Rookie Teaching For Dummies

W. Michael Kelley

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118053102
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Gestione della classe

Navigate politics, paperwork, and legal issues Find your instructional style and make learning fun for your students! Gain the upper hand on your first day of school! This friendly guide reveals what they didn't teach you in your education classes, offering practical advice and tons of real-life examples to help you set up and maintain an orderly classroom, engage your students, establish a grading system, and develop positive relationships with parents and school administrators. The Dummies Way
* Explanations in plain English
* "Get in, get out" information
* Icons and other navigational aids
* Tear-out cheat sheet
* Top ten lists
* A dash of humor and fun

Part I

What They Didn’t Teach You in College

In this part . . .

It’s time to draw back the curtains and march proudly out of college and into (gasp!) the real world! No matter how much preparation you have in college, nothing can quite prepare you for what you’re going to face when you’re all alone in front of your first class. Things have changed since you were in school, and you’ll notice it right away. However, it’s not just the classroom that will bring surprises and shocks during your rookie year. You’ll also have to deal with society’s preconceived notions about what a teacher is.

In this part, I help you figure out just where you fit in the grand scheme of things, both at your school and in your chosen occupation. I also bring you face to face with a universal truth: Most of the stuff you learned in your teacher training is utterly useless in the classroom! But don’t worry — I give you all kinds of information that you do need, and nothing you don’t.

Chapter 1

What Have You Gotten Yourself Into?

In This Chapter

Exploring how teaching compares to other occupations

Understanding the unique demands teachers face

Anticipating the challenges you’ll face before your first day of work

Coping with the chaos of your day-to-day life

Most new teachers are shocked by how different their perception of the teaching profession and teaching itself tend to be. In order to reduce the transitional shock from perception to reality, this chapter focuses on some of the biggest unexpected adjustments that you’ll need to make as you earn your stripes as a teacher. As you read this book, you may find that not every single thing applies to you directly, but you can still find underlying commonalities that affect all teachers. In addition, remember that even though teaching probably won’t be exactly the way you pictured it, by no means should you fear those differences. The little unanticipated variations from the expected are often what make teaching the job that so enticed you in the first place.

Real World versus School World

The world inside the school walls is vastly different from the world outside those walls; however, a haunting, underlying similarity exists between the teaching profession and every other job that you could have taken. These differences make people refer to the “real world” in class, as in the common apologies, “You’ll need to know how to divide decimals in the real world,” and, “In the real world, people use these spelling words, so unless you want to look like a dolt, you need to memorize their definitions.” In this section, I show you how both worlds you’ll be living in compare and contrast.

The similarities

Even though teaching has more dissimilarities than parallels with the so-called real world, you’ll find universal laws that hold true in both. Understanding how your new world stacks up to the one you’re used to is a necessary first step in preparing for the teacher’s life.

Your performance will be evaluated based largely on numbers. Even though tons of books are written about the little emotional things that make an entire career “worth it” (Chicken Soup for the Retiring Biology and Life Sciences Teacher’s Soul–type books), suggesting that a teacher is a good one if she makes a difference in just one kid’s life, the reality is that your proficiency in the classroom will be judged according to numbers, just like in most professions. Ultimately, test scores, grade distributions, and standardized assessment scores speak more loudly than anything else when it comes to administrators, especially early in your career. However, if your numbers aren’t quite up to the par they set for you, especially at first, never let that blind you to the good, albeit immeasurable, things that you’re accomplishing in the classroom. Just because you can’t quantify something doesn’t make it any less worthwhile of an objective.

You will get both praise and blame that you don’t deserve. Take it all in stride. The good days and the bad days will eventually offset each other. So, if things look bleak, give it a week or so, and the clouds will begin to clear. However, this works both ways. If you’re feeling on top of the world, don’t get too big for your britches. Even the most experienced teacher is bound to wind up in extremely sticky situations, and they always come out of the blue. Always be on the lookout for problems, and try to head them off before things get ugly.

Most people don’t want to hear about what you do at work. Even though everyone’s been in school and can relate to your job, don’t assume that people want to hear about your great lesson plan on teaching condensation to elementary-school science students. As much as you may be changing the future and exciting kids about learning, realize that other people’s apathy is nothing personal. In fact, keeping most educational opinions to yourself is usually to your benefit. If prodded, many people will launch into a diatribe about “what’s wrong with education.”

Teaching is an admirable career, full of sacrifice and too often bereft of the reward and recognition it deserves. But be sure you don’t slip into the mindset that you’re doing society a favor by teaching, and that society should, in turn, pay you back in spades. You and I both know that teaching is one of the few truly humanitarian professions left, but trust me when I say that the rest of the world would rather us not belabor the point.

The differences

Teaching is undeniably as unique a career as they come, and in many ways, it’s completely, utterly, and shockingly different from other jobs. Most of these differences are practical rather than philosophical, and if I sound like I’m starting to get a little bit too deep into academic speak here, let me dispel that perception with the first stark contrast I make between the real world and the school world:

You don’t get to eat or go to the bathroom when you want. You haven’t lived until you’re forced to eat lunch at 10:05 a.m. or until you’ve sweated out the last ten minutes of a class period, with a dire urge to (I’ll try to put this politely) relieve yourself. Biological needs play a bizarre starring role as you get used to teaching. Veteran teachers are so used to this schedule and are so well adapted to it that you can set your clock to the time that they use the restroom (not that you’d ever want to do that, but you get my point). Do yourself a favor: If at all possible, find out what your schedule will be the summer before you start teaching, and govern your life by it. Eat lunch at home when you’ll eat it at school. Practice a little self-control in the bathroom department, and only go at the times allotted by your upcoming schedule. You may consider this preparation to be a little ridiculous, but if you’re not used to such rigidity in your schedule, it may be an unwelcome surprise later.

You’ll be expected to do a lot that has nothing to do with your training. Even though you’ve spent years preparing for a life of teaching, you’re also going to have to serve as the police. Some schools have a police and security presence these days, but, in most cases, the system is miniscule at best. You’ll be expected to police kids as they eat, play, walk in the halls, use the restroom, attend sporting events, attend school-wide assemblies, and so on. In addition, you’ll most likely be asked to participate in a school-based activity, sponsor a club, or coach a sport even if you have no experience in that club or sport whatsoever. Flip to Chapters 17 and 20 for more discussion of extracurricular activities.

Your free time is going to take a huge hit. Most teachers use the term 9-to-5 job very contemptuously. They curl their lips and produce spittle when they talk about people who can just leave work at 5 p.m. and not have to grade, plan, and wonder what to do about that weird kid in social studies who keeps spitting on other kids. You should expect to give up lots of your own time (and spend lots of your own money), especially if you’re going to make fun and engaging lesson plans. You can find tons of lesson plans in books and online, but you’ll find that none are ever quite right for you. You’ll spend a lot of time tweaking these plans, so they work better for your kids. Plus, don’t forget that you have to master the material before you can hope to teach it — you’re about to find out just how much you really forgot from your own schooling!

Your summers are “work free.” This difference is no longer true universally, as it once was. I never experienced “year-round school,” and I’m thankful for it. All that time you spent at school and at home, grading and working yourself to the bone, is rewarded with a little more than two months of vacation. Don’t be surprised, however, that your summers are rarely, if ever, actually vacations at all. Don’t forget that you have to stay certified, and that takes a lot of classes and workshops. Furthermore, you’re not earning a king’s ransom, so most people take extra jobs during the summer.

You actually earn all your pay only during the academic year, so summer is technically an unpaid vacation. Many school systems will take your annual pay and divide it up so that you receive the same pay during the summertime as you did during the school year. However, some systems will offer you a choice. If money management isn’t exactly your strong suit, don’t elect to take larger paychecks that end when the school year does. If you’re given more money, you may end up spending it. On the other hand, if you know yours...