during your first year

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Home : 2005 : April : 16

during your first year
By Cathy-Dee

First of all congratulations on moving into your first year of teaching.

Here are some tips I've used and also shared with others.

1. Sleep - it is easy even after a few years of teaching to not get enough sleep and
that affects everything in your classroom.
2. Start off organized - try to have plans in place for the first few months of school, figure out how you will record marks, attendance, etc., Where will you store your student's works, what about notes for home, etc.
- I have a table set up in my room with a lot of little shelves and all the student's work is kept on that table. It is easy

for me to grab a group of booklets to mark this way. One "shelf/tray" is for work to be put when student's are absent - so if a parent calls wanting homework I can quickly grab their books from that tray.
- I also make up a graph/chart with all my student's name on it. I use this chart for everything - checking off names when students bring back permission slips, recording marks, having a easy sheet to take out during fire drills, etc.,

- Remember you do not have to mark everything - sometimes we feel we need to mark every piece of work a student does. We simply do not have enough time to do this. Mark what needs to be marked for report cards and to keep your students informed on their progress. I usually mark most workbooks daily, journals weekly,and most writing howeverthose extra activities like practice pages, first lessons, etc.,I do not mark

- Find a mentor on your staff or even two - ask them questions about anything and everything. But also remember to be careful what you say and how much you say until you know how much you can trust your colleagues. It would be nice to say that you can say anything to your colleagues, but in real life we know that sometimes what we say will be told to others so things that should stay private you need to keep to yourself.

- Have fun!!!! Enjoy your students, enjoy those moments when things work out well, take time to do fun things or unique activities with your class, enjoy reading children's books, get down and do activities with your kids.

- Don't let mistakes get you down.

- Communicate - send home weekly newsletters, call parents when their children are struggling, let your administrator know when there are problems.

- record - keep records of things, you never know when you might need them.

- Don't Compare - don't compare yourself to other teacher's in your school. We all have our own style and some teachers have more time, some are more creative in some areas, some just have more experience. You will do some things very well, you will find you will need to do some things better and you will learn about new things you can try in future years.

Good luck!