Posts Tagged ‘First Year Teacher’
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I am in my 11th year of teaching now. Where did the time go? One of the top search results that sends people to this blog is “First Year Teacher” so I thought that the beginning of a new school year would be a great time for something like this. I’m sure there are tons of other things that first year teachers should know, but here are a handful of tips.
- Persevere
- Learn from the wisdom of others
- Avoid gossip
- Work diligently
- Leave room for a personal life
- Live on less than you earn
- Students are a reflection of their parents
- Students are a reflection of their teacher
- Persistent problems are usually caused by something you are doing/allowing/omitting/forgetting
- Find a
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Ramona writes:
I am a first year teacher struggling with classroom management at the elementary school level. I have some logistical challenges because I don’t have my own classroom and travel between classes and schools with a cart. I also have almost 300 different students I see every week. But mostly my problem is that I don’t like to humiliate children and make them feel bad, which seems to be what most classroom management looks like. Of course a child feels embarrassed if you administer some kind of punishment to him or her in front of the whole class. But it seems like if I don’t do that, the kids will walk all over me and I will quit (sooner …
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Thanksgiving is a holiday for remembering what we have and giving thanks to our God for His blessings. I like to spend the months of November and December reaching out and giving. I practice giving as a regular habit throughout much of my life, but I specifically focus in these two months on giving back to my blogging community.
Last year I highlighted a number of readers with Reader Appreciation Month. At the end, I did some great summaries:
- 50 Classroom Management Tips I Have Learned This Month
- 47 Blogs That My Readers Are Reading
- Top 5 Character Traits Of Great Teachers
- 50 Reasons To Love Your Job As A Teacher
I recently created a list of 10 Things I …
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As my series of 10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher comes to a close, I want to point out that the world has changed dramatically over the last 7 years since I began teaching. As an educator, the primary advantage in the tremendous growth of the Internet would be the incredible EduBlogs that have sprung up.
As someone who is quite technologically sophisticated, the presence of this many blogs would have been tremendously helpful for me back then. The problem is that most of the people out there aren’t quite as technologically saavy as I am. So what is an aspiring young educator to do?
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. Honestly, there …
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One of the greatest challenges that I had as a first year teacher was with classroom management. I’ve mentioned that a number of times before and I think most first year teachers go through that.
As with most, I noticed that I had some days where the kids were good, and others where they were bad. It was just so unpredictible. But why?
What made those days so unpredictible?
I honestly think it was a combination of things. But the most important factor in the behavior of the kids had to do with how much dead time they had. How much time they were unoccupied and had to find something to do to keep themselves occupied.
How do you keep …
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Blogging makes me a better teacher. It’s clearly not the only thing that makes me a better teacher, but it is a tremendous benefit.
This is the second installment in my series on 10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher.
I have previously written on this subject back in January (8 Ways Blogging Makes Me A Better Teacher). At the time, I was in the midst of dealing with a medical emergency. The other band director I work with had a stroke in December and was actually out for over three months. That was back when I had 146 blog subscribers, by the way. Currently I the blog is approaching 450.
The benefits for me about …
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When I first started out teaching, I desperately wanted the kids to like me. To this end, I ended up letting my classes get out of control. A handful of things contributed to this:
- Concerning myself with every matter that was brought to my attention
- Allowing kids to mesbehave
- Trying to get the kids to like me
- Yelling at kids
- Arguing with them
- You Better Smile Before Christmas!
- How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
- Arguing Is Normal, isn’t It?
- 5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior
- Make Love not War – How
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Pat, over at Successful Teaching, recently tagged me in her blog challenge. She suggested that I write an article about the single most important piece of advice I would give a new teacher.
It’s odd that she would write that, as it has been something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. So much so, in fact, that my list goes beyond one. Each remaining day this month, I plan to elaborate on each of these subjects, but the list for now will suffice.
- Get a handle on classroom management early
- Start a blog now!
- Establish a small circle of teacher friends
- Make efforts to reach every student
- Pacing
- Establish clear, concise, comprehensive classroom rules
- Maintain your old lifestyle after
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Then hop on over to Learn Me Good and buy a copy of his book. It is undoubtedly one of the funniest books I’ve read since becoming a teacher.
I read it on Fridays in the fall while I was monitoring our school-wide detention. I keep the kids absolutely silent during detention, and that’s hard to do while you’re reading about 3rd graders named Plakton, crazy antisocial ex-coworkers, Star Trek jokes, and TAKS tutorials.
The book documents the struggles of a first year teacher as he makes the transition from the business world to the education world.
If you can’t afford the price of the book, then his latest offer to email you a copy of the book might be …
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As I have mentioned before, my priorities as a first year teacher were a little bit off. It wasn’t until the end of my second year before I began to really “get it.” I still don’t get it, but I have begun to. What I learned in the last two and a half months of that second school year was that I needed to ask questions. But not just any questions. Over time, I have learned that a lot of the questions I asked were unfruitful or misguided. But I did do some things right. Below are some of the best questions that you can ask more experienced teachers, along with my answers to them.
- How Do I Keep My
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