You decided to enter the teaching profession and you successfully landed your first teaching job. Congratulations! Teaching has many rewarding moments but it can also feel daunting if you are not prepared with the right tools and resources to help you start the year off on the right foot. I remember my first year as a teacher with all its ups and downs. Knowing what I know today, and if I could go back in time and redo that year, I would do many things differently.

Today, I want to share with you three useful tips to make your life as a first year teacher so much easier.

Tip #1: Don’t Overfill Your Plate

When you begin a new teaching job, especially when you’re a brand new teacher, you are overly excited and you want to make a great impression. That’s natural and very understandable. I was certainly in that same place my first year as a teacher. I wanted to do everything under the sun. I wanted to implement all the ideas I learned about in college classes and I wanted to implement all the strategies I came across in the readings. I wanted to do it all! And I tried to, for sure. But what happened is that I couldn’t get a handle on everything and ended up frustrated and overwhelmed. Although I had all good intentions, I eventually learned (although it took me a few years) that you can’t do too much at once. Find one thing you’d like to try and focus on that. Reflect on what worked and what could be improved (gather formative data) and try again. Remember, your first year will be a lot of trial and error. So, not everything will work for you and the students you have in front of you. You need to try things in bits and pieces, in increments, and not all at once. You’ll be much better off.

Tip#2: Honor Your Personal Time

As a first year teacher, it’s very easy to lose track of time. I remember my first couple of years as a classroom teacher, after dismissing the children I would spend over three hours in the classroom organizing the classroom library, tidying up the classroom, putting up children’s work on the bulletin board, and getting the classroom ready for the next morning. And it didn’t end there. I went home and spent many more hours searching for resources and planning. I also spent countless hours planning on the weekends because I wanted to create the most innovative lessons, and I genuinely wanted to do the best I could for every child I worked with. Many teachers come to the profession with similar values and ambitions. They are ready to go above and beyond to reach every child; and I’m not saying we shouldn’t feel that way. Nonetheless, try to manage your time effectively so that you are not spending all of your time immersed in work-related researching and planning, or spending inordinate hours in the classroom afterschool. No matter how dedicated you are to your teaching job, make sure you leave enough time for your family and your hobbies. If you don’t, it will be very easy to burn out and quickly lose your enthusiasm which you definitely don’t want to do. Balance time for work, your family, and yourself.

Tip #3: Mutually Establish Rules

One of the first things new teachers are advised to do at the beginning of the school year is to create classroom rules or expectations with the students. This is definitely a great idea and a much needed ritual, especially at the beginning of the year as you’re establishing routines and expectations while building positive relationships with your new students. However, those rules are not effective unless you actually implement them and you are consistent in enforcing the consequences you establish if rules are not followed. Remember, as with any new relationship, your students are testing you to see how firm you are and what they can and cannot get away with in your classroom. Being firm does not mean being excessively tough and unreasonable. Being firm means having high expectations and treating students with kindness and respect at the same time. That is, you expect students to abide by the rules you mutually agree to and you follow up with consequences that are fair and justified when the rules are not enforced. When students understand that at the beginning of the year, they will be committed to the rules they agreed to. And, therefore, they will be less likely to break them.

I hope you find these tips useful and I wish you much success this school year. If you have more ideas to share or you’d like to ask a question or add a comment, please do so below. As a reading specialist and instructional specialist, I have acquired much experience over my 26 years in the education field. In the upcoming months, I will be sharing more posts and videos with tips, tools and many free resources to support teachers, new and veteran, as well as parents. If you would like to join my mailing list, please be sure to subscribe below. Have a wonderful and rewarding school year!

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash