3 March 2008
List for March 3: Ten Quick Bits of Advice for New Teachers

Filed under month of lists

I’m about to enter the final quarter of my twelfth year as a teacher, so of course I’ve picked up some good experience. I remember when Traci, Ross, Owen, Allison, and I showed up for our new teachers’ orientation at HBA (holy cow…Ross is the only one left!) and Ms. King, my world history teacher, was asked to share her own list with a title similar to this list’s. Although nobody’s asked me to share my own, I present it now.

1. Some of your best ideas are going to be miserable failures. When a lesson fails, it doesn’t mean you’re a lousy teacher. Tomorrow’s a new day and you don’t have to knock ‘em dead every day. If you play it safe, you’ll never come up with anything truly fantastic. Trust yourself. Be creative and be willing to watch something go down in flames and if it does, come back strong the next day.
2. If you’re pretty sure it was a good idea and it bombed, save it for another time. It’s possible your terrific idea will work with every class you attempt it on for the rest of your career.
3. You’re not as bad as your worse lesson; you could be as good as your best.
4. There are two groups of people you must go out of your way to be super-super-super nice to: Custodians and secretaries. They will save your butt. If they want to.
5. In the teacher-student relationship, YOU’VE GOT TO BE THE TEACHER. Meditate on this thought daily throughout your first year. I mean it.
6. Related to that last item: Your students will have lots and lots of friends throughout their lives. They will only have a small number of teachers. Be a teacher, not a friend.
7. As in any workplace with a large number of people, there will be many opportunities to listen in on gossip or to contribute your own. Do not get sucked in. Do not let that kind of talk happen around you. If you’re in the workroom and a few colleagues are going at it about someone else, just leave. People who gossip in the workroom are there for one good purpose, as far as you’re concerned: To remind you of where the high road is.
8. There are going to be forms you have to fill out on a regular basis, and a lot of the info’s going to be the same. During your orientation week, photocopy these forms with the constant information (such as your name and room number) already filled in. This will save you so much time that if for some reason you never thought about it, you’ll have tears in your eyes when you thank me upon our next meeting.
9. If there’s a secure place to keep it, always have a complete set of clean clothes stashed away in your classroom. If you’ve got a car, it’s not a bad idea to keep it there, but just watch: The one day you come to work without your car will be the one day you need that change of clothes. I’m talking socks and underwear, too. If this comes in handy once in twenty years, it will be completely worth the effort. Mine has come in handy at least twice in twelve!
10. If you are not a tidy person at work, keep one large drawer in your desk or file cabinet empty. That’s your dump-everything-in drawer for parent night, conferences, or sick days. You’ve got to pull everything back out after, though, because if you don’t, it’ll take up residence there and you’ll no longer have an empty drawer for such occasions.
11. I know I said ten, but I think five and six are really two parts of one piece of advice, so here’s an eleventh: At the end of every school year empty out your desk. You don’t have to bring everything (posters, files, materials) home, but taking all your desk stuff home accomplishes two very, very good things: First, if for some reason you have to leave during the summer (or if you get moved to another room), your desk stuff will already be taken care of. I taught for six years at my last school without ever really cleaning out the desk, and when I finally left, cleaning out the desk was long, laborious, disheartening, and stressful. The way I handle things now, you’ll have (at most) one year’s worth of stuff to deal with if you should need to pack up. Second, emptying out your desk every summer keeps things a lot tidier during the school year. I have a shoebox labeled “Desk Stuff,” and my rule is that I can’t save anything for the following year that doesn’t fit with the other stuff in the box. This has worked really well for me.

That was surprisingly easy to do; I might have to come back with another ten later this month.

2008-03-03  ::  me