Category: Uncategorized
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20. Evaluations
You are probably fully aware of how you will be evaluated as a teacher. If you are new to a grade level, a school, a district, or a state, you will most likely have more evaluations per year than someone who has been teaching the same grade in the same school for fifteen years. You…
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19. When an Administrator Tells You Something You Have Done Wrong; Just Own It.
Unless you are some type of cyborg, you are going to make mistakes. All humans make mistakes and it is the foundation of learning. When someone tells you that you sent the form home on the wrong day or you were not on your duty post by the time the bell rang, just own it.…
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18. Ask All the Questions
For three years, you can get a ton of forgiveness for not knowing how something operates. When a principal hires a teacher so new that the price tag is still on her ear, she knows what she is getting. She is counting on your creativity, technology savvy, innovation, and enthusiasm to contribute to the…
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17. Make Friends with the Secretary, Head Custodian, Media Specialist and Lunch Lady.
You may think that you want to quickly impress your grade level chair or rub elbows with the principal. Nonsense. The four critical relationships for a new teacher are the school secretary, the head custodian, the media specialist and the lunch lady. Those people run the entire school. I can promise you the principal has…
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16. Always be Professional
This suggestion seems rather benign. After all, you are college educated and working in a noble profession. If professionalism were easily understood and interpreted, there would be no need for a Professional Standards Commission. Every single year you teach you will have a faculty meeting with a long powerpoint presentation about things that happened to…
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15. When Responding to Emails that are Upsetting, Don’t Send.
Email is the most common way of communicating between a parent and a teacher. Emails are tricky. First, they are permanent. You can delete them but they still exist. When someone sends an email when they are emotional or especially upset, it sets a tone for an exchange of words that is hard to escape.…
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13. Noise is not a Bad Thing.
There are teachers who believe that absolute silence is the goal. Actually it is not. Literacy is the goal of early childhood and that involves reading, writing, speaking and listening. A perfectly silent classroom is immediately compromised. Children have learned everything they already know by interaction; not by merely listening to someone else. If your…
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11. Develop Routines and Practice Them.
The value and development of routines is definitely taught in college. Where many new teachers miss the mark is in the practice of them. They are ready to get all that stuff out of the way and start teaching lessons. There are several books that tell a teacher how to handle the first three days…
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12. Proximity Will Help You Manage a Group of Children.
When you arrange your classroom furniture, make sure you can easily get around every desk where a child sits. It is difficult for someone to misbehave when the teacher is standing right beside him. The teachers who sit behind a desk or table seem to have the most trouble with classroom management. You can offer…
Fire Drills 