Teaching is such a rewarding and worthy profession. But it can easily overwhelm and bury you: there’s endless paperwork, endless amounts of people to communicate with, and every lesson plan can always be improved, etc.
As a new teacher, it will be helpful to focus your attention and energies on five areas:
- Prioritize self-care.
- Get a handle on classroom management and organization.
- Gain self-knowledge and refine your teaching.
- Build relationships.
- Gradually master your content.
Focusing on these five areas will help you create a strong foundation for a long and thriving career as a teacher.
Prioritize Self-Care
There is a reason why teacher self-care is number one. People who go into the teaching profession naturally tend to be very self-giving and over-achieving. But to really last in this field, you cannot neglect your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Remember, you cannot give your best to the kids if you are not at your best. You cannot be at your best if you are not taking care of yourself.
Set Time Limits for Work
When I first started teaching, I did horrible things like stay in the building until 10 pm and grade all weekend long. I felt bad about taking sick days and ended up eating junk food for dinner because I was too busy grading or lesson planning. And let’s not even talk about exercise! Because of all that, I was not able to give my best to my students. I couldn’t be as present or energized for my students when they were in front of me because I failed to set healthy work boundaries for myself. Fortunately, I had a great mentor teacher who called this to my attention and helped me make adjustments.
You need boundaries! You can’t run yourself to the ground. The best way to do this is to set limits on your work time and stick to them. Decide how many hours extra, whether before or after school, you’re going to put into the work every day. How many hours over the weekend? Try to stay within your contract hours.
I know that’s hard, especially your first year. But remember, there will always be more work. Every lesson can be more perfect, no matter how long you’ve been teaching. So the work literally is never-ending. So it’s up to you to set and practice healthy boundaries now. Decide on reasonable hours and respect them. Do your best not to bring work home.
By setting time limits, you’ll also learn the important lesson of prioritizing and making your prep times more efficient. For example, do you have to assign so many formal assessments that you’ll have to grade afterward? Eventually, I got really creative with giving immediate feedback for assignments because of the time limits I had for work. These systems helped my students learn better.
Use the Existing Curriculum
I also learned not to pressure myself to come up with so much of my own curriculum. I think sometimes there’s this stigma against textbooks because they don’t have the most creative and engaging activities. But, hey, guess what? Those textbooks were written by multiple experts in their field. You’re only one person. On top of that, your school already paid thousands of dollars for that curriculum. And, finally, sticking to the textbook for the first year or so makes planning for subs so much easier! Don’t pressure yourself to reinvent the wheel. Yes, it can be more exciting (here’s an article that might help), but don’t be afraid to add things gradually throughout the years.
Enjoy Your Life Outside of Work
Prioritize your health and make room for life outside of work. Make sure you have time to do things you enjoy outside of school, whether that’s sports, reading, movies, etc. Foster friendships and hobbies. You will enrich your students with your well-rounded life experiences and fresh energy.
We need teachers. We need great teachers. So please take care of yourself! Don’t feel guilty for taking sick days, and, yes, that includes mental health days! Check in with yourself daily and make sure you’re ok. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Get a Handle on Classroom Management and Organization
Classroom management is such a priority. Before you can focus on mastering your content or refining teaching strategies, you need a strong level of comfort in managing your classroom. You can know everything there is to know about your content, but it would mean nothing if you can’t engage your students meaningfully because of a chaotic classroom. There are different techniques, and teachers have different styles. However, there are general things that will always hold true. Here is an article I wrote to get you started on some ideas.
- Be present and accessible to your students by walking the room. Don’t get stuck behind your desk, even during work times. This will allow you to check in individually with each student, even for just a few seconds. This will also help you build a safe learning environment and minimize negative behavior in a non-disruptive manner.
- Establish and maintain helpful and efficient procedures and routines. Predictability and structure can prevent so many classroom problems. The simple act of displaying class activities at the beginning of each lesson every day has helped me run my classroom smoothly for many years.
- Create, with your class’ help as much as possible, clear and simple expectations for behavior and readiness in class. Limit it to a manageable amount. Clearly communicate fair consequences from the start, and follow through consistently.
There are so many ways to manage a classroom, but the important thing is to find what will work for you and your teaching style. Read up on books and articles to help you find strategies if you’re having trouble. Reach out to mentors or other teachers who manage their classrooms well.
Basic organization is also key to managing your classroom. Being distracted because you are looking for things or because you don’t have your materials ready lessens your presence and control in the classroom. You don’t have to make your classroom look like it came out of a magazine, but at least keep things orderly and develop a system for student and instructional materials. Here is a step-by-step guide to getting organized that you might find helpful.
Gain Self-knowledge and Refine Your Teaching
Always, always, self-reflect! Reflect on your teaching, motivation, and classroom interactions daily. Knowing what makes you tick and what frustrates you will really help you identify your areas for growth as a teacher. Pay attention to how you interact with the students and how they react to you. Pay attention to how you deliver content and engage students. Reflect on ways to improve daily. It would be useful to keep a simple teaching journal. Write short reflections every day if you can to keep track of your progress.
Once you’ve reflected and established what kind of teacher you are at the moment, then you can more clearly set a path for the kind of teacher you want to be. Once you pick up on your natural teaching style, the less you will try to be like someone else. You will be more genuine and gradually become more comfortable in the classroom. Students can sense confidence or lack of it, and they react accordingly.
Build Relationships
Building relationships is a gradual process, and it takes time. So don’t rush it, but do prioritize it. You don’t have to have deep heart-to-hearts with each of your students and colleagues. Start with small conversations and genuine interest in their lives. This can happen during passing periods, before school, and after school. They don’t have to be big acts – just small acts done with love and sincerity. Look people in the eye and say a quick hello. It’s a quick, non-intimidating way to connect. It communicates that you are open and you see the other person.
These small acts of connecting are also very important for your well-being. Teachers get so busy, and it is so easy to become isolated in your classroom. Little conversations and eye contact with your fellow teachers and students go a long way. It will even help with your classroom management when the students see that you are genuine and sincere.
A very important relationship to foster is with a mentor teacher. If your school has not assigned one to you, find someone you can trust. Find an experienced teacher who is positive and realistic. Even if you have to join and look in a Facebook group or other social media, make sure you have someone you can reach out to for advice. I benefited so much from having mentor teachers. I learned so many things much more quickly than if I had struggled with them on my own. My mentor teachers helped me troubleshoot student issues, streamline grading and lesson planning, urged me to prioritize self-care, and gave me excellent instructional strategies. Having at least one mentor is so crucial to your career longevity and success as a teacher.
Gradually Master Your Content
This will come as you teach, yes. But I just want to emphasize how important it is to actually read the readings or work on the math/science problems, etc. that you’re going to assign or give a lesson on before you do the actual lesson with the kids. I know it seems like common sense, but you can easily forget to do this when you have so many things on your mind. You may have reviewed the lesson plan and what you’re going to do but neglect to look through the actual content. You may mistakenly assume that all the problems or information you’ll be teaching are clear and straightforward.
So when things don’t go as planned in the lesson, it is harder to adjust because you don’t know what the parameters are for what you’re actually teaching. It’s easier to be creative, flexible, and respond to the unique needs of your class during the lesson if the content is fresh in your mind and you’ve anticipated the types of questions or mistakes that may come up. Even after I’ve been teaching the same content for years, I always made sure to, at the minimum, skim the information each class would be working with the day before or in the morning.
Conclusion
As you go through your first years of teaching, you will get more comfortable. You will become more familiar with being in the classroom and interacting with your students. You’ll have more time and energy to work on other things like making your own curriculum, streamlining your grading process, having a much better-looking classroom, etc. Building strong foundations during your first years, before adding more to your plate, will help you to avoid burnout and feeling overwhelmed as you tackle more areas of your teaching.
I hope this helps! Thank you for teaching!
Read Next:
The Heart of Good Lesson Planning
Top Ten Tips on How to Manage the Middle School Classroom
Ten Simple and Creative Ways to Make the Textbook More Engaging