Teaching my first class

[xxmadsenxx]

Starting next Wednesday night, I'm teaching a class at the youth center. It's four hours a night, for four Wednesdays in a row. It's a class that kids who get in trouble for DUIs, underage drinking, and/or drug charges have to take. I have never taught it before. I have sat in on it a few times, and helped out a little bit a couple of times, but I've never actually taught it. A lot of it is just informational, but a lot of it is also based on identifying and changing high risk behaviors. It basically teaches them a little bit about what drugs and alcohol do to your body, information about alcoholism and addiction, what the risk factors of addiction are, how to make better choices, and other shit like that.

I'm a little nervous about teaching it. Not too nervous though. It's not like I really have to come up with anything on my own haha...it's all curriculum-based. I went through the training for it a while ago, so I know what I'm doing. It's not like it's hard anyway. But still...it's my very own class. I'm not used to that. I'll be the only instructor. I do have some experience teaching classes though, since I helped out my professor quite a bit when I was a T.A. for him...he had me teach a few sessions. Then there were a few other times where he asked me to come talk to classes, but that wasn't actually teaching. I think it will be a good experience. I have led group session things plenty of times, and I do some one-on-one stuff at the youth center too, but this teaching thing will be a first!

Everyone in the class will be under the age of 21. We deal with kids up to the age of 21, since they're still minors when it comes to alcohol. Even if it's for drugs, we still go up to age 21. They're planning on starting up a program for college-aged people at our center too. It will probably take a while to set up, but I'm glad they're doing it. That won't be for at least another year though.

Comments

[xxmadsenxx.livejournal.com]

Thanks!