Teaching Makes Me Nervous

I have the privilege to be able to teach a class online this semester through Kepler Education entitled J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Sub-Creation. Not only is it a joy to be able to teach a curriculum I designed about an author I adore, but it is wonderful to be able to spend time each week with a great group of students. Tonight, we had our seventh live class session which means that we are halfway through our time together, and I will tell you a secret.

I get nervous before every class.

It is not that I doubt my own knowledge. I prepare for class every week, and I have been studying these books for a very long time. I will not claim to be the world’s foremost expert on J.R.R. Tolkien by any means, but I am reasonably confident that I know the material.

I suppose that some might chalk it up to this being my first experience teaching a high school class. However, I have led Bible studies and Sunday school classes for years, so I am not necessarily uncomfortable presenting in front of a group of people. I am confident in my ability to lead a discussion.

However, even with that confidence, I always wonder if my class will go well. I always wonder if I can draw my students in to engage with this content. It is such a great story, and I want them to get just as much joy out of it as I do. I want them to feel like they know Frodo and have fought side-by-side with Gandalf. I want them to wonder what it is like to live in the Shire and to ride with the Rohirrim.

In short, I want them to live the story, and I want them to love the story. I want to do justice to the epic tale that Tolkien has told. I want them to see it in the best light possible, and I know that a significant part of how they perceive the story comes from the way that I teach it. We all remember those classes in high school or college where we just loved the content because the professor did such a good job communicating it. For me, that class was Introduction to Logic. I basically took it as a filler to round out my schedule, but the professor was excellent, and he made it so interesting. I looked forward to that class. The content was fine. I find logic interesting, but not especially so. The teacher made that class what it was.

On the other hand, I think we can all remember classes where we just could not connect with the teacher for whatever reason, and we didn’t learn anything. I’m not going to give you any examples of this from my life personally, but I assure you that I did have those classes as well. It is not that I disliked the teacher personally or anything like that, but I just could not connect with the material in the way that it was presented. Maybe I never would have connected with the material, but to the contrary, maybe I could have in a different context.

That is why I get nervous before I teach each class. There is a level of responsibility that comes with trying to communicate ideas, and that responsibility includes how each student will potentially feel about this topic when they leave at the end of the semester. I take that change seriously. I know that some of my students have never read The Lord of the Rings before. A huge part of the classroom environment is the students themselves, but as the teacher, I do feel the burden of responsibility to do justice to these great books. I hope I do. I don’t know if I will ever know how well I do, but I am going to keep trying the best I can.