EduSpeak: Advice for First Year Teachers from teachers who have been there
In one of my courses at The University, I hold a panel discussion once a semester. I call it teacher panel. I invite former students, now sucessful professional educators, to come back and answer a range of questions about surviving their first few years of teaching from my current students who are studying to become teachers themselves.
It’s an unvarnished & confessional Q&A, where the panelists shamelessly talk about job interviews they bombed, trouble they have had with angry parents, the students who literally bit or spit on them and about how to grade a stack of 65 term papers in one day.
I never have trouble recruiting panelists, even though teachers are starved for time like no other professionals I know. They readily volunteer. Why? They say they get as much out of listening to the other panelists as they did when they were students in my class years prior, probably more they say.
I buy the pizza and drinks, and then I keep my mouth shut until two hours has passed. My students can ask me questions all semester long. They only get two hours to ask these experts, so I have to put on the muzzle. I’ve done this for ten years now. And, every year it’s different. Some years panelists disagree passionately about what to do on the first day of school. And some years, panelists agree so much that they seem like they are echoing one another. Most years, there is a lot of both.
What did we learn from teacher panel this year?
Take Care of yourself. There will always be another paper to grade, another lesson plan to make, another meeting to go to. You can work 24 hours a day, but that won’t make you a good teacher. Go for a run. Take a nap. Watch the ballgame. Take the dog for a walk, and make sure you eat lunch every day. Meditate, eat right and go to bed early. You can’t take care of your students if you don’t take care of yourself. Remember what the flight attendants say before take off? If you are traveling with a minor, please put on your own mask before helping the minor.
Share lesson ideas with friends, and ask them for help when you need ideas. Save your lesson ideas and curriculum documents, even if you don’t like how they played out. That way you can share them with other teachers. Maybe someone else can make work what you could not. Do it for selfish reasons. Do it so they might share their teaching ideas with you. Sharing is caring. For your self.
Ask for help. Asking for help not only may means I get help, but it also might lead to a friendship. And teachers need friends, especially since they don’t have time to socialize like normal people. Amanda Palmer, author of The Art of Asking writes “This is how a creative human works. Collecting, connecting, sharing.” Yes. Asking for help means that you don’t know. But, that level of vulnerability is the special sauce for making strong professional relationships, and nobody expects you to know everything your first year. In fact, everyone expects you to know very little. So, ask away. There will be no better time to look ignorant.
Know what your students absolutely need to know to do what you want them to do before assigning work. If you assign students an essay or a project, and have never actually done the assignment yourself; nevermind taught it, you are destined to set your students up for failure, and their failure is your failure. You need to break down the work into steps for them and walk them through each step during class again and again until you KNOW they KNOW how to complete the work. And, while you are at it, do the assignments that your students must do.
If you are traveling with a minor, please put on your own mask before helping the minor.
Accept that schools are social environments. Then, set boundaries. You can fight the battle for a silent classroom, but you will lose. Start from a place of acceptance. People like to talk to one another. It’s just natural, and teachers ought to let them talk — to at keast a little bit. Pick your battles. There is no way that you are going to have a silent classroom. But, you can have periods of time when people don’t talk while you are talking or during presentations , but only if you start by accepting that students are human and they like to talk to each other. Whatever you do, never talk over or interrupt your students. If you do this to them, they will do it to you — not necessarily as payback either. They will do it just because you are teaching them by what you do more than what you say.
Provide free cell phone charging, with one string attached. Once they plug in their phones to your charging station, they can’t take them back until the end of the class period. That’s the agreement. Just remember to never touch a student’s phone, because if you drop it, or if they think you dropped It…Well, let’s not even go there. You get the idea. And ringers off, please.
Ask students to help you do your job. Even if its just a little task, like choosing what color paper to print a quiz on, asking a student to make this choice for you will build trust and relationship and community. Eventually, they might actually be able to help in a productive way. You could have them pass out papers, teach a lesson or even make an assignment. The more responsibility you give students, the more invested in your class they will become. The one student who is the most disruptive, who is disrespectful, who does not care about his or her grade, is most likely to forget he hates school and act like a leader, if you ask him to collect the homework or write the assignment on the board. And, if he says no the first time, laughing at you and rolling his eyes, don’t take it personally. Just ask him again a couple days later. Be patient, he might come around when you least expect it.
Let students fail. Failure is educational. In fact, learnng theory and educational research both show that no single ingredient is more effective in a lesson than failing. Plus, you can’t save everyone from failure — even if you wanted to. And, you definately won’t save anyone who doesn’t want to be saved. Protecting children from failure might actually harm them in the end. Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure, writes “Today’s overprotective, failure-avoidant parenting style has undermined the competence, independence, and academic potential of an entire generation.” It’s understandable that teachers and parents alike want to protect children from the discomfort, pain even, of failing, but real failure has real educational value. Don’t stand in the way of their failing. Instead stand behind them when they do.
Document everything that a student does, that is even a little abnormal. Parents, bosses and lawyers want to know what happened that day, what you tried, what you said and what the student said. Document every time that a student does not show up for extra help they signed up for, every time that a student did not turn in homework, every time a student forgets his or her textbook, every day that a student comes to class late. If you one day find yourself in your boss’s office union rep, sitting next to you, wondering if you might receive only a reprimand for this or that, your dated documentation, your logs and emails to yourself will prevent you from having an anxiety attack. And maybe from being reprimanded or fired.
Call home before things get out of hand. Sometimes talking to your students’ parents can help when you have a problem with a student, especially if you call home before a problem gets out of control. If you call home after, for instance, a student’s grade has dropped into failing territory, the conversation is going to be stressful, but if you call home when the student’s grade has only dropped from a B to a C, you are giving the parent hope, instead of desperation. And, keep your immediate supervisor in the loop on troubles you are having with students. Supervisors do not like surprises. Not from angry students or parents, anyway.
Have a sense of humor. One of my panelists told us “I have a student who takes his shirt off every now and then, and I just stay calm, very calm and tell him, with no special intonation, rather a flat tone, I can see that you have your shirt off again, Brad. Please put it back on.” The sense of humor is not designed to get my students to laugh and think I’m funny. In fact, there is a trap there. Their laughter makes you want more, and then you might try too hard to make them laugh again. Inevitably, your next joke will fall flat, signaling to your ego that they don’t love you and never will. You will be heartbroken.”
The reason to keep your sense of humor is so you can control your own emotions — not theirs. Humor will enable you to walk away when your ego says to stay and fight.
Make friends with other teachers. You need to have mentors, a support system of friends and confidants. Teaching can be very lonely, so even if you are slow to trust people, and they are slow to trust you, which is pragmatic, smiling, saying hi to people, reaching out to help or for help and accepting invitations is important, so when you are having a bad day — or a downright emergency — you will have someone to talk to. You cannot be friends with your students, but if you don’t have many friends, you might act like a friend to them. So, take time to make friends who are also on the job.
When you have a bad day, remember that everything is temporary. Unfortunately the same goes for good days. Most of my worst days, days when I want to scream, quit or just go out to my car and cry, are often the very same days that I get a birthday cake from my worst behaved class, an email from a former student that says I saved her life last year or a student who has struggled for months shows me her report card, and there are no Fs. She is beaming with pride, and she wanted to share that with me. Cheryl Crow sings, “Making miracles is hard work. Most people give up before they happen.” Don’t be most people.
You never know what your students are carrying around with them. We all have things, personal things, we don’t talk about that weigh us down, make it hard to get through the day. Cancer. Addiction. Accidents. Miscarriages. Domestic abuse. Divorce. Reprimands. Legal trouble. Death. And, I wish the list ended there. Well, our students are walking around with the same things.
Don’t climb way up into the branches to pick a rotten piece of fruit when the ripe fruit hangs low.
Don’t try to save the world or even to save a single kid. By the time the school year ends you will have prevented a student from committing suicide, helped a gay kid come out, given a student who struggles academically a little bit of confidence that she did not have before, showed a kid that he CAN write, reminded a victim not to become a bully, taught students about your academic subject, taught them hard work pays off, showed them a new skill…..and most of the time you will never know it from them. But, you do know it now. Because I am telling you. It’s the nature of the job. So, you don’t have to try to save anyone. You are saving most of them. Thing is. If you try to save even one, it will likely backfire. You will become over invested, cross the line and push too hard. Don’t climb way up into the branches to pick a rotten piece of fruit when the ripe fruit hangs low. Usually, picking a hardcase to save, means you are trying to save yourself — not them.
Sometimes your students may seem lazy, mean or intentionally disrespectful. This is actually rare. They usually are doing their best. They may be unable to tell you or you may be unable to understand why they they do what they do. It just seems like they are resisting you to get you mad, but they are doing what they do for a variety of reasons, most of which are not about you, most of which are at least partially unconscious. Instead of taking It personally, try to give them the benefit of the doubt if you can, and if you can’t, let it go, be calm, polite and gentle when you send them to the principal’s office, when you fail them for the term or when you call home with bad news.
primum non nocere. People often say that the phrase “First do no harm” is from the Hippocratic Oath, when in all actuality, the phrase does not even appear in this promise that doctors make upon entering into the role of healer. It wasn’t Hippocrates who wrote “primum non nocere.” It’s from the 17th century. However, an equivalent phrase from Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school says “Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient.”
We are not doctors, but our jobs are not so different. My panelists tell my students every year that shaming, castigating, blaming and punishing students does not work. In fact, all of these are counterproductive and usually done with the most emotionally desperate and ethically bankrupt of intentions. Instead of letting your ego and amygdala hijack your teacher-self, even after one of your students has intentionally insulted you. Take a deep breath, step back and talk to a friend. Remember we are first, helpers and then academics. We are never punishers.
If you make it to June, have your students write letters of advice to the students coming in September. Have your students write letters to your future students on the last day of school, advice about how to deal with you. You will learn a lot from these letters when you read them on the third of July on Hampton Beach. Some letters might warn your future students that you are a hardass. Others might say you are a pushover. But, most will probably tell them that they are lucky to have you. It’s like a course evaluation for you, and a chance for them to tell you their truth. You might actually use one or two as advice for your new group of students in September. At least one of them will make you smile.
Surviving your first year of teaching requires a little luck, a lot of patience and even more forgiveness. You will have to forgive yourself, first — for not being perfect, not being able to do it all and for not knowing every damned thing. You will make mistakes, fail and screw up. Learn from them, and move on. If you get stuck there, you won’t make it to June. You will also have to forgive your students for being mean to you and to each other, for forgetting things, losing things and not showing up. You will have to forgive your colleagues for letting you down, not choosing you and for dumping their problems on you. You will have to forgive the parents for not always taking your side, for not believing you and for even accusing you of things you never did. Lastly, you will have to forgive your bosses for not always having your back, for being demanding and for blaming you for stuff you didn’t do. Forgiving them will make it easier when you have to apologize to them later for your screw ups, but that’s not why you do it. Do it because you don’t have any extra space in your head for that contempt. Do it because you want to see June, to be asked back, and to wake up on the Monday morning after Christmas vacation and think, I like getting paid to help people every day.
Thanks to Danielle, Nick, Tia, Chrissy, Mikayla, Chelsea, Jenn and all the panelists over the last ten years.