Teaching Woes

Week two at the secondary school gave me an opportunity to sit in some of the classes. I hadn't got a good grasp on what the classes were learning and what exactly I needed to be teaching. Mary invited me to sit in and observe her lesson in Form 2. I was told I would be teaching Form 1, so I was a little out of place watching Mary's Form 2 class. I awkwardly stood out from under the pavilion in the sun...moments later, one of the students brought me a chair. I sat back and learned. Literally, I learned. Mary taught the the students past participle. Before the lesson, I couldn't have told you what a past participle was...now I know, it's "I had gone to the store." Never would've known that before! I hadn't studied that since high school if not even earlier! I sat in the sun through the lesson, getting a sunburn and a little ridiculed from the Form 2 students. The lesson left me a little insecure about the Form 1 class I was to start teaching the next day. From what I could tell, these students were way beyond what I knew, or rather, remembered, from high school English!