Career Change: OMG - What The *Bleep* Was I Thinking??

I made a promise to friends that I would be completely transparent about my career change - so here goes my latest meltdown.  I was doing okay and feeling... wwwwweeeeellllllllll - not exactly "confident," but feeling that at least that I could handle anything that was thrown my way - that is until a few hours ago.

Today, I was sitting in what TFA euphemistically calls 'professional development.'  As I have discovered repeatedly over the past few months, that is an extremely loose interpretation of what we have received.  TFA had asked myself and a few other corps members to take English Language Learners Teaching training which is all about how to differentiate daily lessons for those students for whom English is not their primary language in order to assist them with their language learning skills. As my school district is 90% Hispanic and a predominant number of them are ELLs, it seemed like a good idea to take this training. The problem is this training went like sh*t through a goose and I left the class significant more confused than ever about teaching ELLs.  Generally these classes should be taught over a significant period of time, but our training has been in a matter of a few hours. Not nearly enough!  Me being an "old dog," this "new trick" is freaking me out! I'm not worried about teaching the actual content of literature to my students.  That's not the issue.  But what do I do if (more likely, when) I have students whom barely speak English??  The writing of essays, papers and journals accounts for a significant portion of their final grades, but how can they write papers for an English class if they can't even comprehend basic English.

I never, ever want to feel that I've harmed a child in any way, shape or form and because I haven't gotten the quality differentiated instruction that TFA swore they would provide, I'm wigging out that I'm going to screw up one of my students' education! I know I'm a smart girl, but I just don't know how to do any of this and I see students in less than 2 days! So back to my original question:  WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?!?!  I don't know if I can do this!  My stress level is pretty high right now.  High enough that I bought a half pound of assorted chocolates on my way through South Station in Boston and have made a significant dent into eating the entirety!  <sigh>  I'm never going to lose these last 30-ish pounds. 

Okay, enough self pity.  Back to the grindstone ... I have "miles to go before I sleep."  Although sleeping is pretty much the last thing that I've been doing for the past few days.  Hello, insomnia, my old friend.