I'm not a teacher, but I'm guessing that once you've taught a class, you can pull out the old lesson plans and recycle. So it must get easier from a planning perspective.

It's a lot more planning when you've never taught the course before. Once you've taught something more than once, the planning gets much easier and less time consuming. In general, like anything, the more practice yo get at it, the more proficient you become.

It is fun for me to read this though, because like you, I think most students don't grasp how much work goes on outside the classroom. For most teachers or professors, being in the classroom is the EASY part; it's the planning and grading (plus other professional and academic committments) that make this job WORK.

It does get easier, I promise. For a two-hour class, I would think of it in terms of segments, probably four 30-minute segments, to keep things interesting. Try for a mixture of lecture, discussion, and structured activities. You want to have some activities that you can stretch if things are going faster than you anticipated and some that you can punt on if you're running out of time. You also want to make sure that you're allowing plenty of opportunities for students to process their learning by sharing thoughts with a partner, jotting down main ideas, tweeting, adding a question to the box, etc. This will help keep your students more engaged and increase learning. Check for understanding regularly, not just by asking, "Does this make sense," but by doing something that requires students to demonstrate understanding, such as sharing an example, making a connection, answering a question, drawing a conclusion, etc. Have fun--teaching really is a blast!

The best thing a teacher has ever taught me? I always think of my high school freshman year English teacher. Prior to his class, I kind of just skated by and figured "this is good enough"...because it always was. But in his class, "just good enough" wasn't good enough. All year I hated him for it, but looking back I always think of what an important lesson he taught me...Always give your best, 100% of the time.

My mom is a teacher, as are some of my friends from high school. The first year of teaching is the hardest because you have to come up with EVERYTHING, but as you continue on, you can make changes to the base you already have, so the work isn't nearly as terrible. Also, some subjects don't change year to year...like algebra. So you might change up a few things every year, but you have a lot of the work done to start.