Two things surprise me (so far!) about preparing to teach. The first is the amount of time spent not preparing lessons. Dealing with administrative details, coordinating with other faculty, organizing, all these take a tremendous amount of time.
The second thing is that preparing the lessons themselves is a more daunting task than I had imagined. Although classes start next Wednesday, I only have a few days worth of lessons planned. The rest are still very sketchy. I know that’s probably a good thing, since it means I can be more flexible – go faster or slower if necessary, or change my approach if I have to. But I don’t like it. I want everything to be laid out in detail for the full term. That would be very inflexible though, and certainly not good teaching practice.
Once classes start, I feel sure that I’ll find some happy medium between chaos and predictability. And I’m betting it tends more toward chaos.