I Wanna Be the Very Best, That no Teacher Ever Was...

From First Year Teacher to Best Teacher Ever! How Can it Be Done?

So you just started, or are about to start your first teaching job and you want to do everything you can to help your students. You’ve learned how to give assessments and use them to drive instruction, the basics of classroom management, how to teach each subject and differentiate for special needs and individual learning styles, you even learned a variety of activities or organization ideas that you want to implement. How do you synthesize this learning now and put it towards actually teaching?

But wait, you don’t just want to do the minimum and rely only on what you have learned in school. No, you want to be a great teacher, the best teacher! You want students to be engaged in every lesson, to have fun learning even traditionally “dull” subjects, to love learning and become lifelong learners! You want your students to understand math concepts, not just memorize algorithms. You want students to use academic vocabulary and become lifelong readers. You want your students to have a desire to grow use their brain and grow new dendrites and to seek out knowledge. You want your students to say “my teacher is the best because she/he makes learning fun!”

And more than academic achievements, you also want your students to feel valuable, special and inspired by your warmth and kind direction. You want them to know they can do anything they put their mind to and also how important education is in helping them achieve that. And you want them to be good citizens of not only their country, but planet earth; learning to care for others, respect one another and encourage their fellow classmates.

You want all this and more for your students and to achieve it you must not only practice every method you learned in school, but seek out additional training and advice to make it happen. But there are so many voices out there, so many ideas, methods and activities. Where do you begin?

This is how I am feeling right now as I start my teaching career. I have such high expectations for myself and my students, but I don’t know where to begin.

On one side I have all my lofty expectations for what I want to achieve as “the best teacher ever,” yet on the other side I have the absolutes which I must focus on such as “what am I going to teach Monday?”

Monday. That is where I must begin. All the big dreams I want to accomplish with my students to engage them and make them better people must start on Monday. Every big goal that feels abstract in my mind has to be turned into a practical activity that can be done throughout my lessons, which start Monday.

How can I just focus on one day and one set of activities when there are so many numerous ideas out there which I love to make my subject exciting? Monday I am teaching 5th grade math, but right now all I can do is gawk at all the accomplished teachers on Pinterest who have math centers, math activity notebooks and adorable math charts around their classroom.

I want to be like those “accomplished” teachers, but I’m not there yet.

• I want a classroom that’s beautiful and full of colorful learning tools, but I don’t even have a teacher’s budget or teacher’s salary yet.
• I want adorable charts and custom posters, but I don’t have the time before school starts (first time teachers are often thrown into jobs last minute).
• I want an organized classroom, but right now I don’t have an organized mind.
• I want my own teaching blog, but right now I don’t even teach.
• I want students that love me and find me fun, but right now I haven’t even met them yet.
• I want to make math easy to understand and fun, but I’ve never taught it before.
• I want to explain the concepts in new ways, but I don’t even understand all the common core methods myself yet.
• I want a perfect classroom management system that’s fun and includes everyone in a positive environment, but I’ve never had 30 kids alone with me for 9 months before.

Maybe I should remember back to my days of Pokemon. You never just start as a Pokemon Master. It takes training, battles and fighting team rocket. The journey was the fun part of the game, perhaps it can be the same along the road to Master Teacher?

I am trying to jump way ahead before starting on square one.

I see the big picture and it’s overwhelming. How am I ever going to get from being a new teacher with no experience to accomplishing all these things that to me make me a great teacher?

I know what I must do. I must start at square one. I hate starting at square one. I see all these other teachers with awesome classrooms and mine is plain. I see teacher’s managing their classroom with ease and I struggle to transition through daily tasks. It’s hard for me, someone who is competitive with herself and wants to be the best at everything, to be ok with starting small and simple.

If I start small and simple I have to be ok with being, what in my mind feels like, “sub-par”. Of course I am actually exactly where I am supposed to be and doing great! However, I don’t feel that way. I have to learn to be ok with not having everything I want for myself right now and allow myself be content with not yet being who I really want to be. It’s a process.

The alternative is trying to accomplish everything at once. I may impress people by having an amazingly decorated and organized classroom, a system for everything, a blog with all my teaching ideas, resource folders, printouts and a google classroom. They will be really impressed because very few new teachers will have all these things. But, there is a reason for that. If I try to do it all now, I will become burnt out before I ever become the great teacher I am seeking to be.

 A new teacher has to focus on just getting the ropes of teaching down. A new teacher is probably, like me, hired into a position with no more than a week or two to prepare for the entire school year. Finally a new teacher doesn’t have the experience or resources that make teaching easier. Experienced teachers have classroom management techniques down to a habit and can plan lessons much quicker as they already have the previous year’s materials on hand. They simply take what they already have and know and adjust it. A new teacher must start fresh with no framework to adjust and learn as she/he goes how to manage students.

Though many teachers start out, like me, wanting to be the “best teacher ever,” we can’t achieve that goal in one year. It’s unrealistic to achieve that in your first year and you probably won’t feel comfortable with where you are at until year 2 or 3 or 4 or 5. After the basics are down to a second-nature practice, then you can start reading all the blogs and adapting their techniques into what works for you.

Where to start:

Make up your own way of doing everything

Or Get a little advice from various sources then choose one framework to adapt.

Don’t expect things to be perfect right off the bat. Instead plan out what you must have and then plan to adjust it as you go and find out what does and doesn’t work.

The basic things you need to plan before teacher are:

1)     Your classroom management plan – how will you maintain a positive class atmosphere that quickly and proactively deals with positive and negative behavior?

-        The key is to choose one that you like and then stick with it

-        Don’t worry if it isn’t the best idea in the world, don’t spend hours researching what is. Just ask 1-3 teachers what they do, pick the one you like best and follow it nearly the exact same way.

-        When something works for one teacher you can take it, make it your own and always change it, but you need that something to start with before you can move forward- so decide.

-        Keep it simple: You can have 1-3 ways to manage behavior, but don’t make it too complicated.

•  Something simple is Clip charts. They go up when they are on task, down when not. End of day they get a reward for going up
•  Raffle. Students earn tickets for doing well, lose tickets for the opposite. Raffle every Monday and Friday to see who gets a prize.
• Class points. When the entire class is working together, quiet or behaving well points are marked on the board. Alternate, marbles are added to a jar.
• Make it cumulative and when they reach 100 points they get a class party OR
•  Make it last only that week and reward them if they reach a certain number
• I am going to do this combined with the raffle. I draw 2 names a week normally, but if the class gets 5 points or more then I will draw one extra name for every 5 points achieved.

2)     Your Daily Schedule for each day of the week

-        At what time will you teach each subject and what time do you have to go somewhere like the library, recess, computer lab etc. ?

-        Create a daily routine for each class or subject

•  This should be like an outline of what you do every day. For example: Math – every day we have a warm up , then instruction, then some way for the students to practice what we learned. Every Tuesday we do a fluency practice for the first 10 min and every Friday a quiz. 
• By planning out a skeleton of what you do every day in class it makes lesson planning easy because you just fill in the blank rather than having to create a whole new lesson for each day.
• Creating a routine also helps the students know what to expect and take ownership of what they are learning and doing in class.
• I will post mine at the bottom of this page

-        Write down your weekly schedule in your teacher planner or in a table on word/google docs

3)     Lesson Plan

-        What times during the week will you plan for the next weeks lessons? Plan a regular time to lesson plan

-        You should plan 1 week in advance minimum

-        For first day of school plan out the first month if possible because you may be busier than expected

-        Plan out when all tests and assessments will be 1 month in advance at least

-        For district tests find out in advance when they will be and have them in your planner as well

4)     Your Classroom Decoration

-        If you have the luxury of your own classroom, a supply budget and time to organize your classroom then continue

-        Look for decoration ideas on Pinterest

-        Choose a color theme

• rainbow
• gray and blue
• yellow and turquoise

-    Choose an additional theme or pattern if desired

• Owls
• Back to School Kids
• Polk-dot
• Chevron
• Spongebob
• Super Heroes
• Sea Creatures
• Famous Literature
• Famous Scientists
• Alice and Wonderland

-        Find print outs and chart designs to print off Teachers Pay Teachers

-        Buy, make your own and print

-        Make a supplies list for everything you will be making

-        Get the supplies and start making your bulletin boards, banners, borders and other decorations

-        Go to your classroom and set it all up, bring a friend, spouse or paid neighbor kid to help

5)     Organize your classroom

-        Look up Pinterest organization ideas

-        Collect the ones you love in your own Pinterest folder

-        Now sort through and decided which to incorporate

-        Make a supply list of everything you need for students and for organization

• Binders
• Pencil holders
• Trays
• Paper towels
• Markers
• Colored pencils
• Paper
• Etc.

-        Make your own organizer systems at home

-        Transport everything to the classroom and set it all up

Those are the only things you really need to worry about. If I have missed anything feel free to tell me, but I’m pretty sure for day one all you need to have is your classroom management plan, weekly schedule laid out, lesson plans for the first month and lesson planning plans set, and if you have time a classroom decoration theme and organization plan with supplies.

The latter two can get really crazy and time consuming and really should only be done if you were hired with the summer to prepare. If you are like me and only have a couple weeks then just go with a very basic set up. Make a list of basic supplies and head to dollar tree. While there get a few organizers, a couple posters and some reward prizes. Then just keep your classroom simple at first and as you have time and inspiration strikes you can add to it. No one expects you to have an amazing classroom all decked out in just 1-2 weeks.

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So this is my lesson that I am sharing with you and trying to remember myself. We can be great teachers, even the best of teachers, but it doesn’t come all at once. Yes its obvious, but for the eager teacher wanting to be the best for every student she/he ever has, it’s hard to accept.

We need to live our lives as well. We need to eat, sleep, spend time with family, take time to relax and let ourselves grow over time. We can’t do these things if we spend hours a day trying to come up with the best ideas ever for every single second of classroom time.

Here is what I am doing. For now I will settle with a simple daily routine in my classes. If I set the same routine for every day then I never have to guess what I should do tomorrow. Instead when I come up with a great idea I can just adjust what is already there.  

I’ll take my daily routine and adjust it each week to include the specific pages of the textbook, worksheets, quizzes, word problems, activities, and games etc. that we will work on this week.

I will plan everything out and then in my free time on the weekend or extra planning time I will go back to a few blogs and learn a few more tricks that I can slowly incorporate one at a time.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. That’s the mantra I need to focus on.

A first year teacher shouldn’t do it all. Do what you know, slowly seek to learn more and incorporate new ideas one at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself.

My Daily Schedule for Math Class

Day	Warm up     8:30-8:45 (MF) 8:45-8:55 (TW)	Instruction and Modeling [I Do It, We Do It] 8:45-9:15 (MF) 8:55-9:05 (TW)	Guided Practice [You Do it Together] 9:15-9:40 (MF) 9:05-9:50 (TW)	Independent Practice [You Do It Alone] 9:40-9:50 (MF) 9:05-9:50 (TW)	Closure 9:50-10:00
Mon	Spiral Review & Mental Math (15 min)         8:30 - 8:45	Whole class lesson/ concept development (30 min)    8:45 - 9:15	Student collaboration time (25 min)   9:15 - 9:40	Introduce Math Games (5-7 min)  9:40 - 9:47	Read Aloud related to content OR Share out (5-7 min) Raffle 3 min
Tue	Number Talks (5-10 min)   8:45 - 8:55	Mini Lesson (10 min) 8:55 - 9:05	Teacher conducts 1:1 conferences and small group instruction Based on level, test and fluency scores 9:05 - 9:50	Games or Rich Problem Tasks (Same time as Guided Practice) 45 min   9:05-9:50	Share out 5-10 min 9:50 - 10:00
Wed	Number Talks (5-10 min)	Same as tue
Thurs	14 min Fluency Practice 8:30 - 8:44	COLLABORA	TION		10:00 Send kids back to Guinther
Friday	Spiral Review & Mental Math	Same as Monday			Raffle 3 min