The Everything New Teacher Book: A Survival Guide for the First Year and Beyond

THE

EVERYTHING®

NEW TEACHER

BOOK

2ND EDITION WITH CD

A survival guide for

the first year and beyond

Melissa Kelly, MEd

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THE EVERYTHING® NEW TEACHER BOOK 2ND EDITION

Dear Reader,

You are about to embark on a grand adventure: teaching. Sometimes teaching can be an awesome experience, other times it can be extremely challenging. However, in the end it is worth it when you look at your students and see them learning, participating, and growing. I have written this book directly from my and my husband’s classroom experiences, as well as those of many other teachers with whom I have worked. I hope you will find that these pages hold lessons they didn’t teach you in the college of education. The information here is from the trenches. It is not based on theories of education, but rather on experience. I do hope that you enjoy this book and, more importantly, that you find true happiness and fulfillment in your profession as a teacher. You have chosen a truly amazing career. As George Bernard Shaw said, To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.

Welcome to the EVERYTHING® Series!

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Visit the entire Everything® series at www.everything.com

To my true joys in life: Marty, Ty, and Jessalyn.

Contents

Top Ten Things Every New Teacher Should Know

Introduction

01 Welcome to Teaching

The Noble Profession

Education Today

Your Role as a Teacher

A Day in the Life of a Teacher

What Your Students Expect from You

Habits of Successful Teachers

02 The Secret Formula for Success

With an Attitude

Practice Consistency

A Fair Deal

Learn to Be Flexible

Putting It All Together

Practical Applications

03 From Expectations to Results

Great Expectations

Fears Associated with High Expectations

Shedding Your Biases

Communicating Your Expectations

Effect of Expectations on Behavior

Effect of Expectations on Achievement

Meeting Your Own Expectations

04 Setting the Ground Rules

The Wisdom of Posting Class Rules

Missing School Supplies

Dealing with Tardiness

Late-Work Policies

Make-up Work Policy

Restroom Use and Hall Passes

05 Behavior Management

Beginning on the Right Foot

Discipline Plans

Humor Is the Most Effective Tool

Active Listening

Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Appropriate Disciplinary Actions

Parental Communications

06 Prejudice, Controversy, and Violence

Prejudice in the Classroom

The Most Effective Tool

Discussing Controversial Topics

Religious Matters

Holiday Celebrations

Political Issues

Dealing with School Violence

School Bullying

07 Organizing Your Space

Setting Up Classroom Space

Classroom Supplies

Textbook Use

A Filing System

Making Your Life Easier

Copying Tips and Tricks

08 Working with a Lesson Plan

What Is a Lesson Plan?

The Learning Objective

Sources of Ideas

Your Planning Tools

Knowing How Much to Include

Assigning Homework

Learning to Be Flexible

09 Maximizing Your Instructional Time

Warm-ups

Keeping a Journal

Housekeeping Time

Daily Review

Moving from Activity to Activity

Additional Tips and Ideas

If You Have Extra Time

10 A Variety of Teaching Methods

Three Types of Learning Styles

Nine Measures of Intelligence

Importance of Varying Instruction

Class Lectures

Group Discussions

Learning Centers

Cooperative Learning

Role-Playing and Debates

11 Technology in the Classroom

The Haves and the Have-Nots

It’s Not Just about Money

Computer Technology

Learning Online

Using Technology Effectively

When Your School Can’t Afford It

12 Assessments and Grading

Valid Assessments

Pretesting to Track Progress

What Do Grades Really Mean?

Grading with Rubrics

Staying Organized

Academic Integrity

13 High-Stakes Testing

What Is High-Stakes Testing?

Current Trends

What’s at Stake

Arguments for High-Stakes Testing

Arguments Against High-Stakes Testing

The Impact on You

Teaching to the Test

14 Beyond the Classroom

Are Field Trips Worth It?

Field Trip Destinations

Planning the Field Trip

Field Trip Day

Virtual Field Trips

Visits to the Media Center

15 Avoiding Stress and Illness

Expect to Get Sick

Be Your Own Best Sub

Getting Hurt on the Job

Sick Buildings

Causes of Stress

Stress Relief

Sleep Deprivation

16 Giving Substitutes a Fighting Chance

The Substitute Folder

Effective Substitute Lesson Plans

Scheduling Substitutes

Final Preparations

Student Behavior

Not All Substitutes Are Created Equal

17 Meeting Diverse Needs

Learning the Lingo

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

The Individual Education Plan

Inclusion in the Classroom

Teaching Students with Diverse Needs

Pull-Out Programs

Working with a Co-Teacher

18 Walking the Staff Tightrope

Your Place as a New Teacher

Keeping People Happy

Following the Chain of Command

Making Good Colleague Choices

Staff Gossip

Personality Conflicts

19 Avoiding New Teacher Exploitation

Positive Effects of Participating

Your Teaching Assignment

School Committees

Extracurricular Activities

Additional Duties

How to Say No

20 The Pendulum Swing of Reform

Cyclical Reforms

Changes in Classroom Procedures

Ability Grouping

Interest and Career Grouping

Block Scheduling

Year-Round Education

Setting Up Smaller Schools

Voucher Reforms

21 Thinking about Education in a New Way

Educational Theories of the Past

Revisiting the Purpose of Education

A New Way to Look at Curriculum

Twenty-first Century Skills

Taking Learning to a Higher Level

Building a New Mindset

22 Online Learning: The Wave of the Future

What Is Online Education?

State of Online Education Today

Case Study: The Florida Virtual School

The Wave of the Future

The Mind of an Online Instructor

Benefits of Teaching Online

Issues for Online Instructors

Tips for Success in Online Teaching

23 Dealing with the Unexpected

Expect the Unexpected

Not Enough Texts

Overcrowded Classes

No Classroom at All

Multiple Preps

In Case of Emergency

24 Survival Mode: First Day, First Week

The Right Learning Environment

Attitude Is Everything

Dealing with Nervousness

Before the Students Arrive

The First Day

Checklists for Success

25 Can You Really Do It All?

A Part of Your Community

What Parents Want

Working with Your Students

Appeasing the Administration

Setting Your Own Expectations

A Rewarding Career

Appendix A: Additional Resources

Further Readings

Organizations

Online Resources

Appendix B: Glossary of Terms and Acronyms

CD Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to the staff at Florida Virtual School, especially Julie Young and Pam Birtolo. I would also like to thank Mike Daecher from About.com, Rita Kienle, Lynn Roll, Mickey Colen, Loretta Schultz, Tom Fleming, Tim Newman, Laurie Peterson, Jennifer Smith, Lana Howe, Pat Naylor, the Ericksons, and Tammy Rabon. Without each of your special gifts, I would not have had the role models necessary to write this book. Finally, very special thanks go to my agent, Barb Doyen, for starting me out on this path, to my entire family, especially my parents who were and are my greatest teachers, to my awesome husband Marty without whom this book would not have been written, to my beautiful and amazing children Ty and Jessalyn for love and laughter through it all, and most importantly to Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior.

Top Ten Things Every New Teacher Should Know

1. Always have high (but not impossible) expectations for yourself and your students.

2. Effective classroom management starts on the first day.

3. Humor can help diffuse a tense classroom situation.

4. Consistency and fairness go hand in hand and should be practiced every day.

5. Be flexible, but don’t become a doormat.

6. Smile at your students.

7. Avoid confrontations in front of other students.

8. Be friendly, but avoid becoming friends with your students.

9. Get to know the people around you, and choose your friends and battles wisely.

10. Never advertise your inexperience.

Introduction

TEACHING HAS A LONG and noble history. From the ancients, like Plato and Aristotle, to the educators of today, teachers have made a huge impact on the world around them. Almost everyone remembers one or more teachers fondly, and some people credit a particular teacher with their success in life. Teachers are hugely influential, many times in a positive way but sometimes in a negative way, too. Teachers can inspire their students to greatness — or they can inadvertently give inaccurate information that will stick with their students for a lifetime.

Being a teacher is a special calling. It takes a kind yet firm heart. It also takes a person who basically believes in the goodness of all people. A cynical teacher can cause a borderline student to lose faith and give up. On the other hand, a positive and perceptive teacher can help a student turn her life around and begin to meet her potential. Just having a positive attitude is not enough, though. A classroom teacher relies on many special skills.

Lee Iacocca said, In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. Teaching can be a stressful and sometimes a thankless job, but when a teacher finally does see that he is making a difference, he receives a reward like no other.

As a new teacher, you will be faced with many challenges and, hopefully, will reap many rewards. The Everything®New Teacher Book, 2nd Edition with CD is designed to be a tool that can help guide you down the path of effectiveness, leading to the ultimate goal of a truly rewarding career. Though it is designed for the novice, more experienced teachers will also find it useful in their day-to-day careers.

Teaching is truly a cumulative activity. The advice in this book is drawn from the accumulated experience of many teachers. You can trust that the information you find here is based on what really happens in the classroom. It is not pie in the sky theory but realistic and effective practice. Most of the information in this book can be used from day one. In fact, much of it should be implemented before the first day of classes.

One of the main reasons that new teachers have such a tough time in the beginning is that they do not feel comfortable in their position. Because of their lack of experience, they make some very common mistakes, like making friends with students or being lax in terms of discipline. In fact, most new teachers start to worry about keeping discipline before they even enter the field. It is one of the more difficult challenges that a new teacher faces. This book aims to steer you around those common errors and keep you from making them in the first place.

As a new teacher, you will be in survival mode for the first few weeks of school. However, after things calm down and you begin to feel comfortable in front of your students, you may begin looking beyond the latest housekeeping task to the big picture, which includes the school at large. As with any new career, you will be faced with a new vocabulary and customs. The school culture is like no other industry because of the unique nature of its product: educated children. This book is designed to give you some insight into the inner workings of the school system. You will learn about the trends and ideas that abound in education today. Just knowing what these terms and ideas mean can help you converse intelligently with your coworkers and administration.

Not every person is cut out to teach. However, if you feel the calling and you work to improve yourself, you can be an effective teacher, the kind of teacher who truly makes a difference in her students’ lives. As Henry Adams said, A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

CHAPTER 1

Welcome to Teaching

Effective teaching is both a science and an art. Formal education can lay the foundation through the examination of various theories of effective teaching, but nothing can replace the experience of being out in the trenches. The art of teaching comes mainly from observation and experience. The scenarios and examples in this book are drawn from real life to help prepare you for your teaching career. The first step to becoming an effective teacher is to have a clear picture of what teaching is really like.

The Noble Profession

Consider why you became a teacher. What made you decide to devote your life’s work to teaching? Was it an influential teacher you admired, a desire to help others, or some other personal reason? At times, teaching can be a thankless profession, so you need to find your satisfaction from within. Yes, you will receive some rewards, but from day to day, you will have to create your own support system.

The teaching profession is a true calling. Not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. Some people just don’t have the patience. Others are not detail-oriented enough to keep up with the logistics and paperwork. Inflexible people will find that they have a hard time working within the strictures of a school system. If you are in teaching for the money, you will probably be disappointed. However, if you approach teaching as a calling and a noble endeavor, you will find satisfaction.

Education Today

Education is in a state of flux. It’s commonly believed, whether accurately or not, that something is seriously wrong with education in the United States. Politicians often run on education-reform platforms. Reform is also a common topic on talk shows and news reports.

Changing Attitudes about Education

The truth is that no one has a real handle on the issues and problems with education in America today. The reasons are multifaceted and deal with the core of our changing society itself:

• Attitudes among parents have changed. Many parents no longer choose to be partners in their children’s discipline process.

• The teacher’s role has expanded but is no longer well defined, so many teachers lose their focus.

• It’s difficult to remove ineffective teachers from the school system.

• Society has become more permissive as a whole. Less emphasis is placed on personal responsibility.

• Student attitudes have changed over time. A greater number of students today believe that teachers and schools must accept them the way they are.

• Administration is often stymied by laws and budget concerns. It no longer joins teachers to create a consistent message and outlook on education.

It is obvious that because of all of these intersecting and conflicting issues, the ideas on how to fix education are varied. Educational professionals, parent groups, politicians, editorialists, and many others have their own opinions on which reforms are necessary to overcome these difficulties. However, the task is extremely difficult, if not impossible, because the solutions have to alter people’s attitudes and actions.

It is often difficult to adjust to the newest educational reforms. Changing the structure of your teaching day or year can be disruptive, both to you and to your students. Keep a positive attitude, and realize that reforms come and go, but the things that make you an effective teacher will never change.

The Changing World of Reform

Many of the proposed reforms don’t provide solutions. They merely offer a bandage for the battered system of education. This does not mean, however, that education in America is dying or already dead. It is alive and well in the classroom of every effective teacher.

Education reforms are like swings of a pendulum. If you have been in education long enough, reforms that you thought were long forgotten will be revived, dusted off, and given a new coat of paint. As a teacher, you should be prepared to see your school jump on the reform bandwagon at some point. While many reform movements have good points, adopting them can cause problems. School systems often invest a lot of time, effort, and money into a specific reform. With all this investment, it can be hard for schools to admit if a reform does not work as planned.

Reforms will happen to your school sooner or later, so you may expect any of the following:

• Year-round education

• Block scheduling

• 4 × 4 scheduling

• High-stakes testing

• Learning communities

• School voucher system

Each of these reforms has its champions and its critics. They all will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter 20.

Your Role as a Teacher

The role of teachers has expanded to a point that it will sometimes be difficult for you to grasp exactly what is expected of you. Today, education is the topic of many social and political debates. The problems that education faces are not clear-cut, and the answers to these problems are even less apparent. In this atmosphere of blame and reform, teachers often find themselves sinking instead of soaring. To keep your sanity, you must define the role you are going to have in education.

Teaching has become much more complicated over time. Teachers wear many hats:

• Facilitator

• Coach

• Nurse

• Knowledge specialist

• Special-education expert

• Surrogate parent

• Record keeper

• Guidance counselor

• Technology expert

• Social worker

The truth is that no one person can fulfill all of these roles. It is your job as a teacher to decide where to put your emphasis. Develop a clear vision of the role you want to play. This will give you the power to make a much greater impact and will also shield you from the pressures and stresses that affect many other teachers.

Choosing Your Roles

So how do you decide where to place your emphasis? One way to begin is to rank the roles in order of importance according to your beliefs. It is an interesting exercise to create a similar list according to how you believe your school would rank these roles. Compare the two lists. If you are feeling frustrated, it may be that your values are conflicting.

To be a successful and happy teacher, it is advisable to work in a setting that matches your values as closely as possible. However, it may not be possible to quit your position at a school where your values conflict. Just having a clearer picture of why you are experiencing difficulties in this kind of situation can help you find ways to cope.

Administrators, colleagues, parents, and students will pull you in many different directions. Have a strong foundation for what you believe your role should be, and you will be better armed to meet the challenges you face.

A Day in the Life of a Teacher

It is important to remember that no one is born with the skills, understanding, and experience to be an effective teacher. However, with perseverance, a positive attitude, and the tools found in this book, you can be successful. Teaching may be challenging, surprising, and even exciting. Days are often filled with unexpected events and are also occasionally blessed by amazing rewards. These, of course, are what make teaching worthwhile. One thing is certain: Rarely is any day in the life of a teacher typical.

The Basic Schedule

As a teacher, you usually get to school early and leave late. Your day probably begins with some planning time that allows you to make last-minute preparations for the students. Once the students arrive in the classroom, you will probably not get another moment of quiet until your next planning period or the end of the day. In fact, some elementary teachers do not get a planning period each day of the week. In such cases, they might only get planning time when their students leave for their enrichment activities such as art and physical education.

Each class is a new challenge. You will find some students who love learning and some who despise it. You will present your lesson and may not have any unexpected disruptions. When the day ends, you will probably have meetings to attend before you can settle down to grading and planning for the next day.

Sometimes new teachers don’t get the same consideration as those who have worked at a school for a while. If you feel that you are not being treated fairly by colleagues or the office staff and administration, find a mentor at your school who can help you work through these issues.

Unexpected Events

Part of the challenge of teaching is dealing with the many unexpected events that will arise each day. Here are just some examples of these events:

• Office announcements: While schools try to limit these during class time, it may still happen a few times each week.

• Fire drills: Most fire drills are announced beforehand, but there may be times that a student pulls the alarm as a prank.

• Minor student disruptions: Minor disruptions, such as inappropriate talking, happen on a daily basis.

• Major student disruptions: Everybody hopes to avoid major disruptions, but they still happen — to all teachers.

• Unexpected visitors: Students on official or unofficial business, other teachers or administrators, and even parents have been known to unexpectedly interrupt class time.

• Unannounced assemblies: While most assemblies are announced beforehand, sometimes you will be given only a day’s or even a few hours’ notice.

• Guidance interruptions: In high schools at certain times of the year, it is common for guidance counselors to call students to meetings and appointments.

• Other disruptions: Many other disruptions will arise when least expected, including unlikely events like very noisy construction work or power outages.

As this list shows, it is in your best interest to be flexible and expect the unexpected. Be ready to change your lesson plans at a moment’s notice. And always remember to keep your sense of humor.

A Teacher’s Rewards

Some days will also be filled with rewards. While you should not expect these little treats, you can feel confident that they will happen. A chronically disruptive student might experience a turnaround, a slower student might grasp a difficult concept, or a simple discussion might serve as an excellent educational experience. These are the moments that will continue to motivate you through your career.

It is useful to keep a journal with positive observations, clippings, and student comments throughout your teaching career. When you are feeling stressed or burned out, just pull out your journal and get recharged.

One of the most wonderful rewards of teaching is having former students come back to tell you how much you influenced them. Students will sometimes write you letters or notes expressing how important you were or are to them. If you remember back to your school days, you can probably think of a couple of teachers who were truly influential. Strive to be that teacher for your students, and you will be well rewarded.

What Your Students Expect from You

A week or two before school starts, students start gearing up for the new year. They usually get their new class schedules in the mail or go to their school for a meet-the-teacher event. They’ve probably been shopping for new school clothes and supplies. When the first day arrives, most will come prepared with clean notebooks, fresh boxes of crayons, and unsharpened pencils.

Something else happens at this same time: Students get excited. Many, if not