Your first year of teaching is a special level of insanity. You’re thrown into a classroom, in charge of a slew of kids and you have to get them to learn, sometimes while they work against you. Nothing you learned in college is remotely helpful. Everything is crazy. You get to decorate your classroom which is so much fun and you have all this hope that you’re going to inspire all your students only to find yourself overwhelmed by standards, lesson plans, observations, that one parent, all the while trying to hold it together as a kid throws highlighters at you (true story).

I’m entering either my 14th year teaching so I feel fairly confident in providing some advice for the dwindling number of people preparing to enter a profession that I still love, most of the time.

Know Your Standards

I don’t think anyone ever told me this. And I wish they had. Because I didn’t. It was bad. I taught things wrong, spent time on things I didn’t need to teach…let’s just say my data that first year was rough. About halfway through the year, I got tired of not knowing what the heck I was teaching and what was coming up next. So I made it my mission to understand every single standard – at least enough to cover it adequately. Believe it or not, learning your standards does NOT mean reading them over and over again. While that will help you learn the exact words of your standards, it actually doesn’t tell you much.

Take one of ours, for example. It says the student will “round numbers to the nearest ten, hundred, and thousand”. That seems clear enough, but the way you actually needed to teach that and the way the students were assessed on that is nowhere in that standard.

So how do you learn your standards? TPT. And Google Drive. Let’s start with the Google Drive. I’d be willing to bet your new school has a shared drive of some sort. Now, my grade level’s is color-coded and organized because I have issues, but even if it isn’t, it’s probably a good place to look for worksheets, old lesson plans, presentations, what have you, that teach your standards. If your school is not as obsessively into folders as I am, it will feel like you are digging for gold, but there is usually gold to be found. This doesn’t mean you have to use what you find when you teach, but it will give you an idea on the finer details not mentioned in that standard.

Now, TPT. I am NOT telling you to go spend money. In fact, you really shouldn’t for this one. Once you’ve read over your standards a few times, go to TPT and search for those standards and see what freebies are available. Download anything you think goes with your standard, then delete anything that looks useless or too cutesy or too confusing – be brutal in your deleting. You’ll be left with two valuable things: resources that you might be able to use in the coming year, and teacher authors you can check out later since you like their free stuff, you might want to buy something once your school gives you money. These can tell you more about your standards and help you start wrapping your head around how to teach all the things.

I can’t stress this tip, enough, though. If you do NOTHING else to prep for the coming year, please learn your standards. I don’t care that your school uses a scripted curriculum or your team told you they’d give you everything, you still need to know them yourself.

Nuetrals Neutrals Nuetrals

I’ve harped on this before in my Tips for Classroom setup blog, but I’ll say it again. Neutrals. I don’t care if you have loved hot pink and gray for the last decade, help yourself out and stick to the neutral colors for big stuff or expensive stuff. Again, this is one of those that I speak from experience. I came in during the chevron and neon and chalkboard phase. I bought baskets in every neon color under the sun. And all but one of those baskets have been donated to someone else. In fact, most of them didn’t make it through year 4.

I loved color. And then…I didn’t. I switched to white baskets and gray baskets. They’ve been with me nearly ten years now with no sign of stopping. I can put colorful labels on them (I don’t but I could), but no matter what my style is they just kind of blend in and go with everything.

I think the amount of color and stuff in my earliest classroom and home decor has led to the predominantly white modern organic style I have now in my classroom and my house. I work across the hall from a teacher who loves Snoopy and one who loves flamingos and pastels. We all have our own styles and they will change, but if you get neutral colors for baskets, shelving, carts, etc. you won’t have a soft pastel orange and green room with a neon pink three tier cart (she doesn’t, she was smart, she has a nice taupe cart).

Now some of you are thinking – who cares? You might not. Not everyone does. But you do have to spend a good chunk of your day in your classroom, so it is important that you like it. Just…you don’t need a canary yellow bookshelf that you will most likely be painting in three years.

Ask Questions

This one is more for once the year has started. But it’s a good one for the summer and teacher prep week. Ask the question. As a veteran teacher, I am never going to get mad at a baby teacher for asking me a question. If you find someone who does get mad or annoyed – they’re weird and I don’t know why they’re being a jerk so find someone else. By and large, most of us vividly remember our first years and remember how hard and confusing it is. We’re here to help.

Some teachers try to help by leaving a ton of crap for you. That is not helpful. But even those teachers are pretty cool with questions. Returning to my highlighter throwing friend…I let that go on too long and now I know he probably needed more help than I could give him. But I was fresh and full of ideas and I knew I could get through to him. I couldn’t because he was throwing highlighters because the thought of the noise in the lunchroom overwhelmed him and made him anxious and he didn’t want to go to lunch, but I was making him. Hence the highlighters. I know this now. At the time, I had no idea that was even a thing. Had I asked one of my fellow teachers for help, explained his behaviors, they might have identified this friends issues much sooner and we would have had a smoother year.

Do not just sit and struggle. College does NOT prepare you for teaching – frankly, it can’t. I have some serious thoughts on how teachers should be trained but that’s a story for another time. Sure, some of the things you learned might be helpful, but the people in your building have a whole other level of understanding. They’ve had siblings, or cousins, or they know that kids deal – whatever it is. They might have even had a student with similar behavior or academic issues and have a thing that really worked. You will never know any of that unless you ask.

Seriously. We vets want to help. Please ask us for it.

Don’t Stress Your Observations

Another one that comes later, but for real. In my district, your first year, you got observed three times by building admin, then by the district math person, the district reading person, and the new teacher district person (I’m sure she has an actual title but I don’t remember it). It’s a lot and it can be intimidating. But let me tell you, there are only 2 results for an observation: “okay” and “thank you for the help.”

Sadly, almost all of my observations have been of the “okay” variety. Generally, they were good. Or they pointed out things that were ridiculous. Or they were just…unhelpful. As long as there is nothing on the observation that you strongly disagree with – say okay, sign it, and move on with your life. I was legitimately observed on Halloween two years ago. Do you really think they got anything from that? Of course not. So that was a smile and nod, sign, and move on observation meeting. This is not particularly fun or helpful, but unless you’ve done something truly horrible (like, you put on Netflix for the kids and got on your phone horrible) you’ll be fine. They don’t actually care all that much if you’re generally doing your job. I will put the caveat in here that this is most administrators, not all. You will sometimes run into one who takes this all VERY SERIOUSLY and is intense about the results. Again, this doesn’t really impact you unless you are truly terrible so even with the crazy admins…try not to stress about it.

Now, the second option is harder to hear but it’s what I would LOVE to have and rarely get. In fact, I’ve only ever had about 2 of those good observations in my entire career. One was my first year. Our district math lady came and observed me. She told me what I did well, and then she had a list of all the things I did wrong or could have done better. Yep. I did a LOT wrong. And if she’d left it at that, I’d have been annoyed. But this lady took each thing that I had struggled with and gave me a few helpful tips to fix said issue. In fact, I am STILL using some of things she told me to do more than a decade later. That was the most helpful observation I have ever had, even though my inner Hermione was annoyed that it wasn’t perfect. Now, I have sat in one where they were giving me tips that I knew were not good, so I smiled and nodded and said “okay”. You know good advice when you hear it.

And when you get one of these helpful observations, you say “thank you” and know that a person who is going to do that is not going to write that you were a terrible teacher. In fact, they will probably be impressed that you were willing to take constructive criticism.

A Few Parting Words

Your first year is going to be tough. You will be tempted to stay at school for hours. Don’t. I mean, make sure you have enough done not to cause yourself stress, but that paper that needs grading? It can be done tomorrow. That data? Enter it during your next planning time. You need to find the balance that works for you – school is not and should not be your whole life. Do you like planning and want to do it at 8 AM while you watch HGTV and do a load of laundry on a Saturday? Do it. If you don’t want to lift a finger for school outside of contract hours, keep those fingers down. So even if it feels like you need to stay after school every day for hours…you don’t.

Don’t take things you don’t need. If a teacher wants to give you a giant binder of stuff – unless you want it, say no thank you. You can even say that is just too much right now. Thrift stores and yard sales and veteran teachers will fill your library faster and cheeper than anything else. A parent sends you a rude email? Wait to respond when the initial sting is gone- and make sure you have a sounding board to make sure your email doesn’t sound rude or mean. Remember, there is no sarcasm font so another set of eyes on a difficult email is a life-saver.

If you don’t use a planner regularly, don’t get one. If you’re not sure, try a cheaper one from Target before dropping the big bucks on Erin Condren or Berteau & Co or Happy Planner or Plum Paper (I have tried many. Still haven’t settled on one I like best).

Finally, enjoy it. Own it. You get an entire year of the excuse of “I’m new, I didn’t know” so don’t be afraid to go for it and try the things and change your classroom management in January and rearrange the room 17 times and change your schedule when it isn’t working. Some things are going to work, some aren’t.

I’ll leave you with a parting photo of my classroom this year. Very different animal from that first one.