The first year of teaching is the hardest. You face many challenges, wins, and pour yourself out for your students. Below are 9 tips for first year teachers. If you find yourself here, searching for tips on how to get through, I hope you cozy up with a cup of coffee or tea, and receive some encouragement. You can do this. Keep going.
Prioritize sleep. Hear me—you will be tired. In high school, my principal would often tell us “sleep is a weapon,” and boy have I come to realize how true that statement really is. When you are tired, you have less patience, struggle to make the best decisions in the moment, and can feel mentally cloudy. I read an article recently by Teach Thought Staff that teachers make 1,500 educational decisions every day. We problem solve, we divert attention, we multi-task, we manage a classroom of hearts and minds. When a student is struggling emotionally or behaviorally, we use strategies to diffuse the situation while attending to the rest of the class. These examples touch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the decisions that teachers make on a daily basis. And when you are tired, the decision fatigue hits an all-time high. Get rest, dear teacher.
Give yourself grace. There is so much you are learning this year, try your best to take it all in. Not every lesson will be perfect. In fact, you may feel like you have failed. You are not a failure. Failure is not your name, dear teacher. Teaching is your calling. You have a specific gift set which has equipped you for this job. It is not an easy job, and you knew that going into it. But just as you give your students grace when they don’t deserve it, you need to do the same for yourself every day.
Make self-care a priority. This may look like a 30-minute work out after school each day, a walk around the block, a time of prayer, a short nap after school, or even an afternoon cup of coffee. Try to attend to your needs once a day in whatever way that suits you best. You are in a job where you give so much of yourself. Do not put yourself on the back burner.
As best as you can, start organized and stay organized. I learned quickly that it is not fun to dig for lost papers or assessments due to my disorganization. It is not ideal to lose notes from parents that need a response. Create your systems for organizing your classroom, student materials, and your desk! These systems need to work for you, which often comes with trial and error—and that is ok.
Plan ahead. When I first started teaching, my goal was to be planned and ready to go for one week out. Do not push off copies for the morning of—the copy line can be unpredictable. For me, this took staying at school late one day a week. I would make all of my copies for the next week and file them immediately (remember—organization). This helped ease my weekends and the rest of my weeknights.
Maintain positive parent communication. Behavioral incidents do happen, students may struggle academically through the year, and unexpected situations may arise. Start out the school year on a positive note but continue that communication through the whole year. Apps like ClassDojo and Google Voice help make maintaining communication even easier.
Protect your weekends. It can be so easy to bring work home with you on the weekends. Weekends are too short to be consumed with work. If you need to use your weekends to do work, prioritize between 1 and 3 tasks to complete. As you get in the groove of teaching, try your best to minimize work you do on the weekends. You need to recharge so that you are full and ready for your class on Monday! Remember—there will always be work to be done. There has never been a time in my entire teaching career where I had nothing to do (at least during the school year). Your to-do list will always be there but protect your weekends.
You will most likely have support staff in your classroom at some point—teacher’s assistants, para-educators, parent volunteers, etc. You are allowed to set boundaries in your classroom. Clearly communicate expectations to support staff and thank them often for how they help you.
Best of luck, sweet teacher. You will make it through your first year. Breathe, and remember to take it one day at a time.
Best,
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