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Hopefully they'll loosen up soon
By Shannon

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SB, I was on the other side of a similar situation my first year of teaching. I was also a fifth grade teacher. I was put on a team with another new teacher, as well as a third-year teacher who was supposed to be like a
mentor to me. This third-year teacher taught some of the same subjects as I did, so at first I felt more comfortable planning with her. I felt like I would feel like I was doing a better job of covering the important topics at the right pace if I planned all my stuff with her.

This lasted for about two weeks. Then the planning meetings became hard to schedule, and I realized that

she and I had different styles of teaching. I also felt like we couldn't really plan together all that easily anyway because our classes are tracked by ability, and that our classes' levels were too different to plan all the same activities.

Point is, I learned very quickly how to plan on my own and stand on my own. Hopefully the same will happen for your teammates. Maybe they are just nervous and overwhelmed as they anticipate the start of school, and they'll calm down soon enough. You may have done a very good deed by helping them out at the beginning.

Also, something that worked for me in the days when I was heavily dependent on that other teacher was to offer to do some of the "no brainer" work. I told her that, although I didn't know a lot about the actual teaching, I was willing to make copies, type, or cut stuff out. Maybe (and I don't know how comfortable you feel suggesting this) you could ask your teammates to help you out by doing some of these things, since you are helping them out so much.

 


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