[FionaVB]

This is probably way to late for anyone to see, but...
I've only been teaching for 6 months, but I'm at a language school which tends to work in 15-week courses. Most students just roll from one course onto the next. Last Wednesday I had two new classes scheduled, one after the other, and before going to work I was examining my feelings to see if I was nervous or what. (I was, a little, but looking forward to it too. The beauty of the system is that even if the class is really awful, it will be over in a limited number of weeks.) Anyway, I got to the class, and I knew all the students - I had taught them for the course before their last one. And the second class was the same: they were among my first set of classes. And they actually cheered when I walked in the door! Was that ever a confidence-booster! The funny thing was that both classes hadn't been that much fun for me the first time round: both were noisy and difficult to control. But this time they were about half the size, which helped. (Maybe I'd scared half the students away?)