I have been asked to participate in the Reform Symposium and will be hosting a session this afternoon called 10 Things I Wish Someone Had Explained Before My First Job. Feel free to join at 4:30EST today. I don’t normally do these online training things, so hopefully this works. Go to the link here.

A lot of these things are topics I’ve covered before, but here is what looks to be the outline for now.

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If this is your first time visiting this site, or even if you’ve been reading for a while, there are undoubtedly some articles that you’ve missed along the journey. As I have been working a lot on organizing the site lately, it has come to my attention that there are over 400 posts on the site. This can be kind of daunting for a new reader to say the least.

These are some of my favorite articles and series that I’ve written on the site. If you’ve read these, maybe you could check in and respond to a comment or two!

1. Questions That Will Save Your Career
2. Where Have All The Good Teachers Gone?
3. The Best Time To

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November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? This year’s focus is First Year Teaching Tips. There’s still room if you want to participate! Contact me and let me know your answer to this question:

What are some things you wish you had known before you started your first year of teaching?

Today’s response is from Clix, the author of Epic Adventures Are Often Uncomfortable.

Things I wish I knew when I was a first-year teacher:

1. Backward Design – Reviewing the standards and keeping them in mind as I plan my units and my lessons helps me to clarify for the students what they need to learn.
2. Each year will continue to get better (at

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I have gotten 4 comments in the last 24 hours from people telling me about a time in their life (past or present) where they were so focused on school that it completely stressed them out. A big part of that comes from the fact that so many of us have a hard time saying, “No!”

Personal time is a vital key to maintaining (or regaining) the sanity that we have lost as a result of our work. If the only people you hang around are kids, parents, teachers, and administrators, there can be no wonder you are burning yourself out!

Quick, read these articles!

• 25 Tips For Less Stress
• 65 Things You Should Do Right Now To Avoid

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This is a guest post by Mister Teacher of Learn Me Good. Mister Teacher teaches third grade near Dallas, TX.

Greetings, faithful readers of So You Want to Teach? Do not attempt to change the channel! We have taken control of the vertical; we have taken control of the horizontal; we have taken control of clichés and tag lines from old 60’s sci-fi television shows.

Joel has graciously offered me the opportunity to write a guest post here on his blog. So I suppose I should take a moment to identify myself. My name is Mister Teacher, and I have a drinking problem. No wait, now’s not the time to say that. Let me try that again. My name is…

In the Christmas break, I am looking back at this blog’s growth and development. I began writing a little bit for the blog in February, but didn’t officially launch it for real until June. Since that time, growth has been pretty consistent. I now seem to regularly get a small number of comments for every article I write, with some eliciting more than others. As I look through the blog’s archive, it strikes me that there are some articles that have either been buried deep in the archives, or for whatever reason, have gone unnoticed by my readers.

So I am giving all of those articles a chance to redeem themselves, come up to the light of day. Here is…

This is the fourth in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers.

What are some of the personal habits that are important to me?

Personal Procedures
What are some of the personal habits that are important to me? As I’m sitting here in the middle of the summer writing this, I realize that some of my structure has left my life. I stay up too late, and I wake up too late. I take longer than normal getting ready in the morning, and I sit and read a lot more now than I do during the school year. But disregarding that, here are some of the things that are important to me to keep my…

I recently read an article written by a newly-hired teacher. She was concerned about the fall and how to establish procedures. My response was for her simply to be patient, ask lots of questions, and hang in there. When I was in her position, that kind of advice would have sounded trite and condescending to me. So I wanted to write a bit more details about some of the procedures I set up in my own life that have allowed me to be more effective. These 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers may help newer teachers who are struggling to maintain their sanity. The 5 procedures in the series include:

1. Communication Habits
2. Classroom Habits
3. Relationship Habits
4. Personal Habits
5. Community

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In my last post Organization Leads To Sanity, I wrote about how I personally get organized at work. In this post, I am going to give some pointers that I have and that I plan to begin implementing that will allow anyone to get and stay organized much more easily. These tips apply both to the physical workspace as well as the digital workspace. I am going to spend the next few weeks implementing them in my home as well in an effort to bring me a greater sense of purpose in everything I do.

1. Declutter
   I touched on this one recently, and I seem to touch on it frequently, because it is vital. Eliminating clutter will completely eradicate

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After a conversation with another teacher last night, I started looking through the archives. I realized that I have written a few times about having a clean desk and a clean desktop on my computer, but I have never really given a step-by-step guide of how I got there and some of the things I do to maintain that.

If you are not yet familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy, it is a book that covers many personal productivity issues. I have not yet read it, but have read numerous blog posts about it. The most thorough I’ve seen so far is here at the GTD FAQ from Zen Habits. If you have never heard anything about the…

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.

1. How Do I Keep

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This article is part 7 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

How do you teach and teach well, and yet not spend your entire life teaching?
How do you keep your sanity?
We come to the final and most personally rewarding part of the whole deal. This has to do with the things that happen outside…

This article is part 6 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

How do you keep the administrators happy?
No matter how hard you try and no matter how much the students and parents love you, certain people remain who can make your job more difficult. Principals, superintendents, counselors, and secretaries are key people to have on…

This article is part 5 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

Help! My students like me too much!
Here is where things begin to get fun. When I first started teaching, I did so because I loved working with children. I tried so hard to make them like me. I wanted to be their favorite teacher. In…

This article is part 4 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

What do you do to keep students learning?
We have come to the central part of why we entered into the educational field. Sometimes amidst the classroom management issues, paperwork, extracurricular assignments, professional development, and all sorts of other considerations, we can easily lose sight…

This article is part 3 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

How do you keep them interested?
Maintaining interest in the subject matter is clearly one of the best things you can do for your teaching. If you are asked to give a speech, you want the audience to be receptive to the content of the…

This article is part 2 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

What are some things I do to keep students engaged in learning?
Once we have been able to keep students quiet, then the real work begins. I found in my first two years that the REAL work for me was keeping the students quiet. I fought…

This article is part 1 of the series Questions That Will Save Your Career. Please read the other articles in the series.

1. How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
2. How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
3. How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
4. How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
5. How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
6. How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
7. How Do I Keep My Sanity?

What are some things I do to keep them quiet?

Why is being quiet important?
I am convinced that classroom management is the key to success in teaching. It is something about which I have become passionate. Why? Because poorly managed classrooms waste the time…