I must admit I almost gave up teaching in my first year as the reality of 40 Year4 children in a classroom with me as the only adult in the room was too daunting! I found the balance between classroom management and being someone whom the children wanted to learn from a challenge! The real classroom was very different to my highly successful practicum placements when the “real” classroom teacher was in the room with the prac student! These are the tips for new teachers I wish someone had handed me back then. On reflection, I always said my first year was about me getting my head together about how to teach and only in the second year did I begin teaching to be effective. Having said that, after four years of teaching Year 4, I was ready to pull my hair out and wanted a change of grade. Fortunately, I was given a Year 6 class and so my learning of the curriculum grew.
I think my initial “sink or swim” introduction to teaching has always stuck with me and may be the main impetus why my Masters of Education thesis was on developing a more effective induction model for beginning teachers.
If you look online there is a plethora of articles and books on advice for first year teachers. “5 Mistakes to avoid as a first year teacher”, “20 things I wish I knew as a first year teacher”, etc. To save you having to glean through all these resources, I have done the job for you and looked for commonalities to make your job easier! Here are my top tips for new teachers, the ones that came up again and again.
5 Top Tips for New Teachers: A First Year Survival Guide
- Teaching Philosophy: I suggest spending some time writing adjectives that describe the type of teacher you wish to be. Just write them down on a blank piece of A4 paper without categorising them. Leave this aside on your desk for a few days and as new words come to mind, jot them down. (This process relates to Wallas’ 4 step model of creativity and this allows a period of “incubation”). What should appear is a “collage” of who you wish to become as a teacher and will inform your philosophy of teaching. If you now arrange these adjectives into categories, you will have the draft of a philosophy of education – your teaching style. This will inform HOW you will teach, deal with students, and prioritise what is most important to you.
- High Expectations: With the above philosophy of teaching in mind, what expectations will you set for your students? The sage advice would be to keep your expectations high, especially at the beginning of the year. By practising procedures and routines with the children over and over (depending on their age) in the first two weeks of school, you will set the scene for smooth transitions and more effective classroom management. What will your discipline plan be? Is this in concert with the school-wide policy? How will you ensure your classroom management is consistent and fair?
- Ask questions: In some schools, you will be assigned a mentor teacher as your “go to” person. You go to them and ask for advice, inquire about procedures, ask about resources in the school, etc. If this is not the case, then you will need to find a teacher whom you respect and would like to emulate and informally have them be your “go to” person. It is the person who you can stick your head into their classroom to ask a question, who can show you how they establish reading groups, or whatever you need to know. Most teachers are caring and sharing people by nature, so this will not be seen as an imposition by them, rather they will be happy to assist.
- Organisation is the key: In order to be an effective teacher, you will need to be organised. Not only do you need to have preplanned how children will access all the things they need without having to constantly ask the teacher, but you also need to have all the resources you will need at your fingertips. There are many resources out there for teachers to purchase to help organise their planning documents and similarly, there are plenty of Pinterest pages and blog posts about how to set up your classroom. (This will be a later blog!) You need to have all the things you need to do your job properly at your fingertips – how will you store assessment records? Will you have electronic storage of lessons and plans (e.g. Google Drive)? You will have many tasks to perform and meetings to attend. How will you keep track of all of these – a synced task app/calendar on all your devices?
- Be kind to yourself!: There are times when you will experience the highs and the lows of the first year of teaching! Realise you cannot please all the people all the time (including parents). Realise not every lesson needs to be “OTT” (over the top lesson) as this is not sustainable. Similarly, not every piece of student work needs to be marked. When you do spend time planning your teaching program, ensure you have sufficient formative and summative assessment task that relate directly to the assessment of the objectives/outcomes/standards/content descriptors. Being a teacher requires a great deal of “administration” time – whether planning documents at the beginning of each term, marking and grading assessments or writing biannual reports for each child. Set yourself times to work and then reward yourself with mini-breaks as you achieve each small step towards the larget task completion. This might be 5 minutes walking around in the fresh air, or a coffee break, 5 minutes on Facebook or whatever re-energises you! The same applies in each school holiday period – apart from attending to all the home tasks that were not completed during term, you need some downtime as teaching is a physically and emotionally demanding occupation.
You have chosen to enter the teaching profession for all the right reasons and you want this to be a sustainable career so you can make the most difference to the most students in your care.
