Jeanette Frantz

Watson, I do know all about the nervousness and anxiety one feels when teaching for the first time ever. I was not teaching quilting, however. I totally established a new vocational program for national certification as a Certified Professional Legal Secretary. I had adjunct professors who taught certain sections, and an attorney who taught the legal ethics, a CPA for Trust Accounting, but there were parts that I was responsible for teaching. I had 25 students sign up for this course, which bordered on being an overloaded class. The very first night I was due to teach, I started looking around the classroom, asking myself what in the world ever made me think I could teach. Well, I did. Once you break the ice, it is much easier. I went on to teach state-wide cram courses for the national certification program, and even contributed to working with the national association's certification board. It was a very enjoyable experience, but teaching can be very hard. Any time you teach a class, you must figure on spending at least 3 hours of preparation for every hour you teach. It demands a lot, and if you are not fully prepared your students will know it. I always worked hard to prepare and it was very gratifying when our pass rate on the nation-wide examination exceeded about 75% of my students. The normal pass rate on that examination for first-time examinees in 1984 was about 5%. I think the most important thing you can do in that type of a class, and it will be a bit different in a quilting class, is convince your students that yes, you may have been working as a legal secretary/legal assistant for many years, but you still have to study. You have to be able to kick the information around in your head to determine what type of answers those who prepare the examination are looking for. Some sections, such as Exercise of Judgment, are very difficult to teach. You have to know the structure in a law office and know how far you can go. One must be confident enough to be very confident in the decisions you make, and those decisions must Not cross the boundary into actually practicing law. That could get the attorney you work for disbarred.