Pardon the cliché phrase, but this will be a return to school like no other year. Whether you are returning in person for the first time since March 2020 or coming back from hybrid to not or mask-required to mask-optional, this year will be different from last year. While Covid is not behind us, this year does have a more hopeful feel about it than last year did. Vaccines are a medical miracle, and I thank God for the lives it has saved and is saving and for the increased freedom they are allowing us to have. As a teacher entering my 23rd year, I thought I'd put in my two cents for teachers at many stages.
First-year teachers - Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for entering the profession at this time when people are more aware than ever of how difficult this profession is. You are needed and valued. Second, welcome to the greatest profession in the world (No offense intended to those working in other professions. All honest work is valuable and God-honoring. It's just that the fulfillment and rewards of education are hard to find elsewhere.). In spite of its difficulty, you have chosen the most rewarding work a person can do, and you will find great joy in watching your students grow into the purpose God has for them. The best advice I can give you is to seek out one or two positive teachers friends. The closer their room is to yours, the better; but what really matters is that they are positive, enjoy their students, and are willing to share their wisdom. You can usually recognize them by the way they laugh when they share stories about former students. Seek them out, and learn as much as you can from them. Warning: there are also probably some toxic teachers in your school, people who have burned out but do not yet know it. They are the ones who never have a good word to say about their former students, whose time in the teachers' lounge is usually spent complaining, and who roll their eyes through your entire faculty meeting. When they start making you feel bad about your students, yourself, or your job, it is a good idea to politely exit the conversation as quickly as possible. Everyone has bad days or weeks, but if a person is consistently negative, they have nothing to teach you. Your relationship with your students will be different from theirs, even if they had the same students. There are going to be teachers (many of them on Twitter) who advise you not to put in a lot of work this year. I understand why they say that, but I would advise you to view this year as an investment in the rest of your career. If you put in the time now, you will be glad you did when you need those lessons again next year. That doesn't mean you should work yourself to death; you have to sleep. It does mean that the first year is hard, but the more you put into it, the easier your second year will be.
Second and third-year teachers - There's no doubt about it. You had the strangest first two years any educator has ever had. If you began teaching at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, you were three-fourths of the way through your first year when everything you had learned was seemingly irrelevant (I promise it wasn't, but it certainly did feel that way). If you began in 2020, I'd like to thank you for entering the profession during that crazy year. You knew it would be nuts, and you did it anyway. In some ways, the rest of your career will seem easy, but if you went from virtual last year to in person this year, you might feel like you are starting your first year all over again, especially when it comes to classroom management. It'll be the first time you have had to deal with students disrupting your class because they don't have a mute button in person. It's going to feel weird, but you can do it. Ask the teachers around you about their classroom management plans. Read Harry Wong's book The First Days of School and Dave Stuart, Jr's These Six Things. Communicate to your students that you enjoy them AND that you are the authority in the room. While you can and should learn from other teachers, you will ultimately cobble that into the method that works best for you. Some of the teachers I respect the most manage their classrooms in completely different ways that I am comfortable with, so I combined elements of what other people do into my own classroom. In the past, I've always told teachers that the third year of their career is when they will really feel confident, but given the past two years, it might be your fourth year before you do.
Veteran teachers - Last year was draining in every way, but you made it. You taught your students differently than you ever had before. You fought your own fatigue while experiencing the whiplash of public support and love turning into vitriol. You encouraged your students as well as other teachers. You modeled living through difficult times for your students. It may have aged you a decade, but you did it. Read that again. You. Did. It. And, you came back. My advice to you is this. Take whatever wisdom you gained from last year, and try to put the hard parts in the rearview mirror. All of those hard things took a toll, but they also made you a stronger teacher than you were before. Take the tools you HAD to use last year, and use them in ways you WANT to use them this year. I'm looking forward to using GoFormative for its intended purpose rather than using it for all of my assessments. I'm looking forward to using FlipGrid in fun ways rather than test essay questions. I'm looking forward to seeing my students' faces and being able to hear their laughter clearly. If ever there has been a time to let your students know how happy you are to see them, it is now. I can't wait to make silly faces at them again (I mean, I was doing it last year, but they couldn't see it behind my mask; and it took a lot longer to convince them I was funny as a result). All of these opportunities should be helpful in restoring your energy, so take advantage of them. Enjoy your students and your colleagues. We took so many things for granted prior to 2020, and now we can appreciate them again. Oh, and please be the positive source of wisdom for the new teachers that I talked about before. You know they need you, so be there for them.
Whether you are a new teacher or a veteran, have a great year!
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