Anxious but also excited to start your first year as an official teacher?! These are the most important new teacher tips that I wish I knew.
I have been teaching for 3 years now, and while I am still learning A LOT, by far my first year was the hardest. There is so much to do in teaching; there is finding resources, planning lessons, tracking students’ progress, meetings, and then the teaching itself. To manage it all, as a fellow teacher, I am giving you all the new teacher tips to make sure you have a successful (and calm) year ahead.
While there is plenty of advice you could receive, I am going to give you the most essential tips for new teachers. This will include tips for lesson planning, behaviour management, time management, and managing all the tasks of teaching!
After reading these new teacher tips, you are going to be extra prepared and walk into that classroom with the same confidence as Beyonce!
This post is all about new teacher tips.
11 New Teacher Tips to Help You Succeed
1. Roughly plan your lessons for the Term
We are going to start where all teaching starts, with lesson planning. When I started teaching, I would plan my lessons week by week, sometimes even day by day, and it was exhausting. When you are trying to come up from scratch with what each lesson should be about (as a new teacher with likely little resources) it is difficult, time-consuming, and mentally draining. It is so much more effective and overall quicker to plan a batch of lessons all at once. What I now do is try to plan and create as many lessons in the school holidays as I can, all before the term starts. Not only am I quicker at making lessons, but it’s at a time when there are no other distractions. During term, I have many other responsibilities that take up my time; calling parents, marking, responding to emails, meetings, etc. So you can imagine a type of calmness when I can focus solely on my lessons in the holidays.
If you haven’t already heard of this structure, I highly recommend looking into ‘Understanding by Design’ by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. This framework suggests we start by identifying what we want our students to achieve by the end of the Unit. It means you decipher a goal in mind for your students, and then identify the assessment that will appropriately assess this goal. Once you have an appropriate assessment, you work backward, identifying all the skillsets and learning needed in order for students to succeed in achieving this goal. This framework has honestly been life-changing. Think of it this way, we don’t drive somewhere having no idea where we are going! We have a route in mind, particular roads and ways of getting there in order to reach our destination. This is the same for teaching! Planning with a goal in mind, ensures you teach your students all the necessary content and details so that they can succeed in your assessments.
While you may not have time to plan all of your lessons, make sure you have a spreadsheet with all the lesson titles and learning objects for each lesson for the unit (if you can, maybe even for the term). I will try include as much detail as I can on activities, skills I want them to practice or acquire and link somewhere any resources I found that I might use for that lesson. I would then recommend having planned (at least) the first two weeks of lessons to give yourself a head start on the term.
2. Be prepared and arrive EARLY
Now that our lessons are prepared, it’s time to focus on the actual day itself. This sounds like a simple one, but arrive early to class. This will be the first impression students have on you, so you want to be organized, prepared, and calm. Of course, many teachers talk about the importance of this first impression to really set the tone for the rest of the year. I wouldn’t put so much pressure on yourself on your first day but do everything you can to set yourself up for success. Have all your resources printed prior, ensure you know where your room is, set up anything on the board or walls within the room, and have your name already written on the board before students enter the room. When you are organized and calm, this helps the students to be calm too.
3. Plan more content than you need
It’s always a tricky moment when you finish a lesson early and have a group of eyes staring at you while you try to think what to do. It can be hard to think of something on the spot as a new teacher, so try to always have an extra activity up your sleeve. If they are a computer-friendly school, Kahoot (or Blooket/Quizlet) is always an easy and productive way to finish a lesson. If students don’t have their laptops, think of an activity that is still productive and useful for their learning, but is engaging at the end of the lesson when students are often tired. For example, as a French teacher, I teach a lot of vocabulary, so often a word search works well, but perhaps any worksheet on hand is a good idea for quick and more advanced students.
4. Establish a routine for the students
Students thrive off predictability and routine! Therefore the more predictable and clear you are from the start, the easier it will be. For instance, when the classroom establishes a routine, it gives students less wiggle room to misinterpret what they should be doing and therefore makes it less likely for them to misbehave. Things such as always entering the class quietly and starting a task, perhaps having a seating plan or an exit routine. In Tom Bennett’s ‘Running the Room‘, he talks about creating a social ‘norm’ for students to behave well. If you can create strong routines, likely this will create a strong culture for students to get the most out of your lessons.
5. Establish a Routine For Yourself
In teaching, there is frankly always something you could be doing. A lesson to plan, an assessment or homework sheet to assess, emails, or parents to respond to. It is however important to rejuvenate yourself, as trying to do everything is a quick way to lead to burnout. Not all emails are urgent. Not all homework tasks must be marked with individual feedback. Yes, after school you will likely need some hours to plan and prep lessons but make sure you find a balance that you are happy with. Have a ‘shut off’ time, where you don’t work. Everyone’s different. This might be 4 or 5pm, or it might be 7 pm. Whatever you are comfortable with. Setting boundaries early with your work is important because if you make it a habit to work long hours and do everything, you may eventually start to feel resentful and lose that happy work/life balance. Remember, you must take care of yourself first. You must put your own oxygen mask on before others. This is the same for teaching, if you are overworking, you will not show up as the best teacher for your students Don’t underestimate the importance of ‘clock-off’ hours, take care of yourself, and you will be a better teacher for it.
6. Be Selective With Grading
As a teacher, we can have a tendency to always want to help and improve our students, but unfortunately, we can’t do it all!! I used to grade every homework assignment they did, but this quickly got overwhelming and exhausting. While giving lots of individualized feedback is a great goal in the future, as a new teacher, it may not be within your means. Instead, briefly read all the homework tasks submitted and give your class some generalized feedback. Predominantly, the same mistakes are frequently repeated by most students. Giving class feedback is a really effective way to still give students the feedback they need but in a timely manner.
7. Behaviour Management – Structure Your “If Then, What”
Behaviour management of students can often be the hardest and more confronting task for a new teacher, and it definitely was for me! I mean truthfully, you never know how a student is going to react, what they will do, what they will say. Often we don’t know how to react to their reaction until we’ve experienced it. If a student continues to be disengaged or disruptive, as a new teacher, I would often run out of ideas as to what to do next. It wasn’t until I devised a plan that was clear for both me and the students. I came up with three to five strategies that I was then ready to implement given I had a situation with a student. Please note I’m a trained high school teacher, currently teaching at a university, so this example will look different for a teacher with younger students. But for instance, if a student was misbehaving or speaking with another student:
Step 1: Use proximity and walk closer to them, possibly tap their desk.
Step 2: If behaviour continued, personally told the student they were receiving a warning
Step 3: If behaviour continued, I would ask them to move seats Step 4: If behaviour continued, I would speak with student outside of the classroom privately to ask them why they were behaving this way, and how I could help them make better decisions.
Step 5: Finally I would give a consequence depending on the student and the action, i.e. picking up rubbish at lunch, detention of some sort, or sending them to the principal’s office.
Obviously, context is everything, and if you work in a school where students are more reactive or aggressive, you will likely need a different plan. The idea, however, is that you have thought about what you will do in most situations, and so you are able to act on your plan when needed.
8. Get to know your students
As new teachers, we can often spend too much time thinking about what we need to do, or how the lesson should play out rather than paying attention to the students themselves. You’ve done the hard work, and you’ve planned the lesson prior. Now think less about what you need to do, if possible, and be present and attentive to your students, as they will guide you. Walk around the room, talk to them, observe their work, and identify how they are tracking along with your activities. You can prepare and structure as much as you like beforehand, but the success of your students and their ability to demonstrate their knowledge will dictate the success and the pace of the lesson. At the end of the day, remember that you are here to support them and their needs.
9. Be Firm With Expectations But Flexible With Your Teaching
Just because you have an established routine doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be flexible at times. Yes, it is important to have a clear routine to stop misbehavior from happening, however, when it comes to learning, students’ understanding is rarely linear. Once you get to know your students, you may need to completely re-direct your intended lesson depending on what they know and what they don’t know. Don’t be afraid to pause or pivot in order to get the best results for your students. You are their teacher, you can pause and give attention when you think it is needed. Additionally, if an activity is not working for your set of students, alter or change it! Identify what your students need in each moment, be attentive and work with them, not against them.
10. Ask For Help From Other Teachers When Needed
Fellow teachers are your absolute biggest assets. The amount of amazing advice and help I have received from teachers with years of experience was priceless for my first year of teaching. Don’t be too proud to ask for help. Within this profession, experience is everything, so utilize the amazing teachers who have plenty of experience and lean on their knowledge. More often than not, they will be happy to help! Teachers are people who enjoy helping others, including other new teachers. They’ve also been a new teacher themselves, and understand how difficult it can be. Talk to them, ask them specific questions, ask them for advice, ask to observe them – you are always better off asking than finding your job difficult in silence.
11. Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself
Let’s be honest. You are new to this teaching thing, and that’s a fact! Do not fall for the comparison trap and compare yourself to someone who has been doing this for 20 years. And remember, no matter how experienced the teacher is, all teachers have bad teaching days. Now yes, you may come in and feel like a true superstar teacher, and if you are, good for you! But if you are like the majority of new teachers, the first few years of teaching are hard until you have some experience under your belt. So don’t be diminished by this. At times, you may feel ‘teacher guilt’ creep in, you may even convince yourself that you aren’t doing a good enough job. Just remember you are. You are just still learning, like your students. So keep going, be kind to yourself, and enjoy the process. Rather than compare yourself to the great experienced or expert teachers, just look forward to the day in the future when that will one day be you.
This post was all about new teacher tips.
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