Just wrapped the first session of a 30-person corporate training for an international hedge fund. First time in my life teaching two hours straight in English, and honestly I was so wiped I nearly wet myself (?
I’d started out with a teleprompter and a full English script. Then I realized that reading off the full script was a lot of pressure and felt stiff, and the scariest part was that if I lost my place midway, the whole rest of the talk would fall apart and I’d never recover the thread. So two hours before class, I just shut the teleprompter off, burned the script, and winged the whole thing — and it seemed to go pretty well (?
Turns out you really should trust your own ten-plus years of teaching experience. Put people in front of me and I just get more and more into it.
Burning the script doesn’t mean skipping the prep
The script-burning thing kicked off a bit of a discussion online afterward — some people questioning whether a teacher who improvises actually prepares.
As the ADHD teacher in question, reading that thread, I found it absurd. The day before class I didn’t run through it once — I ran through it ten times. Adrenaline is what pushes us to pull all the prep together at the last second, to keep ourselves from blowing up.
So what I burned two hours before wasn’t the prep. It was the script. You drill it until it’s second nature, and only then do you have the nerve to throw the full script out and riff with the people in the room — instead of reading it line by line and losing the thread the moment you slip.
Why I put the free stuff online
I always put the free stuff online. If you want to learn for free, great. If you want to gauge the teaching before you pay, also great.