There’s a very good book by Malcolm Gladwell, I think it’s The Tipping Point and he talks about how people become experts in things. It’s like there’s some kind of magic 10,000 hours spent at something and then you can become an expert. But these people just spent day and night and they live and breathe computer technology and they became wizards of technology. That’s how you become good at something. I mean I spent my whole childhood practicing piano and singing, especially piano takes a lot of muscle memory, and I certainly learned the value of daily practice, getting muscle memory under your belt. It’s really the same with anything.
My guitar playing is very basic. That I kind of taught myself. But the piano I took lessons from the age of five to the age of thirty and I went through all these different exams and Toronto where I grew up, music school there.
So, anyway, that’s my story. ‘Say yes more often’ is a very good thing to remember. You want to say, “Oh, I can’t do that.” My very first thought when she asked me to teach I was like, “I can’t do that. How could I do that? I’ve never taught French before, my French is rusty, but here I am. It’s still rusty but I’m teaching. I know more than the students, let’s put it that way.
And one thing I’ve learned is that teaching is not about being perfect at what you’re teaching. It’s apparently about motivating people to do things and I’m learning at the same time. I’m not afraid to say, “Oh, I don’t remember that word, let me look it up.” I can’t pretend that I know every single word in French because I don’t. At first, I found it a little embarrassing when I was starting teaching and now it’s like, I’m not perfect. I don’t know a lot of words and I gotta look them up.