To all the new teachers starting this school year, we are so glad you are joining our team. You are entering one of the most important and rewarding careers out there. For starters, I can guarantee you three things:
- You will love the joy of problem-solving and creatively planning meaningful lessons
- You will have rough days and out of frustration ask yourself many questions beginning with "why."
- You will have even more days when you impact a student who needs you more than you'll ever know, providing you comfort with your "why" questions.
There is an art and science to being an effective educator. There are many books I have found useful for new teachers, such Julia G. Thompson's 560-page "The First-Year Teacher's Survival Guide," with ready-to-use strategies, activities and electronic templates. I highly recommend equipping yourself with this resource as you start your journey.
Here are my four big tips to help you start a successful school year:
1. Collaborate with others in your school
Seek out veteran teachers and similar subject teachers, join their collaborative learning teams or join them for breakfast in the staff lounge. Ask lots of questions and get to know the school culture.
Talk with colleagues about how to connect to your school community and families, strategies they enjoy using and what they do to relieve stress. In Thompson's book, you can find strategies to build a network of teams and community of practice.
2. Establish a positive learning community
Spend the first few days of the school year building classroom community. Effective teachers find devoting time to get to know their students interest is pivotal to academic success throughout the year. You can find fun team-building games on Pinterest, Google "Kagan class-building activities" and check out pages 107-174 of "The First-Year Teachers Survival Guide" for more ideas.
One of my favorites relationship-building strategies that works for all grades is called the "Me Bag." You provide students a paper bag and have them decorate the bag with 5-10 pictures about themselves. You and students share the decorated bags with the class.
3. Plan with the end in mind
A wise philosopher once said, "You have to know the destination to know where you are going." Start your planning sessions with your standardized or common assessments for your grade level as your blueprint. Then, analyze the skills/concepts/anticipated difficulties needed to be successful with the objectives.
Planning with the end in mind prevents you from planning aimlessly and helps you create preassessments to support differentiated learning paths for reaching the objectives. Here is an example of a unit snapshot that I have created.
4. Design and deliver engaging instruction
Think about how you were taught, and then toss out all of the ineffective teaching components, such as direct lecture from a PowerPoint, working independently and sitting still for the majority of class. Add choice and play where possible. Find multimedia and relevant resources to support learning, and plan for real-world application problems and tasks. Put students in groups so much that they become the facilitators of the teaching.
Just to name a few resources: I love learnzillion.com for adding supplemental and short interactive videos for math and English language arts concepts and Flocabulary.com for hip hop videos to help students remember vocabulary and concepts for all subjects.
As you will come to realize, the most exciting part of teaching is we are all on a continuous learning journey. Learning is beautifully messy, and we have the privilege of unlocking the diverse learning processes for each and every student who walks into our classrooms.
Enjoy the ride, and remember: "A teacher's impact affects eternity."
