I also can’t believe I’ve survived these past two months. This has got to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The lesson plans, the long drives, learning all the new rules, not to mention working with the students and discovering the best ways to teach. Looking back though, here’s my best advice for new teachers:

1. Ask questions. It’s surprising the amount of important information you’ll learn just by asking questions. The people in charge are just as busy as you are, so they won’t be able to tell you everything you need to know. If you have a question, ask someone.
2. Teach slowly. My first month or so I expected the kids to be like sponges and just soak up all the information I threw at them. When I started grading their tests and quizzes I was pretty shocked to see they hadn’t learned anything I taught them. Well, it turns out very few people can learn by reading off of an overhead. Not only that, but no one can learn it only after one time. As I’m going I’m learning how important it is to reteach the key details again and again and again and then once more. I have to keep reminding myself this.
3. Take it in steps. The first week I taught, my goal was to survive and take attendance. The second week I took a stab at creating a graded assignment. Each week I’d add a small new goal and when I met it, i moved on. Right now my goal is to create all the lesson plans for the week before the week starts. Harder said than done. But that’s the only way you’ll make it, taking it one step at a time.
4. Make mistakes, reflect and improve. IMHO, there’s nothing wrong with messing up your first year. As long as you get attendance taken and don’t fail your entire class, you’ve done pretty well. No one is perfect their first time around, just make sure you’re learning from your mistakes and improving your level of teaching.

Compared to the first several weeks I’m feeling much more comfortable with what I’m doing. I’m still exhausted as anything from staying up late to finish lesson plans. To me though, I don’t want to do anything less then my best. It’s just not as fun.

I’m tired, I’m worn out and I need a good vacation, but I’m happy to be a teacher.

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Then, I need to run to the attendance office to get class rosters to check attendance, but it turns out the sheets that get printed aren’t correct. Again, my mentor comes to save the day.

Of course my wonderfully drawn out lesson plan takes half the time I expect it to take, so I end up with 45 minutes left in class and nothing else to do.

But I get past that and make it to my 3rd period class (2nd period is my conference). That’s when things turn ugly. I of course planned to have a projector for my introduction, but setting up a projector and a computer (don’t have a laptop yet) took about 30 minutes of class time. Oh, and I also run out of the surveys I wanted the students to complete during warm-ups because the rosters were wrong.

Alas, I have staff members who were wonderfully helpful throughout the day and saved me several times. It’s amazing how much of a difference having someone run one errand for you can save the day. I’ll have to remember that later when someone else needs help.

To sum it up, teaching takes a LOT of work and is a LOT of responsibility and you think about running away a LOT. But as long as you don’t and you give it your best, you’ll make it to the end of the day.

As my friend Kelly says, “Teaching takes guts.”

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