10 Tips for New Teachers | High School Teacher

my first tips would be to be round setting on your classroom things that are important but things that you don't really need to think about that's good but then the other things are just kind of like hey think about this or I make your life easier athlete [Music] I am this is your first time here I am a high school English language arts teacher but I have taught a lot of different things including great ste K through five elective like stem and visual Performing Arts I was also a drama teacher I've been around the block a couple times and I've been a teacher for longer than many might think and so I am really excited for today's video because this is an awesome collaboration started by Chelsea from teaching in pearls and Vanessa from my second grade life they have this great idea that a bunch of us all compile our top ten tips for new teachers and put them all together publish them all on the same day and that is what you are currently watching now so when you're done watching this one make sure you take a look down below so you can see all of the other videos that are linked in as a part of this little collaboration I think it's gonna be really awesome if you're a new teacher if you are going to a new school if you are like me and I'm going back to my same school that I taught up for a decade but I was on special assignment for two years so I almost feel like a new teacher again I'm moving into a new classroom that I've never taught in I'm teaching English which I haven't taught for a while because I was a drama teacher before this special position so I kind of feel you there's a lot of apprehension there's a lot of anxiety that comes with I'm starting a new school year for anybody but especially if you are new so let's get started so my tips are gonna be a little bit different I think than some others when I think okay what would I want would have wanted to know when I was a new teacher yeah it has a lot to do with like curriculum and lesson planning and that sort of thing but really the stuff that like kept me up at night was like thinking I was gonna do something wrong um and like how to set up my room so that it actually like functioned as a good operating classroom so that's what a lot of my tips are about that's good my first four are all about room setup so number one when you are setting up your classroom the very first thing you should do you're gonna want to do cute bulletin boards you're going like decorative stuff the very first thing you should do is organize your teacher desk in your teacher desk area and I will tell you why you need to make sure that you've got places for all of the paperwork that comes in like when you get new students just when you start at a new school you need to have a kind of a filing system in place it might not be the filing system that you end up with like forever but at least get yourself kind of set up there you're gonna need to know where all of your school supplies are like the things that seem so simple but are so easy to forget your stapler make sure you've got staples for your stapler especially when you start moving on to putting up your bulletin boards take oh my gosh the number of times that I had like three tape dispensers and no tape to go in them made me insane so get your teacher's desk area sorted out first have a place to put your personal bag your lunch your keys your cell phone things like that if you're a high school teacher or even a middle school teacher like me teach older kids something to think about is like are you gonna have to lock up your stuff I think the primary grades that's not too much of a concern in a lot of places but like older kids you know it's just part of the territory they're growing up and they're learning how to be so you kind of have to like figure out what you're gonna do with that sort of thing a second thing you should do kind of goes along with that and I mentioned this a little bit but you need to have at least two filing systems one violent for like paperwork for actual physical paperwork because even though it is the digital age you're gonna get a lot of stuff you're gonna be a lot of paper and you're going to need to keep it like don't don't shred it don't throw it away there isn't always a digital copy because not all schools not all um just even like government agencies are all caught up completely my school district still does our like absence forms in triplicate so like it's on carbon paper everything else is digitized but our absences and we have to sign them and then our administrator has to sign off and then you get a copy and we get the goldenrod one but anyways keep stuff have one filing system but is right at hand that is right at your desk maybe it's on top of your desk maybe out one of those desk drawers that you can like find out things in there it might be better to be able to lock it up because you're gonna get paperwork for kids who have allergies you're gonna get IEP s and 504 different special ed paperwork you're going to get a lot of different things there might be sensitive materials that you need to be able to lock up but whatever that is you need to make sure that it's somewhere in your teacher desk area so you have it on hand the other thing that you're going to want it's just like straight up storage like the big huge filing system I wouldn't keep those together just because that's a lot of bulk to have around your teacher teacher desk area where you're kind of wanting to get in and out quickly but like curriculum files and that sort of thing you can just keep in a corner of the room where you don't need to access it a whole lot make sure though that you have two different filing systems my third tip is to have a place for your personal items and your own personal like teacher office supplies the things that kids are not going to have their hands on necessarily like your own stapler your own tape your own paper clips and your pens this is me kind of gross I used to get so sick all the time when I was first teaching and that's for a bunch of different reasons but a big big big part of that was because I used to let kids use my pencils and my pens and my highlighters and it was gross because no matter how many times I wash my hands all of that those germs just spread and spread and spread and so I finally took my like a jar of pens and pencils from the edge of my desk and put it behind me away from the middle of the room it alleviated a lot of the germs circling through my body it was just it just made things a lot more sanitary and it made kids like bring their own pens I totally wanted to be that teacher who like provided children with pencils and stuff and then I started to realize like I'm teaching teenagers I needed to teach them how to be prepared for life bring your own stinking pens and pencils kids it's really not that hard anyways sorry so Fox moment okay my fourth tip as you are getting into decorating and you're getting into like movie if you are like me and you really want to like make that space your own make it comfortable but at the very beginning of the year don't go all out just make it the way you want it to feel and kind of the way you want it to look but give yourself room to grow give yourself room to grow into the space give yourself room to come up with ideas so that you don't have this like thing that you slack up on the wall just so that something's there and then all of a sudden you start teaching and you go oh man now I have to take that down because I just have the best idea ever like it's okay to just have a bulletin board that's covered with a border and that's it or that just says huge letters welcome back students like it doesn't all have to be the best most interesting looking thing you've ever seen because you need to be able to grow into it and you need to be able to give yourself room to breathe and it is really not the most important thing I know it feels like the most important thing and you want everything to be perfect for kids the first day of school but guess what it's okay if then the second week of school what there's something new in the room and then there's something more interesting to look at or the second month of school oh my gosh there's a whole new display that I can look at because my teachers had time to calm down and to like figure out exactly what you're gonna be teaching not just the first two weeks of school but like for the whole entire year and then find something that will really be decorative and function for your class and for you and like how your classroom is going to work okay so number four is make it comfortable but leave yourself space number five this starts to get into teacher self-care if you feel a tickle in your throat and I mean even the slightest little anything I want to use stop whatever you're doing well as long as you're not during contract hours if it's term contract hours finish this will die then I want you to stop whatever you're doing and go right to bed like maybe turn some water but then just go to bed go to sleep the only thing that is going to make you heal and not get sick if you are getting sick is sleep yeah you're gonna want to power through yeah you're gonna want to be like no I'll just grade these papers guess what the papers can wait they can wait until tomorrow morning when you feel better and you can wake up a little bit early and grade them then or nobody ever died from an essay being a half a day later than it was supposed to be put in the computer it's gonna be okay but guess what's really gonna stink it's really gonna stink if you don't get to read your papers because you have a really high fever and then you have to write sub plans and then you get sicker and sicker and it just like snowballs but just heed my warning if you feel a tickle in your throat or if you start to feel like you're coming down with something go to bed like drop what you're doing and go to sleep you're going to thank yourself when you feel better and then you can continue your job teaching is not a job where you can like muscle through for very long you need to be able to have your wits about you and you need to have your strength like it's just even sitting down and like talking to kids there are so many different things that you're doing all at once and you're responsible for all of these bodies in the room and all of their behaviors and everything that they're going through and thinking all is on your shoulders for that time that they're in your classroom so like give yourself a break and just go to bed don't get sick it's not worth it number six oh my husband and I are both teachers and we I was like asking about what he would say for this and he said that everybody should know that your Sunday is just gonna be a workday like for a while for your first few years teaching until you really get a hang for it you get a feel for like how to plan and just like how to grade and you get a good system and a good flow going just know and be okay with the fact that Sunday's are going to be work days you're going to have a six-day Work Week you're gonna be planning for the week ahead on Sunday you might get lucky and you really organized person and like be able to get on top of it but like be okay with at least part of your Sunday being preparing for the week ahead whether it's lesson planning whether it's going into your classroom and organizing whether it's meal prepping because no one can really afford on a teacher's salary to buy lunch every single day and like you're gonna want to prep lunches for yourself yeah be okay with Sunday's being a workday or at least partially being a workday 7:00 this is gonna sound harsh but hear me through if you get to the point where you say this is it I can't take it I want to quit maybe you should but don't do it yet I say give yourself a certain amount of time you know yourself better than I know you obviously so like give yourself a day give yourself a week give yourself a month whatever it is that you might need to like really take it in because often times teachers who say I don't think I can do this I need to quit it might just be that you are in the wrong position you're in the wrong school you are just kind of or like something just isn't quite going right that hopefully isn't gonna be the thing that makes you leave a profession that is surprisingly hard to get into considering all of the stuff that we go through as teachers you'd think it would be easier to get into this profession but it's actually quite hard the reason that I say maybe you should quit is because no human deserves to be miserable every single day and the kids deserve better than a miserable teacher a miserable teacher breeds miserable students right and miserable students don't like learning and people who don't like learning aren't going to like school and therefore are not going to get a very good education I just think that if you don't want to be there try to give yourself a certain amount of time to figure out why and to just kind of let yourself like feel it out but like I said you you shouldn't hate your job and I have definitely had days I've had months I've had years in this profession where I've been like I don't know if I can do this anymore and I'm eight I like really sat my stuff down and said okay what is it about it is it teaching no I love teaching is it kids no I love being with kids it was the certain mix it was what was going on in my personal life like having a three-year-old and a baby on the way and being a drama teacher was making me miserable because I was stretched too thin this is where I was before I had my daughter who was almost 2 and my son was 3 at the time it was just too much I was running a theater it's programmed for a high school and I am NOT a person that will do things halfway so everything was like all out and I wanted to make it really big and I wanted to make it legitimate we were gonna compete we were going to festivals and like all of these things and I was pregnant with my second child and my husband's a teacher so we both have the same work hours so what there wasn't a whole lot of like give there we just had to like figure it out and make it work um and it was too much of a strain and I was miserable and I should have been absolutely elated because I had my dream job and my family was working out the way I had always dreamed and so what I had to do was sit down and say what else can I do and so that's why I took that special assignment position that I mentioned earlier and then now two years out of the classroom gave me a lot of perspective and now I'm going back into the English classroom which is what I originally became a teacher to be an English teacher and I could not be more excited I am all in there are so much fun stuff that I can't wait to do there's so many things I can't wait to learn a lot has changed since I was last an English teacher it's been like six years since I was only an English teacher and so I am so excited and I didn't quit teaching and I didn't do the drastic things that definitely went through my mind more than once but anyways sorry long story just to say if you want to quit maybe you should but try and figure out why because maybe you shouldn't maybe you should just change course okay number nine huh this is a really good one I want you to get to know your custodians and I don't mean like the smarmy like kind of way I mean actually get to know the people who are working on your campus especially your custodial staff your custodial staff works their tails off even if it seems like they don't they are vastly underpaid a lot of times and extremely overworked and they are normally very understaffed so get to know your custodians they'll be able to help you figure a lot of stuff out they'll be able to UM just give you some tips and tricks they know a lot of things and it's just it's just good people like just get to know the people you work with I mean the custodians are often work at night because kids are there during the day but like as a new teacher you're gonna be in your classroom at night more than once I can guarantee it so just get to know the people around you it's a good idea for you to say hi to people just say hi I'm Robert it's nice to meet you thanks for cleaning my room I also like to ask my custodians like if I move to a new room I like to say where would you like me to leave the club the trash cans before I leave like what can I do to make their life easier I don't need to be like hiding a trash can under my desk in the other corner of the classroom like I can take that trash can to the door so that it's easier to empty just ask it makes life easier and it just makes it develops a nice relationships number 9 this is a really good tip that will hopefully alleviate a lot of your anxiety because it's something that I should have heard when I was first teaching find out exactly what the procedures are at your school for different things like attendance make sure you don't start that first day of school and all of a sudden realize you should have no idea how to take attendance I mean somebody showed me how to sign on and that's it because sometimes there are simple enough systems but they can be really convoluted until you get to know them find out exactly how the health office like how the nurse or the health tech wants you to send kids up and under what circumstances or what kind of a pass they want you to send same thing for the attendance office same thing for disciplinary issues find out is it a an electronic referral if you're sending a kid up for a discipline issue what if you just need to set a kid up to ask somebody a question should that just be a Hall Pass like how does everybody want you to work things I mean hopefully somebody at your school will be giving you some sort of an orientation off all this information but number one you're gonna be real really overwhelmed because you just got your first big kid job as a teacher or your brand-new go to school and you're like okay this is a lot of information or number two after you've worked at a school for a while these things become so second nature that you forget to explain them to people so they might forget to explain that to you oh another thing on that same line is find out where the closest bathroom is to your classroom self-explanatory I think actually that might be the most important piece of advice I can give you find out what the closest bathroom is to your classroom like what the key code is to get in or like which key make sure you have a key that works for it because that makes for a really rough morning if it's like the first or second day school and you have to go because you've had too much coffee and mmm I could get a little bit interesting that's my most important tip number 10 this is another like self-care piece um because this happens to all of us and this is probably gonna happen to you guys too but at least I'm trying to help you think about it beforehand schedule regular time with your nan teacher world schedule time to hang out with your family schedule time to hang out with your nan teacher friends schedule time where you're not gonna break the date when you get to actually see the people and do the things that are outside of your job that make you feel good and that like heal your soul absolutely I love teaching I think you can tell how enthusiastic I am about it but it took me longer than it should have taken to learn that while teaching is a huge part of my life it is not my life it is my job it is my calling to work with kids but being an educator is part of who I am but it's not my entire life and I need to have other parts of my life to make me feel whole and I need to be able to go to lunch with a couple of my friends or to hang out with our whole entire family for a couple of days on a little family vacation without any work around me schedule those regular plans outside of your job and stick to them as much as you possibly can and it'll just make you feel less burned out while you are getting towards like if you're on the road and you're getting towards that feeling of being burnt out you'd be surprised how little it takes to make you feel better you don't need a whole entire week of absolutely no work and nothing I mean you mind at some point but if you starting to feel burn out take the afternoon off it's going to make you feel a lot better because it's going to put everything into perspective I wish I'd taken that advice myself actually when I was starting out because I think I probably lost some friends that I and it's my own fault I think I probably lost some friends by not maintaining the friendships because I was like but the work I'm doing is so important I'm a teacher the children need me okay but like you're not the only teacher they're ever gonna have and like yes the work we are doing is extremely important but children students need to have a whole person up in front of them in class and if you are feeling shattered and scattered and you have had your soul sucked out by the system of education which is very easy to have happen because when you're so committed you're just so in it um that that teacher that teacher that doesn't have like the real pieces of them anymore is not going to do students a whole lot of good because that is a one-way ticket to burnout and bitter having that same passion that same commitment to education and to your students but also taking time off and turning your teacher brain off as much as you can I totally get it it's like not possible to turn it off completely and seeing the people that you care about and the people that make you laugh that have nothing to do with the school world makes all the difference in just making you a more well-rounded individual and well-rounded individuals are happy teachers and happy teachers make happy kids who can learn oh my gosh this is gonna be a long video I don't know how mad it's done because I feel like the advice I'm giving is probably some of the best advice I've ever given I'm like really good at this you guys if you stuck through the whole entire thing thank you very much I hope that you have found this helpful I hope that you found this inspiring in some way um becoming a new teacher can be really scary because you kind of go oh my gosh teachers spend all of their life at work like it's not you know kids aren't the only ones you think that we teachers plug ourselves in at night and just stay in our classroom the whole time the whole world kind of thinks that for a reason we are we are intense people and we get really dedicated to our jobs and that's a wonderful thing but you also have to take care of yourself hopefully these tips have helped you make like a priority list of setting up your classroom and different questions to ask seriously if you have any other sorts of questions like that please don't hesitate to leave a comment it might take me a couple days but I do get back to all of my comments I just have two small children so sometimes answering messages is hard for me because my daughter likes to take things out of my hand that are electronic and check them across the room she's - what are you gonna do if you enjoyed this video if you found it helpful please take a moment and click subscribe and like it so that more videos like this will come up in your feed I have a lot more really information packed and hopefully extremely helpful stuff coming out very very soon on this channel also you need to get yourself a big cup of coffee or a big old iced tea like me whatever your beverage of choice is sit down and go down below click all of those different links on all the different videos that are part of this collaboration because I think that will alleviate a lot of anxiety for new teachers out there it's just the best job ever so welcome welcome to the ranks let me know if you have any questions and I'll see [Music]

Channel: The Caffeinated Classroom

Views: 49,991

Rating: 4.9384184 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, teaching, public school, education, educator, teacher blog, teacher vlog, high school, high school teacher, too cool for middle school, early edventures, english, english class, english teacher, drama teacher, theatre teacher, ted-ed, that lettered classroom, ela classroom, secondary ela, traveling teacher, ela, ela teacher, new teacher, teacher mom, mom vlog, iteachtoo, teacher dad, classroom organization, classroom decor, classroom setup

Id: JqaWDIsPvNo

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 22 2018