First Year Stories: Walking a Fine Line

I think the hardest part about being a teacher is that you never leave your work at school.  I'm used to being a very busy person, so I didn't mind bringing home 100 tests to grade on my Tuesday night or staying up until way after my bedtime to plan an activity for next week's class.  To make matters worse, in an age where anyone can reach us at any time through email, it's even harder to break away from work.

I've been trying to leave more work at work over the past few weeks.  I try not to stay at school later than 5:00pm and I try to stop working at 10:00pm.  Of course, there are nights where I just need to grade the quizzes from 1 more class...and then I'm working until 11:00pm and of course can't fall asleep until much later than that.  I realized I needed a change this weekend when I let 1 parent email almost ruin my whole Saturday.  It actually took a second parent email to spur me to set rules (not guidelines) for when I should be doing work.

I have noticed the stress of my job affect my health and my personal relationships.  The wonderful thing about teaching is that it's more than a job, and that yes you do take hours of work home with you because the planning, grading, and emails never end.  However, in most other professions, work stays at work, and teaching should not be much different.  My mentor told me I need to make the students fit to my schedule, not the other way around.

So, I came up with a list of rules (not guidelines) I plan to follow.  If you're a new teacher, you need to read these.  It's already October and I'm unbelievably stressed out.  These rules are meant to keep your sanity, improve your mental health and relationships, and teach you to segregate work and your personal life.

1. Don't check work emails between when you leave work on Friday and when you sit down to do work on Sunday.  I try to avoid doing work serious work on Saturday (maybe some light planning), and after I let this parent email ruin my Saturday, I realized I needed to have a day just for myself.  Plus, that second email I received from a parent pushed me to create this rule, since she flat out told me not to check my work email on the weekends.  Good advice.

2. Don't stay at work later than 5:00pm.  The school is not your home, your home is your home.  Spend time after school getting ready for tomorrow's lesson(s) and gathering the materials you need to bring home to work on and then go home!  For me, this also means not checking work emails after 5:00 either.

3. Stop doing work at a set time.  Because different people have different home schedules, the time where you decide to stop doing work will be different for you.  If you have kids at home, you may decide to do a couple hours of work after they go to bed.  I try to stop doing work by 10:00pm, but I'm probably going to bump that up to 9:00pm.  You cannot spend your entire week working.  It's unhealthy.

4. Make a point to do things for you after school.  I'd put off going to yoga, watching MNF with friends, or going for a run because I had too much work to do.  You need to make time for you - remember those things called "hobbies" you used to have before the school year started?  Schedule 1 or 2 activities after school, even if it's just going for a 10 minute run or meeting friends to watch the latest episode of Glee.

One thing I noticed when I set these guidelines/rules for myself is that I was much more productive during the time I set aside to create lessons, do some unit mapping, or grade tests.  As a new teacher, the hardest thing is being able to balance your life with your job, and the line between the two becomes very thin.  Following these guidelines will certainly help keep those boundaries and keep both you and your relationships healthy.  If you have any more tips to add to this list please comment below!

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Posted by Ali B at 1:13 PM

First Year Stories: Meeting Expectations to Meeting in the Middle

As a teacher, you are always meeting someone else's expectations.  The expectations of your school, the administration, your coworkers, the students, the parents - the pressure is enough to bring on an anxiety attack.  And you have your own expectations as well - expectations for how your class will be run, how your students will behave, and how well your students will do in your class.  And you have expectations for yourself - you expect to be completely prepared for all of your lessons, you expect you can handle difficult situations with parents, students, and staff with dignity and grace.  And yet there are times (and there will be many of them) in which these expectations will not be met.

I realized that I run a very tight ship in my classroom.  My students come in, and I already have them with their planners out recording homework and their notebooks out recording today's objective and Do Now.  My morning classes greet these expectations by being very quiet.  There will be some chatting going on, but it's subdued and will usually stop when I come to see how much writing they've done in their notebooks.  To me, a quiet classroom is one I can control, and I feel my morning classes run very smoothly.

My afternoon classes are another story.  My first afternoon class comes in like a whirlwind - they need to chat with each other before they sit down.  They need to chat while they are working.  And recently, they felt the need to chat when I've been teaching.  That certainly did not meet my expectations, and I convinced myself that there was a big issue with this class.  I tried every trick up my sleeve - discipline ladders, rewarding the whole class should they not chat while I am teaching with a series of strikes.  Yet, nothing really seemed to work, and I found myself going to my coworkers with fear of losing control of my class.

My coworker had a prep during one of my afternoon classes, so she said she would peek in to see how it was going.  And after she did, she told me something I didn't expect to hear: "Your afternoon class is supposed to be like that!"  "But," I kept telling myself, "My morning classes aren't...why should this afternoon class behave so differently?"

I talked to my other 7th grade team members, and found they were having similar issues as well in terms of chatting and literal hyper activity in their afternoon classes.  My coworkers helped me see the bigger picture: they're coming off from lunch and their fine arts classes, where structure is minimal.  Then, they come to my class, where I expect them to be quiet and they just can't - they have too much pent up energy from the past two periods.  I realized at that point that it was my turn to change my expectations, instead of expecting others to rise to mine.  I set more concrete rules for when students would be disciplined, not something vague like "being loud" which I had before, but more like, "you will not chat while you are supposed to be taking notes."  I also practiced being calmer, and instead of constantly calling them back to attention with my countdown (which I only have to do once or twice with my other classes), I would stand there and wait and say, "we'll start this lab when you're ready" in a low voice.  I realized they're excited for my class and for science because they get to "do labs" - even in they're not 100% what that entails just yet, so they would quiet down pretty quickly.

Basically, the moral of this "first year story" is that sometimes you need to adapt and change your expectations.  Once I met my afternoon classes in the middle, I found myself enjoying them more.  And now that we are in the 4th week of school, I find they have also settled into my routine.  I opened my ears and my eyes to other classrooms as well, and watched as the 7th graders took forever to settle down, would run into the classroom and make a scene, or would have the absolute hardest time staying in their seats.  Moving forward, I realize that I need to not only adjust my expectations, but my teaching styles as well to fit the energy within this class.  My Do Nows need to be more concrete so they become settled quicker (a worksheet they will turn in for a grade instead of an open ended question in their notebooks) and I need to embrace the noise and the energy and realize a loud class is not a class I don't have control over.  That is not to say I need to throw away my expectations, and my students still need to know that they cannot chat while I am teaching and cannot be too loud or rambunctious during laboratory activities or experiments.

I feel that as a "first year teacher," there are so many things I was never told and a multitude of lessons I was never taught in school.  The hardest part about being a teacher is that although you are constantly surrounded by people, the profession can sometimes feel so lonely.  It is only you in that classroom, and you have no idea what is going on with other classrooms or other teachers when you are concerned only with what is going on within your four walls.  Sharing my story with other teachers helped me overcome my issues, and I hope it will help other teachers, be they first year teachers or veteran teachers, as well.

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Posted by Ali B at 10:10 AM