Advice... The Finale

Here is the last installment of things I wish someone would have told me before I got started teaching.



5. Don't try to grade everything yourself. It's a good idea to look at a lot of student work early on to get an idea of their abilities. Also, you may feel some sort of responsibility: you're their teacher, so it's your job to grade their papers. Actually, as a teacher, it's your job to teach. Get as much help with grading papers as you can. Be selective about what you grade and what you hand off to a T.A., parent helper or personal loved one. Save your time for things that only you can do and let someone else take care of anything else. Then, you can take a glance through the scores when you get them back to see if your students are on track. In fact, having someone help you grade papers will help your students be more successful in your class. Timely feedback improves student achievement. If it takes you a week to hand back that vocabulary quiz, the students will already have forgotten what was on it and will no longer care that they've failed.



6. Classroom Management is as important as instruction. Upon leaving a teacher preparation program, your mind is no doubt filled with activities and instructional strategies. You know all about learning styles and English language learners. You have plans for using what you know to turn your curriculum into diverse, engaging, and meaningful instruction. And that you should. But a heterogeneous group activity is only as successful as the group members. You may offer some profound wisdom and insight into your content area, but if your classroom is too loud for the student to hear you, it won't do them any good. Start from day one, minute one working to get and keep control of your classroom. Require students to be on task and non-disruptive. Once it becomes routine, you can slowly start to bring in more dynamic instructional strategies. Remember to require the same good behavior of your student working in partners as when listening to lecture, and soon you'll be ready to move on to large groups and learning stations.



7. Test the technology ahead of time. You think you know how to use a DVD player, but what do you do if the disc won't play, and the TV is showing a message in a foreign language? While this may be unavoidable, you don't have to let it happen while your students are watching. When you first get access to your classroom, check out all the technology to make sure it works and that you know how to use it. Then, test it again the morning before you actually intend to use it. Test it every time. Even if the VCR worked just fine last week, it may not work today. Some darling child may have crossed the cables. Maybe this particular video doesn't agree with the player. Or the gremlins may have got to it. If you check it out ahead of time, you may be able to fix it, or if not, revert to plan B.

Advice ... Part 2

Here are a few more lessons I had to learn the hard way during my first year as a teacher.

3. Make friends with your neighbors. Suck up to the teachers in the classrooms near yours. They can easily become allies or enemies, and a lot of it depends on you. Unless the teacher in the next room is also in her first year, she really does know more than you. She may be old, cynical and critical of your teaching abilities when no critique was asked for, and I know that you're full of ideas, optimism and faith in your students. But experience is priceless, and it's the one thing that even the most senile teachers have more of than you. So, if they offer you advice, take it, or, at least, pretend like you will consider it. If the other teachers like you, they can help you out when you run out of #2 pencils and keep an eye out for whoever it is that keeps sticking chewed gum on your door handle. On the other hand, a neighbor who sees you as an arrogant young thing will come over to tell you to keep the noise down every time you show a video and make comments in department meetings about "some of the new teachers" while staring you straight in the face.

4. Have plenty of sponge activities ready to go at a moments notice. A sponge soaks up time. When your planned activities run a little short, and you have an extra five minutes at the end of class, or when you were going to show a video all period, but the VCR doesn't work, you have got to have something to do. Dead, empty time is a very dangerous thing. The best way to maintain your students' good behavior is to keep their hands and minds occupied every minute. You can plan extra activities related to the unit you're working in, but it's best to have some generic type sponges that don't require a lot of materials, especially ones that can be quick or can be stretched out to half an hour if needed. One that I recently learned of that my students liked is a tic-tac-toe game. Draw a big tic-tac-toe board on your white board or overhead. Split the class into two teams, one X, one O. Ask questions or give vocabulary definitions. Students shout out answers. Whichever team gets the right answer first gets to place their mark wherever they want it. Three in a row wins. You can play as many rounds as you can come up with questions for, and you can make it work with any content area.

Advice I Wish Someone had Given Me

This past school year was my first year as a teacher. I taught 9th and 10th grade English at a high school downtown in a city in the southern end of California's Central Valley. I have a Bachelor's degree in English Education, and I had just completed student teaching and the credential program at a CSU with my teaching credential in English and Health Science. I thought I was ready.

I wasn't ready. Oh, I knew plenty about literacy, language acquisition, learning styles, special populations, instructional strategies and lesson planning. But there are a few other things which I wish someone had told me before I got started.

Well, now I know. If you are also a new teacher or plan to be one, I'm sure you could figure these things out the way I did. But I'm a teacher; my goal in life has been to inform and educate others. So allow me to inform you of the most valuable lessons I've learned over the past year.

1. Learn how to use the copy machines. Ask your support provider or department chair or other veteran teacher who likes you to show you how to use the Rizo and Xerox machines. And not just how to make copies. Find out how to turn the machine on and off. Find out where to put the paper and where to get it and if certain kinds go in certain drawers. Learn how to print transparencies and double-sided pages. Learn how to replace the ink or toner and master roll and which direction to insert them. This is stuff you need to know, and you will figure it out eventually, but you don't want to be figuring it out at eight o'clock in the morning when you need to make two hundred copies by 8:15. Besides, an older teacher can probably show you how to do it all without getting ink on your clothes.

2. Now that you know how to make copies, get it done. Early. Do not wait until the morning that you're going to need the papers to do the copying. In fact, don't even do it the day before. If you need handout for Friday, copy them on Wednesday. Run off Wednesday's homework on Monday. Because if you wait, every machine in the staff workroom will be out of order when you need it. Or there will be five other teachers, who got there before you, all waiting to use the one working machine. Even if all the machines work when you plan to use them, you won't be able to because a parent will call. I know it won't last. You'll be getting everything ready early for the first few weeks, but by the middle of the fourth week, you'll be permanently behind schedule. But the longer you can stay ahead of the game, the less depressing it will be when you fall.

More advice to follow...