How to Be Successful in Your First Year of Teaching Elementary School: Everything You Need to Know That They Don't Teach You in School

Introduction

Teaching elementary school is an art that requires much more than knowledge and organizational skills. One of the most important qualities a teacher must possess is the ability to connect with his or her students. If you do not enjoy children, most likely you will not be able to connect with them. Connecting with your students means caring about them as individuals and taking the time to understand each of them. This gives you the ability to give them the best education possible. This requires effort and commitment on your part, and it is a gift many teachers possess.

Even still, you are probably experiencing a common worry: Even though you like children, what if they do not connect with you? Your next thought may be, Even if I can connect with only half of my students, the other half could throw the whole classroom into disorder.

Relax. Remember your answer as to what made you decide to take a job as a teacher — you enjoy children, and you love helping them learn. These are qualities most young people can sense in adults. The students who cannot pick up that caring vibe right away will pick it up from the other students. As for the few who are left and are terrified or suffering from separation anxiety, they will also learn to trust you if you have a positive attitude toward your students and your work. Due to your appreciation for your students, their individual characteristics, and your enjoyment of sharing knowledge, you possess the ability to connect with your students.

Now you may be wondering if that is all you need to be successful: to connect with your students. The answer to that question is no. It does take more than connecting with your students, and that is why this book is here for you. This book will ensure you have the tools you need to be a successful and effective elementary teacher throughout your first year of teaching.

It is important all teachers (temporary or alternative certified teachers, new teachers, and veteran teachers) understand they are one of the most valuable assets to our country, even to the world. Everything in our society is now global, with people coming and going from one nation to another and taking what they learn with them. Due to our society being so mobile and our nation being so diverse, the responsibilities and the value of our teachers is immeasurable, and that fact will be discussed thoroughly in the pages of this book.

Your career choice is honorable, but it is wise to be absolutely sure this is the career you truly want. The good you can do is great and will inadvertently affect many people — not only the students and their families, but every life those students touch throughout their future. Being on the brink of becoming a new teacher, you must understand that if you are making the wrong career choice, the damage you may cause could carry long-term consequences. If you mistreat a student, the child could carry feelings of mistrust for adults throughout his or her lifetime. That is why this book will take a look at your career choice and show you the qualities of a good teacher to ensure you are embarking on a journey you will enjoy.

This book is meant to be an invaluable resource for new teachers, but even more importantly, it gives down-to-earth advice that sometimes gets lost in the usual university chit-chat, where those around you may be using terms you may not yet be familiar with. Here you will find answers to questions and worries that repeatedly whisper in your mind; worries about whether your students will listen to you, or concerns of connecting with your students to give them a better education. This is a book to help you understand the exciting yet challenging journey on which you are about to embark. There will be discussions on how to be a good teacher, the students’ perspective of what makes a good teacher, how your primary grade students think, and what challenges await you. This book will show you how to be prepared for that first day of school so you can earn your students’ trust and ease their — and your own — discomfort upon starting something new and unfamiliar.

This book will share ideas on developing lesson plans, staying on course with paperwork, and finding the time for much-needed down time. This book’s focus is to help you succeed in your first year of teaching elementary school, which will help ensure your students succeed. In Appendix A in the back of this book, you will find sample lesson plans and activities you can implement in your classroom.

In these pages, you will be provided with knowledge from first-year and veteran teachers, giving you the answers you need to make sure your first year of teaching is not only successful but enjoyable. You can find unique answers from experienced teachers on how to be an effective leader who will have a long-lasting influence on the outcome of what will be, over the course of a career, thousands of children.

You will see how each classroom contains diversity that can be used for the good of your students. Gifted students as well as students with special needs have much to offer, enabling you to become more effective as a teacher and make your job challenging but never boring. With this book, you will learn ways to bring a comfortable and enjoyable environment for learning. This book will help you show your students how to work together and achieve success. With the knowledge you receive in How to be Successful in Your First Year of Teaching Elementary School, you will have a step up on how to be a successful and effective teacher for your students, giving you more time to focus on the enjoyable side of the job.

As you read this book, you will gain knowledge of how to connect with your students, the most valuable of all tools for any effective teacher. This book will remind you as you walk into that educational facility on the first day of school, it is not only you who will be feeling anxious and excited; your students feel the same, as will their parents.

How to be Successful in Your First Year of Teaching Elementary School is a book that can be used by all new teachers today and tomorrow, providing the inspiration and encouragement needed to begin a valuable and worthy profession.

Table of Contents

Part One:

The Job

I decided I wanted to be a teacher shortly before starting my freshman year of college. I had already registered in the medical records field and said to myself, ‘Hey, wait a minute! I love children, and I don’t think I would be happy sitting at a desk all day looking at papers.’ I had spent that summer teaching Bible school and Sunday school, and decided I had better change my major. Thank goodness I did.

— Malia Jarvis, kindergarten teacher

at Shumaker Elementary in Bellevue, Ohio

Chapter 1

The Importance of Your Career

According to a World Bank report UNICEF posted, every extra year of primary education increases a person’s productivity by 10 to 30 percent. And according to a study by Durham University’s Curriculum, Evaluation, and Management Centre, the early years of education are the most crucial. This study also says the first year in a student’s educational life has an effect on the final year of the student’s primary schooling. Professor Peter Tymms, director of Durham’s CEM Centre and author of the report, said attention should be given to every year of education, but early-years education is critical. The emphasis placed on the early years of education makes teaching elementary age students an important job.

There are good parents and bad parents, and the same is true for teachers. Just as good parenting skills, or the lack thereof, have long-term consequences on children, so do teaching skills. According to a report on the long-term consequences of teacher placement and bad teaching written by authors Jessica Levin, Jennifer Mulhern, and Joan Schunk, bad teaching will lead a child to believe teachers are not to be trusted, and it can even lead to long-term effects, leaving the child to believe all adults cannot be trusted. Bad teaching can cause a student to give up academically, which can also cause the student to be viewed as a failure. Jobs and temporary job service employees tell their clients it is almost impossible to get a job without college credentials, and it is even harder to gain employment without a high school diploma.

When parents become upset over their child’s having a teacher who treats students unfairly or screams when things are frustrating, confrontations can sometimes escalate into a situation that cannot be calmed. If a teacher and the parents cannot find a solution, the administration must step in. When the administration believes there has been physical harm done to a student, the teachers’ union becomes involved. Accusations that the union protects bad teachers have been made throughout the years, and it has become so commonplace that it has caused some teachers to take a serious look at that possibility. The accusations have been so consistent over the years that there are numerous Web sites that have been created solely for the subject. A good example of this is www.teachersunionexposed.com. It is not uncommon for bad teachers to simply be moved to a different school because the administration feels it is easier than fighting the union to fire the teacher.

Due to these poorly qualified teachers, there have been studies on the long-term effects of bad teaching by organizations such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, and the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit organization that did a study and produced the Assessment of Reach and Sustainability. The New Teacher Project has done numerous studies to show there are long-term consequences when you pair unprepared or bad teachers with students; the project has stated, Principals are often blamed for failing to initiate dismissal proceedings, but even when they try to formally terminate a teacher, the data show they face a very limited likelihood of success.

The importance of protecting teachers is critical, but after bad teaching was discovered to have long-term consequences on students, it is now obvious that provisions that were constructed to protect teachers can do a disservice to many. Some rules in place to protect our teachers overshadow what should be the most basic aim of our school systems: the education of our children, according to a publication posted on The New Teacher Project Web site, www.tntp.org.

Your career as a teacher can ultimately affect thousands of children. The main concern is whether your influence will be positive or negative, which is why the decision to become a primary school teacher is an important one for many people.

Some of our most effective teachers are coming from the Alternative Teacher Certification programs. Alternative certification is a program that trains people who already have at least a bachelor’s degree, along with numerous life experiences, and helps them become teachers. These programs are tailor-made and job-specific to place teachers where they wish to be and where they will be the most effective. In 1983, there were only eight states that had an alternative route to teaching, but 20 years later, there were 43 states as well as the District of Columbia that offered some type of alternative route for certifying teachers. The number of candidates who wish to become teachers is growing. The prospective teachers work with mentors while teaching and usually go through the program working with other veteran teachers. This better prepares them for the profession, giving them more skills and thus providing students with a more effective teacher.

Let us take a look at what it takes to be a good teacher in order to help you be sure of the career choice for your future.

Characteristics of a Successful Teacher

Palms sweating, heart thumping, you enter the building where you have managed to land a job as the brand-new teacher of elementary-age students. You have spent years preparing for this day, and yet you are terrified of what awaits you. A bit uncertain of what to expect, you realize your certification justifies your new position, but it does not necessarily mean you are ready. The only thing that can prepare you for your first year as an elementary teacher is gathering as much knowledge on what to expect as possible. That is why this book was written.

What if the students you are now responsible for do not relate to you? What if they will not listen? What if little Johnny’s mother dislikes you and tries to make your life miserable? These questions and more run through your mind as you enter a world that seems to be total chaos. Voices of all ages echo up and down the hallway. Small, medium, and large people wander, entering and exiting doorways, rushing in the hallway where you now stand. You freeze on the spot, all your doubts and fears surfacing to the forefront of your brain and paralyzing you.

Now is when you need to breathe. Put one foot in front of the other and remind yourself that you are one of thousands who have lived and survived moments just like this one. You are going to love this job, enjoy your students, and quickly become a good and effective teacher. You are here to mold your students into young people who can become assets to their communities.

Now that you are standing in that hallway and forcing yourself to put one foot in front of the other, ask yourself why you decided to become a teacher of primary students. If your immediate answer is not because you love children and helping them learn, you may want to consider switching careers. If you are now making your way through that educational facility because you are sincere about helping children learn, then more than half the battle of becoming an effective teacher has already been won. Rest assured you are well on your way to being a good teacher.

There are teachers who have outstanding lesson plans and instructors whose knowledge puts them close to genius, but these teachers may fail at being an effective leader. So what makes a good teacher if not one who has excellent lesson plans or vast amounts of knowledge to share with their students?

Don Shinton is a veteran teacher who recently attended a meeting for cooperating teachers. At this meeting, teachers were asked to come up with the qualities they hoped to see in the teachers who were about to start working at their school. The answers epitomized the characteristics of effective teachers.

According to the System for Adult Basic Education Support (SABES), there are special qualities that make a good teacher. Maria Hassett, Ph.D., and Richard M. Reis, Ph.D., of Stanford University believe the following list contains the ingredients the best teachers possess:

• A love for children

• Enthusiasm for teaching

• Comfort with not knowing everything

• Perception of teaching as parenting

• A good sense of humor

• Constant reflection of your work

• A positive attitude

• The ability to adapt and change

• The desire to give your students confidence

• The desire to motivate your students

• The ability to listen to your students

• No fear of taking risks

• Tolerance of uncertainty

• Expectations of success for your students

• A sense of purpose

• The ability to learn from a variety of role models

• The desire to avoid stagnation in your lesson plans and classroom activities

Do not be concerned if you do not have all these qualities right away; you will learn many as you go. In addition, these characteristics are not all-encompassing; effective teachers may not possess all of these qualities, but most effective teachers do possess at least a portion of these traits in order to connect with their students and help them obtain the drive they need for success.

Effects of Good and Bad Teaching

It is widely known that children will not learn well if they receive lessons from an ill-equipped teacher. Studies show that when a student falls behind, they will continue on a path to failure if an effective teacher does not step in the following year. However, there can be factors influencing how a child develops other than just a bad teacher. Some of those factors are: their health, home environment, supportive parents and family, class size, and the quality of teachers he or she will have in the primary years of education. The student’s environment influences his or her ability to be successful academically. If a student has a bad attitude and a teacher does nothing to change that attitude, that student will fail. On the other hand, if an effective teacher reaches out to help that student, giving him or her more attention, praise, and encouragement, that student has a better chance of academic success.

At one time, education was assessed in terms of enrollment and completion rates. Today, we understand this is not sufficient in assessing success, and this concept of achievement has changed. A closer look at whether children are learning and retaining what they are taught has become more important. Learning and retaining has not only educational implications, but also economic. If a student is academically successful, that student has a better chance to be socially successful.

Henry Adams, an American journalist, academic, and historian, once said, A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. Ask any successful adult if they can remember a teacher who made an impact on his or her life. You will hear stories of good, effective teachers every time.

David Diaz, a physical education teacher at Southern Lehigh Intermediate School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a good example of that fact. Diaz is a teacher today because of a teacher’s influence on his life when he was a young boy. He said the reason he decided to become a teacher was because he has a great experience with his physical education teacher in middle school and high school, and I knew then that was what I always wanted to do. Diaz also admits that to be an effective teacher you must have flexibility, be even-tempered, specific in giving directions, and willing to make a fool of yourself. Diaz knows that a sense of humor is crucial when dealing with children; he sees about 600 students in his classes every three days.

A non-caring teacher can cause a student who is uncertain in his or her attitude about school to decide he or she dislikes school. On the other hand, a loving and caring teacher can help a student strive for success. The power you have as a primary school teacher is amazing; that power can also be scary. As long as you believe in your students and care about their future, you will be an effective teacher with a career full of rewarding feedback and respect.

Now that you know the exceptional possibilities that await you as a primary school teacher and are up to the challenge of helping students succeed, the next consideration is where you might want to teach.

Table of Contents

Chapter 2

Where You Want to Work

where you wish to start your career includes many choices, and to make a good choice, you will need to look at each of them in depth. To begin, let us examine these schools so you can have a better perspective on where you might want to teach.

Where to Look For a Teaching Job

There are many factors you need to consider before