10 Tips Every Teacher Wishes They Knew at the Beginning of Their Career
March 9, 2022
Every new teacher hopes to be ready for anything at the start of their teaching career, but this rarely happens. In this article, discover tips from some teachers that they wished they had known before starting their teaching careers.
1- Classroom management is key: It is impossible to teach students anything if there are no strategies that are strong for classroom management—especially if you are a new teacher. "Make sending a student to the principal your last resort." If you adopt this strategy as a solution, your principal will know that you are capable of managing your classroom.
2- Building a classroom community: "You must build a community in the classroom before you begin teaching. You need to set aside time to get to know each of your students. If you do this early on, classroom management will be much easier. And you can do this in different ways."
3- Math is more than measurements: "I wish I had known how much pressure a math teacher faces from the administration to ensure all students perform well on tests. Regardless of the pressure, I love teaching kids how math can be a form of stress relief (tuning everything out to get an answer)."
4- Flexibility is very important: "There will be a lot of paperwork and a lot of interruptions. Events and drills take away from instructional time. You have to be prepared and learn very quickly; be flexible because your best instructional plans can easily get derailed simply because a fire alarm went off during your unit test."
5- There is no manual: "I thought an experience guide would suddenly appear in my lap. In it would be lesson plans aligned with standards that engaged all students; there is no such thing."
6- Standards are not everything: "As a new teacher, it is easy to feel that every minute of class time must be justified by a standard. However, it is important to relax and enjoy the moments of connection with your students. It is okay if these moments are not directly supported by a standard."
7- Mentors are important: "Find someone to plan with—such as your more experienced coworker. You will learn more than you would in any other way. And enjoy the summer. This unpaid leave is not a job perk; you need it so you feel refreshed and excited for the upcoming school year."
8- Reading and writing affect everything: "I wish I had known that reading and writing are crucial in learning science! I wish I had learned how to be a reading teacher, regardless of the subject I would be teaching."
9- School supplies are scarce for a reason: "I wish I had known that it can be difficult for some children to bring school supplies. Automatically, we might feel it is a lack of effort on their part, but I finally realized that simply showing up to school takes a tremendous amount of effort for some children."
10- Hold on until next year: "It is exhausting to be a new teacher. But the good news is that the second year of teaching will be better than the first. You will have assignments created, and you will be much better at both classroom and time management, so hang in there."
Originally published in Arabic. This English version was produced with AI-assisted translation; the Arabic original remains the reference.
