Skip to main content

Remember this New Teacher!



It’s your first year. Late nights, anxiety, stress, caffeine-induced insomnia, canceling dates, missing family events, and freaking out plays like a broken record in your mind. Rewind, rewind again, and hitting play with the same emotions over and over again. Hard to believe this--it gets better! Questioning your decision on the regular will take up a majority of your thoughts. God bless the person you’re dating during that first year because your relationship might get a little rocky.

My wife wondered where my personality went during my first year. “I liked you so much better before you became a teacher” with an old lady's nagging, husky voice. Pretending to be a good teacher and acting like you know what you’re doing will prevail during this time period. Self-doubts will creep in and your confidence will be tested. From this experience, you will grow into the best version of yourself as a teacher. Don’t judge the field by the first year. It’s a huge transition including those lovely Sunday night stress-lumps in your throat reminding you that work is around the corner.

Take a deep breath and you will get through this! I remember making it to 2:30 PM feeling like Mr. Christmas himself as I survived another day. You will too!  You will love the job eventually. Everything above will dissolve and those clouds of despair will dissipate. Out of this experience will come the reasons you signed up for this job. This is one of the best careers in the world! It’s one of the most noble professions. Some days in the classroom never feel like work, and I’m riding the cloud 9 wave getting paid to do something I absolutely love. How is this possible? You will feel this too! If you truly enjoy making a difference, seeing young people grow and mature, and knowing that you aided someone in a positive way, you’ve chosen the best field. I’ve been there just like you and know the dreaded feelings of the bell ringing and all the students arriving in class.

Take a deep breath, you are in a new learning experience for yourself, and you will grow and survive all of this while becoming the best teacher in you! It takes time, and this ride will end with you growing tremendously. Read quotes, pray, steal ideas, and try to find humor in your day…every day. Let the small stuff go! Screw the naysayers and nasty teachers who are burnt out and got 1 foot out the door! These students will possibly never forget you. They need you! You might be the only positive person in their life.

Your words of wisdom may make the difference. You're planting seeds into young minds that will someday blossom into something beautiful. And you call yourself a teacher? Welcome to the best job in the world! Get through that first year and you’ll begin to love this job more and more. Even during the first year you will grow more comfortable and experience these highs! Stay positive! You’ll get there!!

Cheers,

Mr. Greg

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remember your Passion!

  Hey friends! It's been a minute! Last year, I decided to transfer from my middle school to high school. I really like the idea of helping teens right before they graduate, and perhaps my impact could be even greater at this level. Funny though, students ask me questions: Why do I like to teach? Why would you want to work with teenagers who can be disrespectful? Why would you want to work here? After hearing these questions, sometimes they do make me question my resolve today. Why do we do what we do? Remember that your passion is to help people and make a difference. This is a service-oriented job. Maybe today you will just help one person in the classroom. If you succeed in helping that single person, today was a job well done. It’s an emotional job at times. You’re trying to teach students content that may or may not connect to real life. Our aim is to always relate the content to their lives, but how much can we alter and change our lessons to 100% relate? It’s impossible. Wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

What to teach?

  What to teach? I remember starting out and wondering what exactly to teach. This overwhelming feeling will leave you lost in a sea of thought bubbles. My best advice, especially with starting out, is to find and print your state standards. Build your lessons by trying to achieve the standards set forth by your state. For example, I teach English. Many of my standards deal with citing textual evidence, analyzing central ideas, writing claims, etc. When I design lessons, I still read and target the standard. These standards most likely have great importance to student and teacher evaluations as governed by your state. However, teachers will complain about being told what to teach. You decide how to teach the lesson and what materials to use. Don’t let negativity bring you down when preparing a lesson. After printing out the standards, check out if your class has a physical or digital textbook. Follow along with the textbook. Most of these educational textbooks will have activities ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting Respect

  Face it. Kids are tough. Kids come from all different backgrounds and experiences. You’re up in front of a room all by yourself. You think respect is automatic, but this isn’t 1965 anymore. How do you earn it? You might think. You earn respect through kindness, empathy, being an adult, and holding students accountable. Kindness : It gets a bad reputation. Students might think you’re an easy target. Kindness needs to be paired with boundaries. Let me tell you a few things about kindness though in the classroom. It can heal, ease tension, make learning more enjoyable, and pump positive vibes into your classroom. I’ve seen some of the most challenging students surrender and change due to kindness. Don’t let it fool you or overlook it. Discipline with kindness always. Students will take nothing personal if you do it in a loving, adult-like manner. Kindness is impactful, and every classroom should use this powerful tool. Does it mean you’re soft and pushover? No. Listen—you can be to...
Post a Comment
Read more