Rock Your First Year Teaching Linky Party

Happy Wednesday!!! I have joined up with Teaching with Crayons & Curls and My Mommy Reads to offer new teachers advice and to help them learn from my mistakes.  I am very late to the party!  I had started this post about a week ago and never finished it.  This weekend was a crazy weekend and we are preparing for vacation so I have not had time to sit down and finish it.

Your first year of teaching is something that you have envisioned for a while. It is a time full of mixed emotions-excitement, fear, happiness and stress.  All of these feelings are perfectly normal and I'm sure the majority of teachers can relate to them. I always have these feelings as the beginning of the school year approaches and this will be my ninth year of teaching.

1.  Take notes of what went well and what you could do better. I always had a lot of ideas that I thought were great but when I actually did them there were lots of room of improvement. 

2.  Find a good support system to collaborate with at your school.  They may be other teachers on your grade level or teachers not on your grade level.  These people will help keep you sane, develop lessons and help you to realize that things will be ok and it's not the end of the world when your lesson does not go as planned.  

3.  Take time for yourself. Do not immerse yourself in work that you are not giving yourself time to breathe.  Go for a pedicure, go out for drinks with friends, read a book, visit with family.  Do whatever makes you relax and get back to your happy place.  You will be a better teacher knowing that you have had time to yourself.  

1.  Do not stay at school working until the wee hours of the night.  You SHOULD NOT be closing the building down each day.  While it is good to be prepared and plan for the following day you need to take time to be with your family or by yourself and enjoy time away from teaching.  Working and having your brain think about teaching all the time will eventually leave you feeling burnt out.

2.  Don't stress if an observation doesn't go as planned.  There is always room for improvement.  This is where a good support system really helps out and helps you realize that while your lesson did not go as planned it also wasn't as bad as you think it was.  

Enjoy your first year! Know that you will make mistakes and that's ok. It will be a year full of learning for your students as well as yourself. Learn from your mistakes and know that the following year will be even better. I feel like my second year of teaching was my best year of teaching.

I hope that this provided some guidance and insight to help you have a successful first year of teaching.  Click on these links here and here to see what kind of great advice other teachers are offering!