Why I Hated Teaching During My First Two Years
Posted Friday, February 8th, 2008 by JoelView blog reactions
Tags: Ask Joel, Classroom Management, General, Procedures, Teaching
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Newby writes:
I have noticed lately in a couple of your posts you mentioned how terrible your first couple of years of teaching were. As a new reader, I have gone back into your archived information to learn more about this blog but have not come across why you had such a hard time. What made your first years so difficult? As a teacher with more years under your belt, do you think those experiences helped make you a better teacher or would you just as well forget about them altogether?
What made my first years so difficult?
I think there were a few factors that made my first year difficult.
- I didn’t know how to control the class
I am a firm believer that classroom management is your key to success in the classroom. I have since learned how to control my students very well. The knowledge that I would eventually learn it sure didn’t make the first couple of years any better, though. - I didn’t generally misbehave when I was in school, so I couldn’t relate to misbehaviors well
I can count on one hand the number of times I was tardy to class in my entire school career. I never got into fights. I never was assigned detention. My parents never had to be called about my actions. This made relating with these kinds of students a seemingly insurmountable task. Because I had such a great teacher to student teach with, I didn’t what kinds of consequences to assign either. - I was too proud to ask for help
I’m a guy, what can I say? :) - When I finally realized I needed help, I didn’t know where to go for it
I asked the head band director I worked with for help and he didn’t know what to tell me. I left it at that and just assumed I would learn it with time. I didn’t feel any more confident going into my second year than I did my first. In fact, I felt even less confident.
Do I think those experiences helped make me a better teacher?
Absolutely! If I didn’t royally mess up, I wouldn’t have known what I needed to fix. If I had been an average or adequate teacher, or if I had very low expectations for myself, I might still be floating along. I see many teachers like that all the time. It’s as if they have never had that wake-up call.
Mine came when a friend came to clinic my band. He got finished and pretty much laid into me without mercy. I felt defeated. I felt worthless. But then he encouraged me a few days later and inspired me to learn what in the world I was doing. I began to call him and some other friends all the time and ask them how they did this, what I should try with that, and on it went. I would call sometimes two or three times a day. “Hey, I did this, I said this, and they did this. What next?”
The end of my second year of teaching was the most eye-opening two and a half months of my teaching career. I transformed my third-rate band into a group of kids who had a presentable spring concert in May. I then moved to another school district and started out my third year as the expert. I taught only sixth grade band, and they all came in not knowing what to expect. They tell me that I yelled at some of the classes on the first day. Never again. But I did explain and overexplain procedures to them. I spent the first week going over classroom procedures every single day. The first three days, that is ALL we did.
Would I just as well forget about them altogether?
No way! Do I want to forget about the pain? Sure, but not if it means losing the scars that the pain brought to me. Scars are a visual sign of points of pivotal change in our lives. Many teachers go around with tire treadmarks on their backside and think they are scars of growth. The difference is in our response to the pain. If we forget from whence we have come, we will be prone to repeating the same problems. We will be that one teacher who is in his 27th consecutive first year of teaching!
Now it’s your turn
What about you? How have you grown from your early experiences of teaching? Would you want to relive them? What have you learned? Share with us!
This is an article in the series Ask Joel. Other articles in the series:
- Ask Joel
- Why I Hated Teaching During My First Two Years
- Do I Really Want To Teach?
- The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job
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Comments
Stengel99 writes:
I can definitely relate to the shock you seemed to have during your first year. I think I assumed that all my students were future music majors who were dying of thirst for the knowledge I was oh-so-well prepared to disseminate. As any second-year teacher can tell you, that’s rarely the case.
I also underestimated the need to personally connect with my students. I treated the relationships as strictly professional, and did very little to show any interest in the lives of students outside of music class. (I’m of course talking about appropriate student/teacher relationships here!) As a result, they felt no connection to me or motivation to excel. Only by the end of the year, after I had already secretly decided not to continue at that school for a second year, did I make any effort to connect with my students. When I did, they responded wonderfully. Even some of my most venomous students and parents warmed up to me.
Kyle Gardner writes:
I am a first year teacher right now and while I don’t hate it at all. It is definitely a learning experience and it is nice to see that others have there struggles as well.
Author Comment
Joel writes:
Kyle: I didn’t really hate it that much, but I didn’t like it as I thought I was going to. The largest problem for me was classroom management. I know lots of information but wasn’t able to convey that because I was fighting kids!
Jonathan writes:
Yeah, I think I am a better teacher for how miserable I was at the beginning. I couldn’t control a class, and turned (largely) to the wrong people for advice.
Also, my school system had a culture of letting newbies cope on their own at first… rotten, rotten way to handle people (it developed when the profession was more stable, and the discipline problems were not as large, but that’s hardly an excuse).
Also, my school system had a culture of making newbies write brand new lessons, even though reasonable lessons were lying around. I was so busy writing (massive effort for, at best, mediocre results) that I denied myself time to adequately reflect on what were my real sets of problems.
Anyhow, I did get better, and now I advocate quite strongly for better support, for real support, for new teachers. It’s 11 years ago, and I still remember how lousy it was.
Author Comment
Joel writes:
Jonathan: That’s really why I started this website. I remember how ineffective I was in my first two years and hope to be able to at least help provide an opportunity for young and prospective teachers to have a fighting chance at avoiding those kinds of problems! Keep fighting the fight, man. :)
Mr. Maestro writes:
The only thing that kept me from quitting in my first few years of teaching was the thought that had I gone into any other business, I would forever think of myself as a failed teacher. I got my first job under an internship. I never had a day of student teaching. I was thrown in alone… the only music teacher in the entire school. I had never managed program finances before, never dealt with parents, never had to do the paperwork…. I felt like a complete failure 24/7. I let the band boosters push me around, and the school was not particularly supportive. I had a couple of families who had it in for me so bad, they were spreading rumors around the community…. that I was sexually involved with students, that I was stealing money from the program. By the time I left that school I was kind of a mess, spiritually. My next job went a lot better…. so much so that I’m still there.
I’ve been doing this for fourteen years now, and I still think of myself as a screw-up half the time. But you know what, I wouldn’t do anything else.
venrice writes:
as a education major i found the you-tube clips very distressing but as a adult in an urban city i am well aware of the dangers and problems that teachers face every day while justing to education some of the countries most poverty stricken populations. the greatest problem that most of these children seem to have is low self-esteem. most of them problem assume that they are unable to acheive anything greater than what they see in there home enviroments. this being the case the only reason that most of them come to school in the frist place is so that the parents can avoid jail. But still, i know that there are still some children in these settings that are capable of acheiving great things if some capable adult is willing and able to help them find their path. but, just in case I am also doing another major. just in case i not the one.
Author Comment
Joel writes:
@Mr. Maestro
I don’t think that most people have any clue all of the administrative work that goes into music programs. Even those who are in college studying to be music teachers! I was fortunate that I was able to build up a private lesson studio of over 40 students in seven different school districts by the time I got around to student teaching.
I used the time that I was in schools to talk with band directors and got to see them planning trips, collecting fundraiser money, having parent meetings, organizing private lessons programs, scheduling concerts, putting together programs, etc. I even stayed after school one day (free pizza is a beautiful thing) and helped out with office work while a director was going over her budget proposal for the next year.
Author Comment
Joel writes:
@Venrice
Welcome to SYWTT! I’m glad you’re here and I hope you find some useful stuff on here. You talk about a low self-esteem and kids having a sort of defeatist attitude. I recorded my band on Thursday and they sounded really good for where we are at this point.
I played it yesterday and asked them what they thought. Some of them heard a few wrong notes so their first response was “we suck.” I had to correct them, remind them how much progress we have made since the beginning of this month, and try to encourage them. My district has a large number of people below the poverty line also.
It’s amazing to see what these kids can do when they see a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully they will really turn up the energy the next two weeks as we finalize our preparations for our competition!
Mr. Maestro. writes:
You know, there was another thing that was VERY distressing in my first year. Like a lot of people, I went to work right out of college. The transition from care-free college student to full time teacher was traumatic. Suddenly I had no “me” time… I was spending every waking hour preparing for the next day. It felt as if the job were swallowing my life. No time for friends, barely enough time to keep my relationship going. It scared the hell out of me. Also, I didn’t like the whole waking-up-at-6-a.m. thing (I was used to… well, you know a college kid… ) Then one day as I was lamenting my early morning commute, I looked around on the freeway and suddenly realized how many people there were on the road with me. That’s when I told myself to shut up and act like an adult.
Well, here I am fourteen years later, and I guess the job DID become my life, and the students, staff and community became like family. I’m really comfortable with it now. I moved my wake-up time back to 5 a.m. to get another hour in before school (and became a regular at Starbucks) and pushed my go-home time to 5 or 6 p.m. (at least). Yeah, I’m a pretty happy workaholic these days.