4 Ways to Be Confident in Your First Year Teaching
From 10 Year Teaching Veteran Stacey Roshan
I just celebrated my 10th year anniversary as a teacher! It’s been an amazing ride. In these 10 years, I have never regretted my decision to become a teacher. That’s not to say that there haven’t been ups and downs, because there have been plenty of those. But I can honestly say I look forward to going to work every day.
Below, I have outlined some of the key things I would recommend to a new teacher. And of course, I save the best for last — the last piece of advice I share has been the most important factor in my success as a teacher.
Be well organized
A teacher’s day is busy, with many moving parts, and rotating schedules to follow. As a teacher, there is a whole lot to keep track of on a daily basis. Developing systems of organization are essential. First, this will help you maintain sanity! Though I say that jokingly, it really is the truth. Keeping organized and structured allows you to be efficient and responsive as a teacher. Not to mention, teachers are huge role models for students and staying organized is an essential life skill that we are teaching.
Backward design
I always start with the end in mind when I sit down to build my curriculum. As a math teacher, I want to start with a macro view of my year. I start with the most essential units and lay them out on the academic year calendar so that I am positive I can cover them. After that, I start thinking about culminating assessments and what skills I want students to be able to demonstrate there. When developing a unit, I always have a draft of the unit test written before I even get started. That is a helpful way for me to sort through the essential understandings and big picture ideas that I want students to have mastered. From there, developing the daily lesson plans and assignments becomes a much simpler task because I have a firm picture of the end goal in mind.
Focus on the good and lead with your heart
Few jobs are as crazy hectic and jammed packed as a teacher’s. As a high school teacher, dealing with teenagers, there are undoubtedly going to be daily moments where I could get frustrated or upset. But the amazing moments far outweigh those small annoyances. I constantly focus on the students who are progressing, enjoying the process of learning, and thriving in the classroom environment I have created for them. I check in with myself regularly and think back to why I became a teacher in the first place. Teachers tend to choose the profession out of sheer passion and heart. Reminding myself of the reasons I went into teaching in the first place has gotten me through many stressful moments.
Build trust early on and develop strong relationships as the year progresses
To me, this is what has kept me absolutely loving and passionate about my job year after year. In the first month of each academic year, I focus as much on building trust (with both students and their parents) as I do on any other aspect of my teaching. I strongly believe this is what has set me up for success in my career. I get to know my students on a personal level, which enables me to help them best in the classroom. Because helping a student learn math is often times not just about teaching them the content and material; often, you have to get at something deeper in the student. What is holding them back? What is their background? What is their personality? These factors can all play a huge role. Once you have built the trust of the student, they can allow themselves to open up to you because they will know you have their best intentions in mind. For the most part, students are looking to be guided and challenged. But getting them there is as much about the approach you take with them as it is with the curriculum you present. To me, building these strong and meaningful relationships is at the heart of being a great teacher and keeping you passionate about your work!
Stacey Roshan is Upper School Technology Coordinator and Math teacher at Bullis School. She has a keen interest in discovering and bringing innovative tools into the classroom to engage students and to make learning feel like play. She has spent a lot of time working to flip the mathematics classroom in an effort to shift the culture to a more participatory learning space, focused on relationships and individual student’s needs. Her work on the flipped classroom has been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, CNN, and The Washington Post and television on PBS Newshour. She has also been named Teacher of the Future by the National Association of Independent Schools. Stacey aims to empower teachers with ideas and tech tools to enrich and enliven the classroom by engaging learners. She tweets at: @buddyxo and blogs at: techiemusings.com.
To be reminded why your work is so very important and for more stories and advice, visit our collection of teacher perspectives at The Art of Teaching.
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