I think that somebody who is coming into teaching needs to be aware of a few things. First, NOTHING can prepare you for that first time you walk into a classroom and it's your classroom. Every novice teacher experiences that "now what?" feeling and needs to know that we've all been there (and from time to time still are). So what can a novice teacher do in order to alleviate some of that first year stress? Well, hopefully, a new teacher's mentor can really play a huge role in helping someone over that first year hurdle. Unfortunately, mentors often do not wish to be mentors or have been teaching the exact same way for 30 plus years. Having said that, the first thing that a new teacher needs to do is ask questions. Ask fellow teachers, secretaries, principals....anyone. For the most part, teachers and staff members will help answer questions about policies, routines, etc. The mentor should really be providing the new teacher with information regarding the curriculum and specific programs that the district uses and hopfully that new teacher will have already attended some professional development to set them on the right track. A novice teacher needs to realize that the first year in a classroom is oftentimes just trying to get through the day.
However, a truly successful novice teacher, after teaching a lesson that may have been unsuccessful or mediocre, will sit down and question the purpose of that lesson and rethink it for the following year (or for the following day or week if the kids really did not get it). Something else that I think is important is that the new teacher share changes to the program that he or she may come up with because in most cases it will give veteran teachers some good ideas to work from and it will alleviate staff members talking behind closed doors saying things like, "That new teacher doesn't share any of her ideas with anyone." Novice teachers should try to stay on the good side of the administration and the staff because, lets face it, there is no job security within those first couple years. The boat should not be rocked....yet.
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3 comments:
I agree with the fact that novice teachers should sit down and look at lessons that don't work and try to figure out what happened, and fix them for the next time they teach it. It's a good learning process for all teachers to go through this. I also think it's a good idea for novice teachers to go through lessons that went well, and find out what methods or strategies worked for them.
I like what you said about teacher reflection. A good teacher, regardless of being effective in their first year, often reflects without even purposely doing so. In my blog, I wrote about how learning about multiple intelligences and other theories in context are difficult to understand until they can be applied. When a teacher takes the time to look back on a terrible lesson, if they are armed with that prior knowledge, they have a plan of attack to try the concept again in a different way.
Wow, true - I only wish the veteran teachers where I was at last appreciated that we novices could teach them something, too. They didn't like us to be too...er...happy in the classroom (read: they thought being boring was equal to teaching well)
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