The New Teacher's Survival Guide

Marilyn (Deputy Head Nathan, Marilyn Nathan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780749416768
• eBook ISBN: 9781135357498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Making the transition from student to newly qualified teacher can be a daunting prospect. Combining theory with practical advice, this book uses case-studies, examples and tips to provide a complete survival guide for the newly qualified teacher.

CHAPTER 1

Before you start

You have been appointed to your first teaching post. Starting out in a new school is a daunting experience for any teacher and especially hard if this is your first teaching post. Naturally you want to make a good start. First impressions count for a lot. If you want to establish yourself as an effective and capable teacher from the word ‘go’, you will have to look and sound as if you know what you are doing. Making a good initial impression will also help you build up your own confidence at a time when this will matter, so what do you do?

Make Arrangements to Visit the School

You will want to visit the school at least once before you take up the post. It will help you to become familiar with a strange building and provide an opportunity for you to gather some of the information you will need. How many visits will you need to make? Two visits would be ideal, one shortly after the successful interview, to get to know the department, and the second towards the end of the term before you take up the post, in order to firm up on what you have to do to prepare for the new job and to collect textbooks and other things that you might need. But don't worry if this proves impossible; it is often the case that people are simply located too far away to visit more than once. The important thing is that you get the most you can out of your visit.

What Kind of Questions Will you Need to Ask?

■ Will the school be open in the holidays if I want to come in?

■ Do I have to come into school on the day before the beginning of term?

■ Where is the staff cloakroom?

■ What are the arrangements for tea and coffee?

■ What are the conventions about dress – do I have to look smart?

■ What happens on the first day – will I have to teach some lessons?

■ Where will I find communications or messages – is there a staff notice board?

■ Will I have to be a form tutor?

■ Will there be a lot of meetings after school? (From a new teacher's list of questions.)

These questions indicate some areas where one new teacher did not know what to expect and about which s/he felt apprehensive. A lot of the questions concerned very basic information, yet not knowing what is expected can make you feel extremely insecure. You will probably be able to think of other similar questions to which you need answers. Writing these down helped this Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) to clarify the information she wanted and you may find it useful to adopt this strategy.

To make the best use of the visit, you need to be clear about what you want to know. You will want information about:

■ how the school functions and its procedures

■ any responsibilities and duties you may have

■ what you are expected to teach.

Finding Out How the School Functions

A good school should send you a pack of information, but if it doesn't, you will have to take the initiative. To get information about the school, telephone or write to the school secretary and ask for such things as a list of the holiday dates, a chart of how the school day is organized, a room plan of the school, and a copy of the prospectus for the coming year. These things will give you some initial information about the school and help you find your way around.

The Staff Handbook

If there is a good staff handbook, it will become your most valuable asset. Ignore all the jokes you may hear about it being fodder for the filing cabinet; read it carefully and refer to it frequently during your first term. It will provide you with a compendium of information about how the school operates. It will give you a good indication of how formal, bureaucratic or casual the ethos is; more importantly, it will spell out and give you detailed instructions as to how to go about a lot of the daily tasks, which may not be clear to you. It also saves someone the trouble of having to explain everything to you individually. Knowing what is in the handbook could save you from the weary, irritable, but totally predictable retort from whichever senior member of staff you accost with your urgent problem – ‘It's in the staff handbook – haven't you read it?’ It could even make it possible for you to reply, ‘I have read the handbook, and it does not tell me how to do this…’

CASE STUDY 1.1. FOR REFLECTION

From the Staff Handbook

Perhaps we should start this case study with a warning. The language and style of the handbook is rarely user-friendly, and locating the relevant paragraph or section can itself present you with some problems as you cannot rely on it having an index, and the organization of the materials included can be idiosyncratic in the extreme. Persevere however, because a lot of the information you want will be in the handbook, if you can only manage to find it!

Several of the questions any new teacher will have will be about what will happen on the first day of term. The examples from the Bestwick Park staff handbook given below will provide answers to a lot of these questions.

Example 1: The First Day of Term

8.40	New pupils assemble in the hall except year 7, who go to the dining hall to be received by their year head and be put into forms.
8.40	All other pupils should go to their old form rooms to be received by last year's form tutor. Go to the hall for assembly when the bell rings.
8.55–9.05	Assembly in the hall
At the end of assembly, form lists will be read by the deputy head and forms should leave the hall with their new tutor and go to their new form room.
9.05–11.20	Form time

During form time:

1. Check names and dates of birth on the form list, correct addresses and telephone numbers, and send the amended list to the office immediately. Except in the case of Year 12, write up registers. Year 12 tutors should keep temporary registers for a few days until lists are confirmed.

2. Issue the form timetable. Each pupil should make him/herself a neat copy. There should also be a copy on the form notice board.

3. Collect school fund money and send it to the bursar's office in the bag provided before the end of form time.

4. Check lunch numbers and send the form captain to enter them in the lunch register in the dining room. Send a pupil to collect all the stationery your form requires, including rough books. It will be available from the stationery cupboard from 9.30. Collect any information which matron may have asked for. She will put a notice in your form register to say what she wants.

5. Elect form officials – form captain, games monitors, homework and subject monitors, charity, stationery and tidiness monitors and a school council representative. In Year 7 officials are elected after two weeks to give pupils time to get to know one another.

6. Go over the rules and remind pupils about the school Code of Conduct.

7. Go through the uniform list and carry out a uniform check.

8. Make sure that the pupils know the rotas for assembly and lunch and understand the fire and emergency regulations.

9. Give out bus passes, rough books and the homework timetable. Explain it clearly to the pupils. See that all the pupils have a notebook in which to record homework and that they have copied the homework timetable into the front of this notebook.

10. Forms will be sent for in turn so that they can be given their cloakroom places.

11.20 Normal timetable will commence, ie, period 4.

This set of instructions from the staff handbook is very precise. It tells you very clearly what the arrangements for the first day are, how you link up with your new tutor group and what you have to do with them during form time. It also clearly answers the question, ‘Will I have to teach any lessons on the first day?’ In this school the teaching timetable begins at period 4 after all the form business has been completed.

Example 2: Arriving and Leaving

Staff should arrive in school well in time for registration at 8.40 am unless they are on early morning duty, in which case they should arrive by 8.30 am.

If you intend to leave the building during a free period, please chec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Before you start
• 2. Adjusting to the job
• 3. The logistics of classroom life
• 4. Lesson organization and management
• 5. Classroom control
• 6. Communicating in the classroom
• 7. Marking and assessment
• 8. Being a form tutor
• 9. Dealing with parents
• 10. Keeping sane
• 11. What makes a good teacher?
• Bibliography
• Index