Advice for First Year Teachers

First year teachers are usually bombarded with advice and information on curriculum, standards, and school policies. After four years of college, workshops, and intense staff development, you know your content and educational theory inside out, but you lack certain practical knowledge on how to get through the tasks that are required of you. Since all of this can be overwhelming, here's some advice I wish someone had told me when I was a first year teacher.

Make positive parent phone calls

First year teachers often find parents to be intimidating. One way to alleviate this fear is to start early in the year making positive parent phone calls or emails. Let parents know when students are doing especially well. This will help you as a teacher build a rapport with parents, so that they trust you later when you call with problems or concerns. It also will make your students love you if, when they get a 100 on a test you say "I'm going to call your mom. What's her number?" and give them genuine positive reinforcement for good behavior and encouragement to do it again.

Keep a seating chart and change it regularly

Something about having assigned seats automatically makes students behave better. Part of it has to do with the fact that students are not allowed to sit near friends and form pockets of chatter throughout the room, but part of it just has to do with asserting your control and authority as teacher. Many teachers, especially young and first year teachers, want to give their students more freedom and so tend to deviate from their seating charts as the year goes on. This is usually a mistake. Even a class that seems really well behaved and mature will quickly get out of hand with too much freedom.

The other key here is to change the seats regularly. Don't just change the seats of trouble students, change all the seats. This way no one gets too comfortable and settles into patterns of talking. It also makes it easier for a teacher later to change seats if you've changed them before. If you wait too long then try to change seats, you get more arguments.

Put students to work