Reflections on My First Year of Teaching

As I am writing this a few weeks after finishing my first year of teaching, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on things I did well, and things I wish I had done differently. I want to start by noting that this is not a list of advice for incoming first year teachers. There is so much advice out there for first year teachers, and most of it is good advice! If I do give advice, it's not just for first year teachers! If I had to describe what I am writing here, I would say it is as much a memoir as anything else.

Mentorship

If I had to give one piece of general life advice, it would be to pick your own mentors.

I chose the first college I went to because they made a point of assigning students with several different mentors to help with our transition to college, including someone whose entire job was to be a mentor. I met with my assigned mentor the required once per semester to choose classes, and the advice that shaped my college experience came from dropping in to talk to some of my favorite professors and the person from ResLife who was in charge of submitting work orders to maintenance.

It is important to have mentors, but in my experience, the best mentoring relationships happen organically. It does help to have mentors who have had training in effective mentoring, but if you are not clicking with the mentors you have been assigned, there are lots of people who have this kind of training. One thing that I found especially helpful was having mentors who I know shared my opinions on the most effective teaching styles, which made it easier to accept advice I didn't like. I also found it helpful to have multiple mentors so I could get a second opinion on advice I didn't like. My favorite mentors are the people I trust to give me advice in whatever area I need it--it is thanks to one of my math mentors that I was able to find a primary care physician I like!

As a first year teacher, I was extremely lucky to have a relationship with one of my district's mentors while I was in college, and I was able to have her assigned as my mentor by special request. That opportunity wasn't just luck, though--I met my mentor because I found and attended professional development workshops that interested in me, and became a part of the community at the CRR, the organization that facilitated this professional development.

I would also recommend being on the lookout for inspiration anywhere and everywhere you go. My life and my teaching has been shaped by fabulous intentional mentorship (THANK YOU Elisabeth and Melissa), but also by things my colleagues or students said, things I saw on Facebook or TikTok, or even something casually mentioned at a phonics training that gave me the solution I didn't even know I was looking for to help my swim lesson students (FYI, if you make the m sound underwater you will blow bubbles out your nose).

There are so many people who have helped me survive my first year of teaching, both with support this year and for setting me up for success before now. I'm not even going to try to list everyone because I know I would miss people. Just know that if you supported me in any way this year, I love and appreciate you!

"Start the year Tough"

This is a piece of advice that I thought I was following. I thought I knew what my expectations were and I was ready to enforce them. Except that I really wasn't. So here's what I would say to my past self: it is super easy to let up on things later, but if you try something new and it doesn't work, it is going to be an uphill battle to get more strict. For example, one of the fabulous ideas my Neurospicy self had was to make a fidget library available to my students, so they could just quietly get a fidget when they needed one without disrupting the class. The problem with the fidget library was that the kids kept getting up to switch their fidgets out whenever they saw someone else using one that looked like fun. The kids also didn't know how to use fidgets appropriately.

For all future awesome structure ideas like this one, I would stick with what is tried and true for the first few weeks of school, because I don't want to have to un-create any of the expectations I have at the beginning of the school year. Then, I will tell the kids I want to try something new, and I don't know if it is going to work yet. I will be sure to make it clear that if we end up not keeping the new procedure, it doesn't mean anyone is in trouble, it just means that it wasn't helping us be successful. Depending on how the new procedure goes, I would also consider giving students a chance to share how they thought it went, and if they have any suggestions to make it go better.

Grow Our Brains

One of the phrases I used the most this year is how we are working to grow our brains. I think this phrasing was really helpful for students to be reflective, and I definitely used it a lot to help students get back on task, as well as to congratulate students as they made progress. My district is using learning targets and success criteria with what are we learning/why are we learning it, and growing our brain is always a part of that conversation in my class! I had a few students that I just had to hope if admin ever asked them why they are learning something, they would ask follow-up questions about how they are growing their brains.

Cutting Corners (but only literally)

This is something that worked out well for me and I would highly recommend! Every primary teacher I know has the problem of getting kids to the right page in their consumables, and no matter what your solution, it always seems like there should be a better way. My district uses consumables for math which include an exit ticket. At the end of the lesson, students work quietly on their exit tickets, and when they are done they raise their hand BEFORE CLEANING UP THEIR MANIPULATIVES and I come over and record their level of proficiency (yay, formative assessment!). Instead of marking their work as complete with a star, I cut the top left corner of all of the pages in their book up to the one we just completed. When I am really organized, I cut the corners past any activities we aren't using from the next day, but even when I don't turning to the first page that hasn't been cut gets the kids pretty close to the right page. After demonstrating a couple of times, all but two or three of my students were able to get to the right page independently.

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