Dear Make-New Teacher,

Look at yous! You're here! In but a few short days (or maybe weeks), y'all will be on your ain. Running a classroom. Holding betwixt 20 and 120 brains in your hands.

Perhaps this is a life-long dream for you. Ever since you were a little, yous were forcing siblings and/or stuffed animals to sit in little rows and take notes as you lot repeatedly pointed at a Fisher Toll globe and fabricated up facts. Or maybe teaching is a new management for you. You've been an accountant for xv years and have decided to pursue what y'all've always wanted to practice, or maybe a door airtight on what you lot've ever wanted to do and teaching is your Plan B. It doesn't matter how you got here. What matters is that you are here.

Undoubtedly y'all've heard horror stories about education. How standardized testing is killing creativity, low pay, loftier demands, particularly in Title I schools. Maybe your friends and family have tried to steer you towards another profession. But something has kept you here. You're non afraid of a challenge. You're not agape of long hauls. You would rather do something that matters than do something for status. You are going to make an outstanding teacher.

Letter to a Brand New Teacher

How are y'all feeling? Nervous? Excited? Completely overwhelmed by the monsoon of information from instructor workdays and are now panicked that you'll take no thought what you lot're doing?  Don't worry. Those are all normal feelings. (In fact, the only worrisome feeling would be, "This is going to exist a total breeze!")

In the months leading upward to my beginning year, I remember searching online trying to notice a detailed, minute-by-minute outline of how I should structure my first few weeks. I basically wanted a script, complete with phase directions and instructions for exactly how to pull off this gig. What should I say? What should I have my students practise? How long should I requite them to do it? What activities should I do? And I remember beingness so frustrated that no such affair existed online.

Simply now I know why.

Nothing about didactics is one-size fits all. Non simply is every student different, merely every teacher is different. Every school is different. Each grade level grouping of kids is different.

Instruction changes from one minutes to the next. A lesson plan that might work for a class 1 twelvemonth might totally fail within the first 5 minutes for another class. Office of why teaching is and so challenging (and so fun!) is that y'all have to constantly be on your toes and fix to improvise when yous see a conflict arise.

Actuality matters to kids. If your entire twelvemonth is you lot printing out worksheets from other teachers instead of education in ways that yous are passionate about, your kids will tune out ASAP.

Teaching is like a relationship. Equally awesome as it would be to be given a script of exactly what you should say on a first date (instead of, for example, rambling incessantly virtually facts yous learned about dolphins from a podcast), life just doesn't work that style. If you did follow a script on a beginning engagement, you would sound like a robot and be completely unable to maintain whatever kind of chat, let alone a relationship. Education is not that different. A unlike kind of human relationship, yes, but ane in which actuality, responsiveness, and listening thing fundamentally.

I know what you're thinking: "So—there'southward no script, no predictability, and teaching changes from i infinitesimal to the next… so how am I supposed to prepare?" The proficient news is that you are probably more prepared than you know. Instruction is a profession that tends to attract perfectionists, and a lot of times information technology's tempting to remember that when we are trying out a new skill on our own for the showtime fourth dimension, nosotros are failing. Not the case. The only way you fail equally a teacher is when you lot finish trying to be better. But honestly, even more than instruction and content cognition, I call back that the all-time manner to prepare for your life as a instructor is to be flexible, to cover conflicts as learning opportunities, laugh as much as you tin, and remember the importance of authenticity.

Advice for a First Year Teacher

Yous'll have days that are so completely and unbelievably crawly that you'll feel like you're in a hot air balloon powered by goodness and youth. You lot'll have days where you'll desire to lock your door, curl upward on your bottom bookshelf, and cry indefinitely. You'll have students you will want to adopt and nominate for president. Y'all volition have students you lot will want to send to a boarding schoolhouse far, far away, but who y'all'll honey anyhow considering they challenge y'all.  You lot'll feel moments when yous love your job so much you will recollect your centre will explode out of your body in a shower of glitter confetti. You'll experience moments when you get and so angry with The System and The Man keeping your students downwards that y'all'll consider having pizzas delivered to your governor's office with the words "Can we accept a 'pizza' our budget dorsum?" spelled out in pepperoni messages. (But then you lot'll decide that's far likewise dainty.)

The play a trick on is to hold on to those good days and those good feelings. Let them ability your hot air balloon.

So don't panic well-nigh what'southward alee. That thrill you lot felt pretend teaching as a kid? It's about ninety times more rewarding and heady when you lot lookout it happen in real life. And if teaching is your Plan B, know that at that place are nearly to be a lot of kids who are and so glad that your Program A didn't work out. (Hopefully, yous will be, too.)

Encouragement for a New Teacher

On behalf of the many, many veteran teachers out there: we believe in you lot. We are a crazy and passionate and tough bunch who are running this marathon together, and we can't expect for you to bring together united states. So grab your water bottle and a package of Band-Aids, and we'll come across you lot on the road.

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Love Teach's Advice to a Rookie Teacher