I graduated from Franklin College, a small liberal arts school in southern Indiana, in 2013. I majored in secondary education and economics while minoring in Spanish. I have always touted my experience in the education department to be of very high quality and I still hold that opinion today.
Yet, after spending a year in the classroom, there are things about teaching that I wish someone would have told me. While I felt Franklin prepared me well for my career, there are many things that I learned the hard way. This harks to the dynamic between theory and practice that is surely found at all colleges and universities. Colleges do well at teaching theory. They struggle with practice for a variety of reasons from educational standards to a lack of opportunities for professional experiences to the differentiation within the career itself. Teacher preparation I believe suffers from the latter. Every graduating teacher will enter into a position different from each of his or her peers. The classroom will be different. The expectation will be different. In most cases, the school and district will be different. Thus, it is hard to give practical advice to students whose futures will be so varied.
However, from my own experience as a first-year teacher, I have found a few ideas that I believe all first-year teachers should know but many are probably not taught. Below are four of them:
1. There should be a place for everything and everything should be in its place.
When I first started teaching, I did everything inefficiently. I couldn't find papers. I did not know what to do with late work or absent work. I was not sure how to manage textbook numbers or tardies. I quickly discovered that I was spending more time on finding things than doing whatever I needed to do with those things. I soon developed a procedure for every task in my classroom and a place for every item in my classroom. The result was that I was spending more time on helping my students learn and less on managing their stuff and my stuff.
2. Do what you say. Do what you say. Do what you say.
Students are creatures of habit. They want to know what to expect when they my classroom and they want those expectations to remain relatively static. Yet, as I was learning what worked and what didn't, I found myself changing my classroom rules, consequences, and procedures constantly. Students began to become confused as to where to turn in late work or what counted as being late to class. Worst of all, I did not enforce my consequences consistently. If a student misbehaved in class and I told them I would call home, I rarely followed through due to time constraints or a fear of what the parent might say. This implicitly taught my students they didn't need to follow my rules. Consistency is the lifeblood of good classroom management.
3. If you want them to value it, grade it.
Education is permeated by the grading culture. Students are taught from an early age that school is about getting whatever grade they need to acquire to either (a) get their parents off their backs, (b) maintain athletic eligibility, (c) reinforce their self-worth or (d) get into the college of their choice. (There are other probably other reasons). As teachers, we of course despise this culture. We want students to come to school because they want to learn and to develop their budding curiosity. Yet, if you do give students an assignment and do not give them a grade for it, they resist and the the quality of their work plummets. Why? The answer is because students have been taught by the grading culture that the only work worth doing is the work that gives them a grade. Otherwise, what's the point? Thus, teachers are forced to appease the grading culture because they themselves are graded through a host of teacher evaluation methods and need students to perform. It is a sad and unfortunate part of education today.
4. Great teachers are great students.
Peyton Manning, the current quarterback of the Denver Broncos football team, is considered one of the greatest to ever play the position. Part of what makes him so great is that he is a "student of the game." He spends countless hours in film study and practice to hone his craft. Teachers should never stop honing their craft either. There are numerous ways to go about professional development and no way is necessarily better than another. Conferences, social networks, and content organizations all can offer great ideas. Face-to-face interactions with colleagues (the "old-school" method) can do wonders. Heck, even a Google search can teach you something new. However you go about it, don't stop growing. If we want our students to become lifelong learners, we must have the same aspiration.
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