How to Succeed as a New Teacher
Tips for the First Year Teacher
New teachers are faced with an amazing task of reaching a group of students and imparting knowledge to them regardless of student background, ethnicity or family income. Here are three things that will help a new teacher meet success during their first year in the classroom.
Find a Mentor
As a new teacher, you need to have an experienced colleague mentor you through your first year. This person may be your spouse, the teacher in the next classroom, or a friend from college, but it needs to be someone familiar with teaching.
You need to feel comfortable going to this person and asking them questions – “How did you do this?” “How did you handle this situation?” “Can you suggest an activity for this lesson?” Talk openly with your mentor. When a lesson goes badly, talk through it and find ways to make it better next time. Every badly taught lesson is a lesson for you to learn from.
Successful Lesson Planning
Successful teachers know what they are teaching, and have a system for planning their lessons out. It may take you the entire first year, but you need to find a method of lesson planning that works for you.
Some ideas include a traditional lesson plan book, unit lessons broken out into daily activities, chart style lesson plans where each category is labeled and you fill in the corresponding activity (introduction, direct instruction, guided practice, etc.). You can also plan lessons out in subject specific folders or binders, collecting the necessary papers for the lesson alongside the plan.
The biggest component to lesson planning is to remember that you need to know what it is the students need to be able to do at the end of the lesson. Have that goal clearly in mind when you plan your activities. If you know what you are teaching, you will have a better chance at knowing how to teach it.
Appropriate Classroom Discipline
Finally, as a new teacher, you need to understand classroom management. Gaining control of your students and keeping them under control in order to teach them something may seem like an insurmountable task, but it can be done, even with the most unruly bunch of students. Talk through discipline problems with your mentor, with your guidance counselor and with your principal. Be sure they understand that you want to succeed and are looking for advice.
With particularly troublesome students, consider writing a behavior plan targeting the specific behaviors you want to change. Ensure that your classroom rules are stated in a positive and not a negative. If you seem to lose control when you are fighting an illness, stop and ask the class for help – younger grades in particular will rise to the challenge of helping the teacher who does not feel well if they are asked to.
Finding a mentor, learning how to write successful lesson plans, and maintaining classroom discipline are three things that all first year teachers need to do in order to have a successful first year.
Learn more tips for teachers.
Tips for New Teachers
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