I have been off with the flu for almost a week.
Not only does this mean I have missed more opportunities to improve my teaching practice (which badly needs it) but I have been unable to get out of bed and have basically spent a week alternately feeling sorry for myself and going bleurgh all over the place (not literally.)
Unfortunately it couldn't have come at a worse time. My first observed lessons were rubbish, my mentor is concerned that I'm crap (not her actual words!) and I feel like I'm crap too. 
I have assessed my planning skills and rejigged them. I have gone over the subject content to refresh myself on it. I have thrown almost two months work out the window to start again. But here I am, back at work and feeling no better prepared than I was before I got sick. I've had nothing to do but reflect but it doesn't seem to be working. 
I do know what part of the problem is. I understand it all in my head. I get the theories, the AifL, the ACfE, enterprise, classroom management, behaviour management. I get it ALL! But it doesn't seem to want to leave my head and translate into actual practice. I try observing and mimicing what I see and that falls flat. I try to do it my way but that falls thorugh too - mainly because I appear to have lost my way in all the training. I used to be so good at this. All my kids in community work understood definitions, knew how to carry things out practically and could write, do all sorts of practical and the rest.
Thankfully, I'm focusing on getting through this week. Next week is October holidays and its head down and sort it out time. Hopefully.
Otherwise I think I might be sunk. 
