Another school year means new teachers, and we have many both at my school and in my district this year. I am asked each year to mentor new teachers-a job I love except for all the paperwork involved. I have noticed that I tend to give all of my first year teachers the same basic advice at the beginning of the year –essentially advice I wish that my mentors would have given to me. I hope that you can use this advice to give yourself a little counsel and also pass it on to those new teachers who need it.
5. Give yourself a break on the weekends. It is very easy to feel like you can spend every minute of every day working and never get caught up. However, too much work leads to burnout quickly, and you need to take some time for yourselves. Give yourself Friday night and Saturday off, so that you can feel refreshed and sane when you start tackling lesson planning on Sunday.
4.5 Take a sick day when you are sick. My first year, I came down with a case of walking pneumonia and did not realize it for about a month. I was so driven that I refused to take a sick day until I finally had to take three days off in a row. Although we all know that it is hard to get work accomplished when a substitute is in your place, you have to allow yourself to be human. Plus, your first year or two, you are still building up immunities to all the germs kids bring in to school. Take the day off when you need it!
4. Be healthy-aka sleep, eat well and exercise. Again, it is easy to focus entirely on school and forego your own health needs. However, like Oprah often touts, in order for you to take care of others, you must take care of your own needs first. Exercising, sleeping and eating well all help to relieve stress and keep you feeling healthy, so that you have more energy and brainpower for your teaching. However, you are always allowed chocolate when you need it!
3. Teaching is an art, not a science, so just keep reflecting. I miss a little bit of my early years of teaching. I took more risks and experimented a little more than I do now. Enjoy the risks and keep working on being as relevant, engaging and standard driven as possible. You will figure out the rhythm each year and if you keep reflecting, you will start to understand what works best for your students. Never stop learning with and from your students and know that every year is a unique adventure!
2. Know that it is much easier to be a student than to be a teacher (aka give yourself a little slack). Many first year teachers were great students who worked hard, never gave up, and enjoyed learning. The crushing reality of having students who do not care, refuse to do homework, have no interest in the most engaging of lesson plans and enjoy putting their heads down is rather ugly. Most of us believed early on that we would be the teacher that made a difference in every single one of our students’ lives, and when we realize that we cannot reach some students, it is a tough barrier to get over.
Yes, you will make a difference in the lives of many of your students. Yes, you need to keep giving those recalcitrant students opportunities for learning every day, all year long. However, you do NOT have to let those students define you as a strong or weak teacher. The hardest part of being a teacher is feeling responsible for all of those students and their learning, versus when you were a student and only responsible for your own learning. Make peace with yourself and your (human) limitations.
1. Seek out help and opportunities to connect with positive staff members. As a first year teacher, I ate lunch with an awesome group of teachers with whom I could share all of my discipline, organization, and planning issues. These teachers were from a wide variety of disciplines and were a range of ages, yet all were willing to listen and give advice. I have heard the advice “never go to the teacher’s lounge” which may or may not be true for your school depending on who is in the teacher’s lounge. However, I got so many great ideas, important advice about school procedures, and friendships from that first year of lunches that my advice would be to find some positive people at your school who can help, and see if you can have lunch with them or meet with them on Friday afternoons for a weekly debriefing.
Overall, no matter what, the first year of teaching is incredibly hard. It does get easier, but good teachers still get nervous each school year, still spend way to much time planning and grading and still get frustrated by the enormity of our job, the difficult lives of many of our students and so much more! Hang in there and enjoy being part of this truly noble profession!
I want to hear from readers-what is best advice you received as a new teacher or that you like to pass on to others?