what we wish we knew as new teachers {with miss tierraney!}

hi guys welcome back to too cool for middle school I'm doing one of those videos today that gets requested a lot and I'm just never quite sure what to say since I have you know just only my perspective that I'm coming from but I thought it'd be a great idea to partner with Misti Ernie here on YouTube for this video so that you can get both of our perspectives about what we wish we knew when we were new teachers Misti Ernie teaches third and fourth grade math and science and then I teach sixth and eighth grade history in English so we kind of cover everything I feel like subject wise and then age why hopefully somewhere in here our advice can pertain to you and I just want to say also that mctierney also has like another channel and like email group that is specifically for Christian educators and I love that she has started that I joined the email group she does like live chats and stuff sometimes that's separate from this video but if you are also interested in something like that check her out I love that she's doing that just for teachers and it's really encouraging to me so the beginning of my teaching career was a little bit like bumpy just because first I did student teaching and that was an entire year long so it felt kind of like my first year of teaching I taught at a high school and I had tenth grade world history and eleventh grade US history then I also subbed a lot for AP art history and avid so I felt like I you know had a full year experience of teaching high school so I can talk a little bit about that the following year was like this horrible drought of teacher jobs in California and so I didn't have a regular teaching job I just ran after-school programs for the YMCA in inner-city Long Beach at middle school so I can also talk a little bit about that and then my first real teaching job was actually a part-time eighth grade US history job at another middle school and then my first full-time teaching job was sixth grade English and 8th grade US history at another school I just kind of had to bounce around a lot at the beginning in order to get my foot in the door anywhere and get experience and I mean that might be my first piece of advice is that um depending on where you are you might have to move to get a job I was working kind of in a suburb of LA my husband worked in South Central LA and then she had a chalk on a north of LA and like we we had to move around a lot to find steady jobs it's not always steady employment there are layoffs there budget cuts even me this year being in a new district they have to pass like an extra bond measure things like the residents of the city paid a little bit extra tax so that I could keep my job but if that had not passed I always gotten laid off again and been on the job hunt again so while you're new it can be a little bit nerve-wracking because you're just not sure how long you're going to be there even if they love you they might not be able to keep you okay so let's talk about something that I learned my first year of student teaching and the year actually went great I love teaching high school I had a couple of like honors classes and so most of my behavior was fabulous like they were very motivated it was a good school my master teachers were really good and had set the tone of respect even before I got there and I mean I was young I was like 24 I think I was 24 when I started student teaching and my students were like 17 18 but I didn't really have too many issues with like disrespect or like goofing off too much in class content wise I really I really studied I really made sure I knew what I was talking about because I didn't want to give those kids any reason to doubt me or disrespect me but the thing that I wish I had known had more to do with like making sure that I had a future job so um it was a very busy year for me I taught I think I remember right I taught first and second period in one of the classes forget which one and then the other master teacher was next door so then next door I caught third and fourth period so I taught up until lunch and then at lunch I went home and got something to eat and then certain days of the week I would have to drive about an hour and a half to campus where I would take classes for my credential class from 4 to 7 and 7 to 10 and then come all the way back and go teach again in the morning or on other days I would drive an hour and a half in a different direction and teach piano lessons and that's what I did like after school got out so from like three til like 8:30 at night so I had just gotten married my husband taught at a private school and coached so we were you know trying to make ends meet with piano lessons and private school salary and like a coaching stipend and so I was just very focused on like the here and now like I need to get my credential I need to pay my bills and I didn't look ahead to getting hired at that school I had great relationships with my master teachers and they would have hired me in an instant but there weren't any job openings that were supposed to come up the following year so what I didn't do was go to like the after school staff meetings of professional development meetings I didn't make much of an effort to get to know the principal I just like assumed she didn't have any time for me and maybe he did it but I had like one meeting with him I think he observed me once but I should have figured out a way to be at some of those staff meetings and to get to know the principal a little bit better because the following school year a couple days in one of the history teachers decided to quit he was going to like run for public office or something so an opening did come up that they didn't expect and this is kind of weird this was like a really weird thing identify for it I did get it and then the district office called back later and said that I wasn't getting it like this was after we had already like paid rent on an apartment and I changed all of our plan and they it turned out like I found out months later like it was totally nepotism and they like hired somebody's nephew or something that was really messed up so I learned two things from that situation though number one if I had had a really strong relationship with that principal maybe he would have like backed me up a little bit more and kind of fought back against the district office a little bit and if I really been a presence at that school maybe there would have been more teachers that could have like I don't know stood up for me or something but I didn't really do that I made great relationships with my master teacher but not necessarily with like the whole administration so I should have done that I was just focused on getting my bills paid so so that's top some of you might be in that same situation but I should have just you know canceled all my students a few times and gone to staff meetings I don't know if that would have made a difference in the long run but maybe it could have and then the other thing to know from that is that if you ever get offered a job it's not official until HR offers it to you and until you sign a contract so the principal called me and said that I was hired that you loved me he was all excited you know to get me in and so based on his word we made all these plans but then HR has the final say and they just kind of you know you know what they flew the job again and even though I'd gotten hired the first time I didn't even get an interview a second time so there are things that go on at the district office level that you have no control over and I mean I shouldn't have trusted the word of the principal because that's not who has the decision you know the final decision so that's stuff that was such a hard lesson we had no money because we ended up paying like to rent that month because we thought we were moving in there without oh we're moving back to this place and it was yeah that was a really trying time that wasn't fun and they wish I had known that I worked at some after-school programs in Long Beach kinda in the inner city rough part of Long Beach and I loved it I loved it I loved working with those kids I still remember some of the kids that I had in that after-school program and it was awesome now here's something I learned in that program my relationships with with the kids were great I was kind of like the principal at at the after-school program so there were other like teachers I can ever what we called them but they ran you know like the different like classes and clubs and stuff and then I kind of oversaw that if there were discipline issues and they had to come to me and parents would generally come to me so I had to learn to kind of be an administrator like on the fly and I had this one parent who right when I got to the school because I they kind of moved me around to a few different middle school so I had got to this one school and the first day I was there this mom called and said you know my daughter really needs to spend extra time on her homework now I was like okay that's fine when we do homework in after-school program and she was like okay I really hope you can you know work with us on this I'm assured we do homework that's cool but we did homework for an hour like we were on a grant when you're on a grant and this is a free after-school program you have to do what the grant says what's there giving you the money you have to do what they say so you know in an era where we did homework help we had an hour where we did like these kind of electives that the kids could choose we had to do snack we had to do physical activity so there were you know certain things within the grant that you had to do we couldn't really extend homework time outside of homework time so these parents got very upset about that but sometimes she wouldn't finish her homework in that hour mostly because she was messing around but you know so I had this parent this is a father he was like six to like 250 pounds like this big dude and he would come in and just try to intimidate me I'm like 5 to probably like 115 pounds at the time he would come in and just try and yell at me and intimidate me and I couldn't and that guy and he did a scare me she probably should have scared me a little more than he did like I did not have a good feeling about him cuz I knew that he was coming in trying to like intimidate and bully me and I would just give it right back to him and one time he called on the phone to say that his daughter didn't get her homework done or whatever are we not proud of it but we got in a shouting match on the phone he was like what kind of a teacher are you that you don't help your students get their homework done like you're terrible you don't care about them and oh you better believe I went off right back on him and there were like students in the room just like it's happening and I got the phone that was just like and I immediately had to call my supervisor like I just like screamed up a parent what I should have done was to call my supervisor before that happened and let him know that like this is parent that comes in and keeps kind of like trying to threaten me and this was like to bully me into doing whatever he wants and letting his daughter like leave the field while we're doing physical activity time and like do her homework off on the side with no supervision like there are certain things that you just cannot do like parents might ask you to do things and you cannot do them like they are not safe that's not what the rest of the group is doing it doesn't matter if you want your kid to do that it's not happening and if a parent is really crazy then you just need to let your administrator know like before it gets to the point where you're having a shouting match on the phone and it turns out he was a total misogynist like apparently she had done that to the principal of the actual school like many times but then whenever he would meet with a male he was like super nice like all of the males that talked to me about doing what he seems like the nicest guy was like are you freaking kidding me that guy's a monster but then I talked to the principal of the school she was like oh no he is horrible he had stormed into my as more times than you can count like Oh so I never should have dealt with that on my own so I should have been talking to the other administrators from the get-go and just like deflecting deflecting deflecting everything up to them when you have a crazy parent just don't deal with them at least when you're brand new they're trying to eat you alive probably like they know that you're new they know that you're young and they're going to try and take advantage of you so move them along to somebody that can shut them down okay so what my next job that was the the part-time job that I loved like I I loved actually I just taught the first three periods of the day I had eighth grade US history that's my favorite thing ever to teach and then really I had the rest of the day when I could have gone home but I always stayed until like after school and I would just plan so I got to spend tons and tons of time lesson planning and I know most people won't have those extra hours in the day but I spent probably from like channel 8 was like 11:30 until like 3 o'clock every single day lesson planning I always stayed like a week ahead I filled out but too full on lesson plans that I had to do in my credential program but I really didn't have to do any more but I just did it anyway so that I would be super prepared over prepared planned way out in advance had my coffees made and so I had a great first year and I think it was just because I was so prepared and I think it was also because I was always go eat lunch with the other teachers and it was so helpful to build relationships with those other teachers they were so friendly so nice and still like Facebook friends with a lot of them and like sometimes I still even see some of those other teachers like if they're around like we'll go out for lunch or whatever I built really great relationships with them and it was just nice to like get another perspective on the school from people who had been there for a long time to hear about students behavior in other classes you know that I also had and kind of hear how other people were dealing with behavior issues and stuff like that so that made my year rate just by building relationships with my co-workers and by spending tons and tons of time prepping maybe the one thing that I wish I had known about that job was that the district did not pay for pizza and I have a whole video about pizza son of AB it'sa and now they're calling it induction program but if you live in California that is something that you have to do and they kind of keep it a secret from you in your credential program because I think it would honestly scare people away and I didn't know much about it until I went into that school year my principal was like he'll I used to work for bits or something and so he was super big on it and was like pushing it on me my district refused to pay for it even though I dug into the law behind it and I found out they were actually receiving five hundred thousand dollars a year to run the Vista program they just didn't do it and so then they were making me go to a different district and pay for it out of pocket and I didn't even have the money remember I was only working part time like my paycheck had a 1 at the beginning had a 1 of making 1,000 something dollars a month and this program cost $2000 for the year so that was more than like 10 percent of my paycheck my principal told me to take out a bank loan to pay for it do not do that do not do it this was another example of just where like a lot of times the district office or like administrators do not have your back they know nothing about you and you do have to look out for yourself so I went to the school board and I went to a school board meeting and just explained to them you know like I'm a part-time teacher here but I stay after school I coached volleyball for free i choreograph the school play for free i stay after and some tutor my students I'm you know really energetic enthusiastic new teacher I want to stay in this district and you know become a great member of your team and from the five hundred thousand dollars that you receive per year to run a Vista program I'm requesting two thousand that to be paid so that I can go out of district and still do the required Vista and they said no tonight emailed and I went to the meeting and I had a whole presentation and to be honest usually school board members were not teachers I actually don't think that they knew what Vista was I'm almost positive they just didn't even know what I was talking about so I even which I emailed like the superintendent like a lot of the teachers at my floor like dang you're a new teacher and you're like Russell and all these feathers but I didn't have the $2,000 to do it they were kind of taking advantage of the fact that I was new and they thought that I didn't know my stuff but I do my dad is a superintendent and my mom's a teacher and my husband's a teacher so I usually know my stuff and when administrators try to take advantage of me I usually know how to call their bluff know about that stuff it's possible if you are a teacher in California you will have to do some kind of induction used to be called pizza you can do it at universities or you can do it through some districts some offer it some don't some pay for it some don't and that you know might affect whether or not you want to work in a certain district so anyway that was like the only bad thing about that year I'm just like sharing the bad things because it's the things that I wish I would have known but honestly overall all of my experiences were awesome I'm just telling you what the one thing that was like cool now lastly I'll tell you about my first full-time teaching job and I had sixth grade English and eighth grade US history and here's what I wish I would have known and I started there so I remember that that this principal interviewed me and hired me and then he quit the next day and we had a new principal so when I started the school year actually I think the first few days we didn't even have a principal because she still had to go through all the paperwork and everything and then she came in like the next week so I was new the principal was new they didn't give me a lot of background or like introduction into the school which is understandable but like two weeks into the school year we had a an active shooter threat somebody called and said they were going to shoot up the school it was seventh period it was with probably the worst class I've ever had in my teaching career so far it was seventh period when normally you would have an elective but these were the kids that either were like in interventions or for whatever reason didn't get to take an elective so they still had history the last grades a day so you know of course I'm not thrilled about that it was like twenty boys and ten girls maybe like twenty five boys and ten girls just a lot of kids with behavior problems and that second week at school we went on lockdown the SWAT team of their fire trucks were there everything and I didn't know what to do in the case of a lockdown at that school at my previous school we had a lot of lockdown because there were a lot of drug busts at the apartment complex across the street so when we had lockdown our principal expecially expected us to just keep teaching so we locked the doors but he wanted to just to just keep teaching because it happened so often like you hear the helicopters above you and I remember one of my students was like oh I think it's my uncle I'll say what and the helicopter that I know like so I just continued to keep teaching until I realized like it was getting really bad and then I just I didn't know what to do like the door was locked of course we didn't know what was happening so I turned on the TV and we watched the news to see what was happening and I shouldn't have done that you're not allowed to do that you're supposed to everything supposed to be quiet my students went nuts they I've never seen students go that crazy the heyward like standing on tables taking pictures off the window they just use it as an excuse to go absolutely crazy and a lot of the girls were scared crying in the corner it was it was the worst teaching day I've ever ever had was that was definitely to work we were there until like six o'clock at night she has had to like pee in trash cans I remember I had a night class for my masters and I couldn't go because I was trapped in the room the SWAT team came in eventually and led us out and my kids were still messing around and jumping around and like laughing at the SWAT team with their machine guns and bulletproof vest like during that time I just I like gave up on trying to get them to settle down and I just sat there on my laptop and just documented what every kid was doing and just had like this running email to the principal letting her know what each kid was doing and then the next day I didn't wanna let them in my classroom like no you can't be in my classroom but you put all of us in danger we didn't know if there was really a shooter or not and if there had been they would have come straight for our classroom for the kids who were being super loud and then the stupid teacher at the TV on but it was just a horrible situation I wish that they had like briefed me on that you know it's not likely that it will happen but just briefed me on like lockdown procedure three four school had started that was no fun I didn't even want to go back the next day but I did and I was furious and I took them to the gym and we had a big discussion we were talking about like the Mayflower housing the Mayflower Compact and how you know they were getting off this boat and they didn't know if they were all going to survive so they all agreed to protect each other and support each other and we did a Mayflower Compact for our classrooms that like we all agree that we're going to protect each other and support each other and not put each other in danger oh that was crazy but on the flip side my sixth graders that year were my favorite class I've ever ever had I love them I'm like still in contact with some of those students now I had some of them again when they got into eighth grade now they're in high school and I love them that's when we started like the drama program our theater production and everything and I loved it so overall that year was wonderful it was just that one day that it wasn't great so I feel like this video seems a little bit negative but again we're just trying to tell you the things that like caught us off guard and that we wish we would have known but really and truly none of that stuff drove me out of teaching you know like we made it through these things and still stuck with the profession we love it we're so glad that this is what we do for a living but it's not all like apples and roses and wonderfulness every single day and again for me like it wasn't usually the kids that were the problem like there were administrative issues or like things going on above me that I didn't really have control over and those things you just have to arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can be as professional as you can not give anybody any reason to doubt you or your professionalism or your dedication to your students and I guess the other thing to know is that you can make mistakes and learn from them and move on from them so I shouldn't have turn on the TV I shouldn't be yelled at that parent you know I should have gone to those meetings at my school I student taught there are things I should have done but I'm so fun I'm teaching I'm done from those things you know now I know better and Michael sighing life is good you might make a mistake and feel really stupid about something that you did and just know that it will pass I'll be okay anyway we love you guys go check out mctierney channel if you haven't already I hope you have a great rest of your summer and that your spoiler is off to a wonderful start if you are a brand new teacher this year please comment below just so that we can like encourage you and give you a shout out and just make you feel good on your way into your first day of teaching thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in my next video by [Music] [Music]

Channel: too cool for middle school

Views: 32,897

Rating: 4.9101124 out of 5

Keywords: middle school, education, teacher, teaching, classroom, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, new teacher tips, mommy vlogs, blogger, vlogger, teacher mistakes

Id: 8OzAKbFA4jY

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2017