Keep it up!

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Keep it up!
By sue d.

It sounds as if there are a lot of people who have had it rough. A few posts back, someone vented that even the veteran teachers were still stressed. Veteran teachers love TALKING about their stress, but if they stayed
in the career, you can bet that they've learned how to manage things a bit better since their first years. As a vet of seven successful years (okay, one miserable year of fifth, but no one knew how I felt and why I switched back to third), I can summarize the main things I would tell new teachers now:
1. Forget what you learned in ed. school or grad school. The real classroom is not

run by Piaget's theories!
2. Organize yourself and keep your first years simple. Don't go crazy with the fluffy projects and cutesy things. Concentrate on learning the curriculum and doing a fun project with your kids every once and a while. You will earn community respect when you concentrate on academics and not fluff.
3. Find a binder to keep together your materials: gradebook, lesson plans, memos, calendars and parent communication logs.
4. Invest in teacher resource books from the teachers' store which directly relate to your curriculum. They have ready-made lesson plans and worksheets in them which you will need and can use when being observed (why reinvent the wheel every day???)
5. Plan two weeks in advance and only stay after school once a week to get it all done. You'll have a miserable afternoon, but it's better than nightly torture.
6. Find parent volunteers to check papers, make copies and help with reading and writing workshops.
7. Do a monthly or weekly newsletter for parents (PrintMaster Platinum software has awsome ready-mades to choose from!) so they are kept informed. Mine rarely need to call or write in notes.
8. Keep a desk calendar updated with meetings and seminar dates.
9. Be strict with your behavior system and dole out rewards when truly deserved.
10. Don't work during the summer unless you are unable to pay bills.
Good luck. I love my job, and have found these 10 things to be essential. The field needs you!