"Managing Stress" and the Foggy Fifties

How embarrassing.

On Sunday mornings, I teach the High School girls MPact class. This is a new class for us, and, aside from an occasional drop-in, I have one student.

Since we're just starting, we don't have any stash of lessons to pull from. And the teacher and student books only come with half of the available lessons; in theory, that's so each class can tailor the lesson selection to suit their students.

In actuality, if we cover the required number of lessons through the school year, with a bonus during the summer so girls have an opportunity to catch up, we have to cover every lesson written.

When I made up the syllabus, I did a 4-year schedule, trying to spread the 'extra' lessons out so that we wouldn't have to have a big purchase of extra lessons in any given year.

"Managing Stress" was on the list for this year; it's one of the 'extra' lesson units and we were supposed to start it back in February. However, due to communication glitches, the material did not get ordered in time for us to start it when scheduled.

I turned in the order again, and we spent the first Sunday doing the project for that class.

When the order came in later that same week, I found that I had written down wrong item numbers for about half the stuff...including the student pages for Managing Stress. Why? Who knows...other than I was doing the list late at night. No easy excuses; I just made several major goofs.

So, we didn't have the literature for the next Sunday. I adjusted the syllabus, switched one 'extra' unit scheduled for later with one that is included in the basic book that I had on next year's list, and we did 6 weeks on Addictions. The material for Managing Stress came in correctly next time so we were ready to cover it when we finished the Addiction unit.

I also ordered the CD ROM version of the teacher book, since ALL the units are on it; otherwise, we'd have to purchase 3 extra sets of the printed pages. I loaded up the CD, found the unit on Stress Management, and printed it out.

Posted a notice in the bulletin that we would be doing a six-week study on Stress Management; I copied the blurb from the front page of the teacher's set in which it said we would be looking at the 'umbrella method of time management'. Sounded like a good stress management tool; I worked through the first lesson, which was on time management and priorities, and got my backside kicked in the process. Teaching myself, I was, and seeing many shortfalls.

Then I got to class Sunday morning and pulled out the student pages to give to my one student.

Wait. That didn't look right.

AS I compared the student pages to my teacher pages, another girl walked in. She'd been in the Junior High class 3 years ago and wanted to join us...she saw the announcement in the bulletin.

Yay! For more students! Only...

Gulp. The 'Time Management' lesson I prepared wasn't the first lesson in the 'Stress Management' unit...it was the first lesson in the 'Time Management' unit (which is also an extra and not in the basic lesson set).

Another goof. Looking at it, I saw that the unit was clearly marked 'Time Management'...I guess I see time management as my biggest stress issue and just pulled the wrong thing.

Or the Hormonal Foggy Fifties struck again...

We laughed at the irony of how much stress has been involved in trying to get this unit pulled together, I did a quick scan of the student pages, prayed for wisdom, apologized for my goof and winged it.

I've got the correct teacher pages printed for this Sunday. Whew.