Something all new teachers need to read

Walking into that classroom on the first day, knowing you have about 30 new children for which you are now responsible. Not only for shaping their education, but for being a counselor, nurse, parent figure and behavioral manager, things can get pretty daunting pretty quickly. 

Here are some tips that greatly helped my rollercoaster journey through my first year of teaching.

1. Empathize with your children: Get to know your kids and let them know you. You are a HUGE part of their lives as they are of yours.
2. Be flexible: So many things can change within a week, always have a back up plan or activities under your sleeve.
3. Find a mentor: Super important to have an experienced person to help you through communication with parent emails, disputes and issues, and also someone to help sympathize with a long day.
4. Classroom management: Be firm and set clear boundaries. Children will push these as far as they can. Follow through with consequences fairly and always keep promises.
5. Do not be afraid to ask for help: People make mistakes, do as you teach, learn from them.
6. Don’t let work over shadow your personal life: Please have a break, you don’t have to answer those late emails from parents, make a choice!
7. Respect is earnt: Children can pick up on vibes of people so easily and can notice when a person is grumpy, doesn’t like them etc.
8. Aim to have a decent conversation with at least 10 children per day: Sometimes classes can have 2-3 children who over shadow others in terms of need. Make sure you reach those quiet ones.
9. My best question was always “Why are we learning this?” : What purpose does your lesson have to the children? Is it relevant to them? Can they use this information?
10. The best piece of advice I can give, “If you can reach and change the behavior/ abilities of at least 2 children you have had a very successful year.”

By Petra Leonard