Teacher Appreciation Week 2011

Donors Choose has made teaching easy, effective, and engaging! Donors Choose is a quick website that allows teachers to write grants for ANY item they want to enhance their teaching practices. I was always challenged with teaching science. I found the curriculum challenging because it was hard to grasp difficult concepts by showing pictures in the book. I wrote a quick and easy grant from Donors Choose for each unit in my book that incorporated hands-on application, such as aquariums, terrariums, greenhouses, an incubator, and a laptop to record our research. Donors Choose helped bring back the "love" of teaching science to me by engaging my learners and making me an effective teacher.

www.DonorsChoose.org is an online website where public k-12 school teachers can go and request materials for their classroom. Individual donors and companies will help fund our projects and make your request come true.  You just sign up on their website and create a project.  There are also facebook sites to help you out.  DonorsChoose (for donors) and DonorsChoose We Teach (for teachers). DonorsChoose is very easy to use and you will be surprised about the outcome! 

Throughout 42 years of teaching music I've learned so much! Thousands of students have walked through my classroom door! Each one deserves to be treated with respect, and in turn, they will respect us! We need to be honest with our kids. Just as we can "see through" our students, they can do the same with us! It's important that students see us as someone that's human too. I sometimes use my experiences or my child as examples when addressing/teaching a "life lesson!" I always choose my battles with students who can be disruptive. The key though is to always be fair! I have often used my sense of humor to dissipate a potential problem in my classroom. Laughter is the best medicine! One of the best lessons I have learned is to be patient! Kids will learn and shine, maybe not at MY pace, but theirs! Kids cannot learn without discipline. First year teachers need to understand that some of these things take years to develop! Enjoy the journey! There are many rewards ahead!

During your first year of teaching, you hear all sorts of advice! You read every new article you can find about teaching! You watch every video on the internet about education, strategies, trends and philosophies. You try to be the best teacher in and out of the classroom as possible! You've got endless workshops, higher education classes and committees to fill your agendas. You realize you have just signed up for a lifetime of learning. You've got parents, children, colleagues, Principals and higher ups to answer to, but there is one most important person: You. "Trust Yourself" and "Believe in Yourself."

My advice is to not panic when lessons do not go exactly as planned. Let "Monitor and Adjust" be your motto. If something is not working, adjust or just throw it out and start with a different idea.

Most new teachers think that once the lesson plans are turned it, they must be followed to the letter. Your building administer will be pleased to see you know when to change your plans.

Have a great year!

My advice to first year teachers is to be very prepared and organized.

My top ten suggestions:

-get friendly with other teachers who teach the same grade level in order to get ideas and advice from them.

-join teacher websites such as abcteach, edhelper, enchanted learning, etc.

-become involved with Donorschoose.org and wishuponahero.com if you need supplies for your classroom or if you want to help other classrooms.

-read teacher guides and come to school very prepared with what you have to teach

-don't wait until the last minute to make copies

-organize and label the books in the classroom library

-organize and label where you put your supplies so you know where everything is

-eat lunch with the other teacher everyday. Important to take a break in the middle of the day in order to refuel.

_be firm, fair and consistent

-enjoy what you do.

The biggest thing I learned my first year was that I can teach their ears off and that is all good and dandy.  However, if they don't feel a connection with me on a level other than just being their teacher I am not going to get very far.  I am the only parent some of them see during the day so I have learned that my relationship with them comes first and the education just falls right into place.  It is much easier to teach math or science to someone that wants to listen to me over someone that could care less what I say!  Get to KNOW your kids!

   I learned very quickly that classroom management is EVERYTHING!!!  My biggest piece of advice I can give new teachers is to start your year stricter than you would normally be.  You can always back off once students have gotten into the routine of following rules and procedures.  You cannot, however, make up lost ground in the area of classroom management.  If you start out too "nice" then, it is nearly impossible to establish a stricter classroom climate throughout the year!

Be organized.  

Create files at the beginning of the year for all your lessons.  For example, my language arts curriculum has 10 units, so I have 10 of the following: 

a. 10 Actual Paper files - all related worksheets and resources.

b. 10 Computer files - all created Word and Excel documents are on my desktop. 

c. 10 Labeled Boxes - for bulkier books, articles, realia.

I also created the above for each month of the year.  For example, April has everything related to Spring, Easter, Open House, art project templates with samples, etc.  Everything was there, right where I needed it.  And it is a good reminder of what I have done in past years.  This process just takes minutes each day to maintain.  Before you know it the year is over, and you'll have a great resource to use and update every year...everything will be easily accessible and available.  

Find an "old" teacher!  Make them your friend, mentor, shoulder to cry on, therapist, Dear Abbey, and mostly just be there to be your BACK UP PLAN!  When you have someone to talk you down from the ledge (sometimes on a daily basis) it makes it easier to see the brighter side of it all.

1) the right administrator -- whether this is the building principal, assistant/associate principal, head guidance counselor, etc. it helps a lot to know a "higher up" who can give you advice, guide you through policies and procedures, and back up you as necessary.

2) the front office secretary -- sometimes the administration isn't available. The people in the front office know a lot of what the administration does, know who the right person to ask is, and can often give you hints and tips about how things work.

3) the building facilities person -- worried about lesson plans and grading more than anything else? When you're pre-occupied and lock yourself out of your classroom, this person can get you back in so you can work. Plus, facilities operations people often know how things work, too.

4) the mentoring teacher -- your school may assign you a mentoring teacher, or they may not. Either way, find an experienced teacher whose opinion you trust and build a relationship. When you're having a great day or a terrible day, this teacher is the one you want to share with.

Have fun, and remember that you can learn as well as teach.

Create binder notebooks for every course that you teach.  In it, you should put your lesson plans, and every resource that you use in that unit (worksheets, quizzes, tests, vocabulary, etc.).  Put a clean copy first, followed by the answer key.  This way, you will never lose anything and you will have that personal resource to go back to the next time that you teach the same course.  And, you can add to it each year (or semester).

Always remember that when a kid is particularly rude or disruptive on a particular day that it is NEVER about you. It is always about THEM. If you take it personally, you will always be miserable.  Kids may come back the next day totally forgetting how they behaved, because it was all about them. Don't take me wrong.  Rude behavior should never go uncorrected; it just should not be taken personally.  If you truly like kids, you must forgive them and not hold a grudge.  In the long run, you may be the only consistent person in their lives.  Tough love takes a LOT of effort, but if they know that you can discipline them and still love them the next day, little miracles happen. It may be a week or several months, but your consistency will eventually win them over and if they have an occasional bad day and they know that you will still care about them, there will be less and less of them.  The following year the most difficult student will come back and greet you like a long-lost relative.

What I learned as a new teacher in that first year is to never underestimate the effect you can have on a child.  About 10 years before I had began teaching I had come upon a car accident where the mother was trapped in the car and her little girl standing outside of the car crying.  I stopped my car and held onto the little girl who looked to be about five or six years old, while the EMS workers tried to help her mother.  Sadly, the mother did not make it and I stayed with the child until her family arrived on the scene.  She didnt want to let go so I stayed a little while longer until she fell asleep in my lap.  The family asked me to attend the funeral and I kept in touch for a little while.    My first day teaching it was to a class of high school juniors and seniors.  At the end of first period the bell rang and a blonde young lady hung behind and asked to speak with me for a minute.  She said "Do you know my name" and I told her there was no possible way I could remember it after the first day she would have to give me a week.  She said her name first and last again and when I really looked at her this time I realized it was the same little girl from the accident.  She told me how she never forgot my name and never would.  I never realized how much these kids will hold onto and how one small thing can stay with them forever.  It was a great lesson for me to remember what I say and what I do in the classroom because they look to us to guide them.  That young lady told me stories all year long of things she does to help others as a result of what I did for her which I didnt really think was so much. 

We have a profession that demands self-reflection. Keeping a journal will help you work out ideas and put your teaching life in perspective. We also have a profession where students love to send us little notes, whether on fine stationery or pencilled in the margins of exam papers. Clip them and keep them. Those little notes serve as a 'refresher course" on why you entered such a wonderful and noble profession.

Forget a lot of what you learned in college.  Experience is your best bet as well as learning from others around you!  (P.S.   Don't try to be their friend....they have friends.....Be their TEACHER!) 

Have a sense of humor.  You will need to be able to laugh at yourself and allow the kids to see you as human.  If they cannot connect with you then it will not matter how proficient you are in delivering the material.  Kids need to be able to bond with you and respect you to learn from you.

The one thing that I learned my first year of teaching was to set aside personal time for myself every day.  It was really easy to work from sun up to sun down on all of the problems associated with teaching multiple preps and it even took away sleep time, so I made sure that I had at least a half an hour each evening to walk around the park, ride my bike or lift some weights.  Not only did the exercise help to clear my head, but it also ensured a good nights sleep.  Being well rested allowed me to keep a positive relationship with my students, and come up with creative solutions to new problems.

The most important thing I learned my first year as a teacher is that everyday is a NEW day....

This goes for me, for students, for parents, for colleagues...there were days that were really hard emotionally, mentally, etc.  I always had to remind myself that tomorrow would be a new day.  For the student who had a really off day, for the lesson that didn't go the way I planned, for the parent who had given me a piece of their mind, and for the colleague who wasn't very supportive, tomorrow would be a new day, where everyone would start with a clean slate.  Remembering this helped me not be so hard on others or myself because I knew that tomorrow would be a better day!