What I Wish I had Known My First Year

As the new school year is about to begin, there will be thousands of young men and women entering the classroom for the first time as teachers.  If you have made this career choice, congratulations.  That's not an easy thing to do in 2018.  The early part of this year was filled with teachers protesting all over the country, so you may think that it is a pretty lousy job that you will do in poor conditions (and they may actually be true in some places).  Someone in your life probably tried to talk you out of teaching in the last four years, attempting to convince you that you could make more money doing something else or that you wouldn't be safe because news coverage of school gun events make it seem like every school has one (much like plane crashes give people fear of flying even though the numbers are quite small).  At some point, someone has probably used "Those who can, do . . ." in their attempt to dissuade you from following the call of education.  So, before I mention some things I wish I had known, let me congratulate you for ignoring all of that to choose this profession.  It has its challenges, yes; but you will soon find that those challenges are far outmatched by its rewards. 

All that said, there may be nothing more difficult to get through than your first year of teaching.  Other than student teaching, there isn't a way to experience it until you are in a room alone with your students, who, along with their parents, expect you to be as good as the teacher they had last year even though that teacher had 15 years of experience to your 1 day.  Keeping a few things in mind will help.

1.  It's okay to not know the answer.  Students will ask questions every day that you won't know the answer to.  Don't be scared of that.  There is too much knowledge in your discipline for you to have it all in your head.  After a while, you will find it to be your favorite thing when a student asks you a question you don't know the answer to.  You will know that it means you are doing well, engaging students beyond the text.  In the first year, however, it can be frightening.  You might think that the students will think you are dumb if you don't know the answer.  In reality, they will respect your authenticity.  If there is time, google their question (or ask them to) to model the search for knowledge and the finding of credible sources online.  If there isn't time, tell them you will look it up (and write it down on a post-it so you will remember to look it up.  They will be floored if you return the next day with an answer to the question they may have forgotten they asked.  "I don't know" is a powerful sentence.  Use it.

2.  Don't be afraid to ask.  A lot of first-year teachers are afraid to ask for help.  I think it is self-protective because you think your job will be more secure if you look like you've got it all together.  Any administrator or colleague worth their salt will know that you don't have it all together because no one does.  Your school may have assigned you a mentor teacher.  That may be great.  If it is, ask them as many questions as you need to.  If that isn't great (because sometimes it isn't), befriend a teacher near you and make them your unofficial mentor.  If you have an administrator who is open, ask them questions.  They probably have experience in the puzzle you are trying to solve, so you want to know what they know.

3.  You don't have to say yes to everything you are asked.  You are going to be asked to do a lot of things, and you are going to feel like you have to say yes.  Parents will ask you to do things specifically for their child.  Some of those will be legitimate, and some won't.  If you don't know the difference, see point 2 and ask another teacher.  You will be asked to sponsor more clubs than you can handle.  It is okay to say, "I wish I could, but I am already the sponsor of two clubs."  I promise the student will not hate you forever. 

4.  Silence is more powerful than words.  When students are misbehaving, it is easy to go into lecture mode.  The problem is that lectures don't work.  Kids are used to being lectured.  Their lives are filled with sound.  If you refuse to speak, you will get their attention far better.  I don't do this often, but there are times when kids have gotten out of hand during a review game, when I've stopped or warned several times, when the kids are just not listening, that I have stopped and said, "You obviously don't need me" and then sat down at my desk and said nothing for the rest of the period.  (Don't try this if there are more than five minutes left in class.)  If you decide to try this, resist the urge to speak; don't even make eye contact.  Sit down and start grading something.  It freaks the kids out so much that you can hear a pin drop during that time. 

5.  Be the one in charge.  The easiest thing to be in your first year is the "fun teacher" until it isn't easy anymore.  A few months in, when the kids believe they can get away with murder, it becomes incredibly difficult.  Being the one in charge doesn't mean that you have to be mean and never smile.  You can do fun things in your classroom, but you will be the one who decided to do it.  You can enjoy your students without giving them everything they ask for.  My students know that they are not to take things off my desk without permission.  I rarely say no when asked, but they should not presume that I will be without asking.  Once it is established that you are the decider of what happens in your classroom, you can sing and dance and give them candy (although I don't recommend that) without losing your authority.  Kids don't say they appreciate this, but they do.  They don't actually like the easy, fun teachers that they can push around.  I know this because I've heard them complain about those teachers.

6.  Misbehavior is rarely personal.  Most books will tell you that the poor behavior of students is never personal, but I take issue with that.  On rare occasions, there will be a kid that just hates you know matter what you do and will try to take things out on you.  That is exceedingly rare, so you should treat most misbehavior as a kid's lack of impulse control and the testing of boundaries.  Even with those kids for whom it is personal, don't react to it that way.  It will only escalate the situation, turning it into a power struggle.  Avoid power struggles whenever possible because you have professional boundaries they don't have, making it hard for you to win.

7.  Have backup plans for your backup plans.  The thing that was hardest for me to navigate in my first year was timing.  I'd walk into a classroom with a plan I thought would fill 50 minutes, and it might take 20 minutes or 3 class periods.  It's just difficult to know until you have done it.  You need some things that you can do any day.  I have a bell in my room.  If I notice we are finishing up early, I pull out the bell and put it on my cart.  Then, I call out pairs of kids to the cart and ask them questions about things we have done in this chapter.  It's the quickest way to have a review, and you can fill time with it until you run out of material.  You are going to have a plan for a great lesson that requires the internet on a day when the internet is down, so you should be able to teach that material with a marker and whiteboard if you have to.  You do NOT want students with nothing to do.

8.  Apologies don't make you look weak.  When you have done something wrong, own it.  Apologize to the student you smarted off to.  Apologize to the class if you graded something wrong.  Make every effort to fix it.  You will strengthen your relationships with those students.

9.  Enjoy your job.  This job is hard, but it is also the most enjoyable way to spend a day.  You get to go to work, not at an office or on a roadside, but in a room full of youthful enthusiasm.  Your kids can tell you great stories.  They will teach you things you didn't know.  They will make you laugh.  If you can't enjoy those things, teaching may not be your calling.  If you can, it makes even difficult days better.

A Life of Positivity

I just came home from a funeral that lasted two hours.  I've never been to a funeral that lasted that long, but Ronald Butler was a man who had accomplished much and been loved by many in his 84 years.  A person from each stage of his life spoke, and they had many stories to share.  (Plus, three of those sharing were preachers and one an educator, so there's that to consider.)  The common theme from every speaker was that this was a man who was positive and energetic about all activities with all people from the time he was a child growing up with little to his last years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

I'm sure everyone in the room could have shared their own story, and I have one as well.

When I was thirteen, I was concerned about my approaching adulthood.   Don't get me wrong; it wasn't that I didn't want to grow up.  It was simply that every adult I knew talked about their work negatively.  They dreaded Mondays, lived for the weekend, needed vacations, and watched the clock.  Considering that the average adult spends 5 days out of 7 at work, I was not looking forward to the idea that I would dread over 70% of my life.

I decided to take a little survey.  I was in the church choir, so one night at rehearsal, I stood near the door.  As people came in, I asked them to tell me what came into their mind when I said "job" or "work."  Most people sighed, moaned, or grunted something discouraging.  This was a Sunday afternoon, and it seemed no one was looking forward to Monday morning.  When Ronald came in, I asked him the same question.  He smiled brightly and said, "I love my work.  It's great to . . ." and proceeded to expound and the people he worked with and the pride he felt in doing something important and how much he enjoyed interacting with students and faculty and administration (He was working in a college at this point, but he had also taught high school).

He may have been the only person to answer this way, but he made me know it was possible to do work that you enjoyed.  He didn't dread Monday morning; he loved it.  He didn't live for the weekend; he lived each day doing what God had for him that day.  I resolved then and there to find work that mattered to me and that I enjoyed doing.  That conversation made a big difference in my life, and I appreciate Ronald Butler for giving it to me.

Since this blog is about education, let me give teachers this one piece of advice.  Kids are looking to you for input about what adult life and work life means.  Speak negatively, and you will contribute to their fear.  Speak positively, and you will contribute to their hope.

Learning Styles Aren't What You've Been Told

Disclaimer:  I am a classroom teacher, not a lab researcher.  I have done my best to represent the research I have found, but I do not claim to have found every study or conclusion.  

Just in case you have lived under an educational rock for the last thirty years, here's a quick rundown of learning style theory.  The idea was that each child is born with a particular predisposition for the method in which curriculum is presented.  Visual learners would do better if the information was presented visually.  Auditory learners did well by listening carefully but would find visual aids a distraction.  Tactile and kinesthetic learners need to manipulate or perform labs in order to learn.  Teachers have been trained for the past three decades to find the learning style of each student and try to reach them using that style.  It sounded good.  It sounded logical.  It seemed virtuous to reach each student in the way their brain was designed.

Teachers always want to do what is best for kids, but we need to be careful that it is research-based, not just something that sounds good in a workshop.  The idea of individual learning styles sounded right, and we taught kids to find theirs for two generations.  The problem is that research doesn't back up what we have been telling them.  In fact, there are multiple studies that show potential harm from buying too much into the concept.

MRI's have been quite instructive on the function of the brain, but it is taking time for the findings to make their way into instructional practice.  Brain imagery has revealed that while the brains of different people will show activity differences based on academic disciplines (showing support for the theory of multiple intelligences), it does not behave differently if the same information is presented in different formats.  The conclusion of these researchers is that the presentation style is a preference, in the same vein as a favorite color or preferred musical style. 

It is difficult to let go of the "matching" approach to learning styles even when we know differently.  So, what's a teacher to do?  Instead of trying to match individual students, controlled experiments are now showing that it is best to match the style to the material being presented.  If we think about it for a moment, this just makes sense.  No geometry teacher would ever think that they should teach in an auditory only way, even if every student in the room was an "auditory learner."  No one who teaches poetry would think that they needed a kinesthetic approach, no matter what the preference of the students because that just doesn't make sense with the material.

As a teacher, think deeply about the material you are presenting and the best method for presenting it rather than trying to work in circles around all your student preferences.  Allow them to process according to their own preference.  It may actually be helpful for a student who has heard you teach material in an auditory method to draw visualizations of what they have heard or summarize it to themselves out loud as their method of internalizing material may be useful, but that simply requires that you as a teacher give them a bit of time for individual reflection.

Recognizing our Needs

I recently engaged in the futile exercise of trying to have a rational debate with someone on Twitter.  (I know, folly, right?)  The topic, if you can believe it, was the need for faculty meetings.  Perhaps, it is because my colleagues are fabulous people who I enjoy spending time with.  It could be because I'm single and want to be with people.  Maybe, I'm just weird.  Whatever the cause, I think faculty meetings are important and valuable uses of time.  While I don't believe in meetings just for the sake of meetings or the time-suck that is announcing things that could have been handled in email form, I totally believe in the value of a group discussion among people who teach different things.  There is wisdom that comes from differing perspectives.  The person I was arguing with online could only see that they could be "doing something else with that time."

Every summer, I volunteer at a weeklong camp, during which I have no contact with anyone except the camp folk and the photo desk lady at WalMart.  When we return home, we have a dinner with our families.  Stories are shared, the camp video is screened, and acknowledgments for years of service are given.  In recent years, some of the staff have balked at staying for the dinner after having been gone from home all week.  Again, I may be strange; but for me, camp wouldn't end properly without the dinner.  If I just drove straight home from the campground, I wouldn't have any emotional boundary between camp and not-camp.  Our directors are open to condensing the format, but last year, one of them said, "We will have something because you have a psychological need for it."

Analyzing these two events and other events in church and school life, it occurs to me that we are really bad at recognizing our own needs.  We tend to be short-sighted and want-focused.  The guy on Twitter who doesn't like faculty meetings can only see that hour and how many papers he could grade how he could go home an hour earlier if he weren't in a meeting.  He doesn't recognize that these conversations bring him perspectives he wouldn't otherwise have and, therefore lead him to better understand his students and improve his craft.  (To be fair, I know nothing about his school and whether or not their meetings are helpful or not.)

If we, as adults who have lived long enough to have had the experience of not getting what we want and being glad for it later, are bad at recognizing our needs, how much more might our students need help in analyzing their own needs vs. wants and short-term vs. long-term benefits and costs.  As with most things, doing this requires active reflection, a skill that requires training.

We have many opportunities with students to guide their thinking.  Some of it comes up in the material we teach.  Some may be done by modeling our own reflection process.  Some can be done in reflection at the end of a project or through a blog assignment.  Most of our opportunities, however, are unplanned moments.  When a student is frustrated by not getting something they want (the role they wanted in a play, becoming a starter on the basketball team, not getting the grade they were hoping for, etc.), we have the responsibility to help them process beyond the current moment while sympathizing with them in the moment.  If you remember being a teenager, every emotion feels like the whole world hinges on it.  As adults, we know that isn't true.  We can show them that it is okay to feel sad about something and then ask them questions that will help them put it in a larger perspective.  Be aware enough of your surroundings to take advantage of those moments, and your teaching will go beyond curriculum.