The 140 fourteen and fifteen year olds has now whittled down to about 125 (Don't worry, nothing bad happened - class sizes were balanced eventually and some students moved) now fifteen and sixteen year olds. As I reflect on this whirlwind of a year, I've come up with a list of things that I wish student teaching had taught me. Without further ado, let's begin.
1. The first day of school is a nightmare. Having student taught only during the Spring semester, I was spared the horror of the first day of school, and was not at all prepared for what that day brought. I'd been preparing for it for several days. My syllabus was all ready to go and I had 150 copies of it made, just in case. I reviewed my plans for the first day about five times the night before and at least 2 or 3 the morning of, but I still wasn't really ready. There wasn't exactly a whole lot of training that covered what to do on the first day, but I thought I had it all figured out. I would welcome them, have a get-to-know you activity, go over the syllabus, and last but not least, review the lab safety guidelines. I was not prepared for the 43 students who showed up to my fourth period class when there were only 27 desks and 6 lab stools. I was not prepared to learn all of the new names and nicknames all while figuring out how to distinguish between Jalen, Jaylon, and Jaylen (who were all in the same class, of course). There really isn't any way to fully simulate the first day of school. You never know what is going to come at you, so my advice to next year's first year teachers: be prepared for anything and everything to go wrong, because it just might.
2. Floating isn't as fun as it sounds. I'm a science teacher, so last summer when I was all excited about my first teaching job and buying classroom supplies, it never once crossed my mind that I wouldn't have a classroom of my own. I had heard of floating, of course, but they wouldn't do something like that to a science teacher, would they? Turns out, they would. Really, I'm not sure why we would want to call something so inconvenient a light and fun word like "floating." I think "carpetbagging" or "migrant teaching" are more accurate terms, but I digress. I was devastated when I learned that I wouldn't have my own classroom because I had spent the better part of the summer dreaming about what it would look like and how I would set it up. Once I came to terms with that disappointment, I started doing my own research on what floating was really like to try and prepare myself for the unique challenges I would face as a floating teacher. I knew from the get go that organization was going to be difficult because I would be storing papers in two different rooms and constantly hauling supplies back and forth. In my next blog post, I'll share some of the ways that I tried to stay organized. (Spoiler alert: not everything I tried actually worked). In the end, the biggest challenge was not having my own space in the school. A lot of teachers' classrooms are essentially a mini home away from home and without my own, I felt a little homeless and like I was less a part of the school than the other teachers who had their own rooms. My biggest tip for any first-time floaters out there is to try and find an unused space and make it your own. Maybe see if the school has a seldom-used conference room or office that you can make use of on your off period. Set up a space where you can be productive and get some work done outside of a classroom.
3. It is OK to send kids to the office. The entire semester I was student teaching, I think my mentor sent one or two kids to the office. When I asked her about it, she said that she just doesn't call the office to come get kids often because she doesn't want to be the teacher that the principals all roll their eyes at and ignore whenever she calls the office. This made sense to me, so I pocketed this advice and decided that I would do everything in my power to handle all discipline myself. Needless to say, my first few months did not go well. For some reason, students don't seem to take discipline from a teacher as seriously as discipline from a principal. One day, one of my mentors observed one of my classes and afterwards they asked why I didn't send three specific students to the office for their behavior. I didn't have a good answer for that. Somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself that not being able to handle discipline myself meant that I wasn't a good teacher. After all, good teachers never have to deal with major disciplinary issues, right? (Cue sarcastic laughter). After that point in time, I started sending disruptive students out into the hallway and handing out office referrals left and right. For some time, it worked, but later on I noticed that the students who were constantly getting written up were either resentful (even if their behavior was 100% inexcusable and they knew it) or they no longer cared, leading to further discipline issues. (Side note: I personally feel like discipline is a constantly changing arena because the students are evolving faster than we are at the moment, so punishments that might have been effective a few years ago are no longer compelling enough to incite behavior changes.) The takeaway from this section is this: don't feel like you have to do everything on your own, especially discipline. Principals and SROs are on campus for several reasons, one of which is to deal with student discipline, so don't think that you can't reach out to them for help in handling issues with a student.
4. High school fights are real. They do happen, sometimes in class, and the students will laugh at you if you "overreact." Apparently white people take fighting too seriously, or so my kids tell me when they laugh at how I reacted to the two fights that happened in my first period class this year. I was taught a few things in my teaching program about fights, namely don't get in between the two kids or try to break them up because there's a good chance you will get hit. I kept this advice in mind when I became sandwiched between two of my students with their fists balled up and rage blinding their eyes. In addition to this, I did learn a few other valuable lessons from experiencing these fights first hand. When there is only one student who is clearly unhinged, send the calmer student out into the hall while you try to calm the first student, because there's a chance the calm one might actually listen to you as opposed to the one who has already decided to hit someone. Secondly, I learned that if fights are a common occurrence in a specific class, talk to 2 or 3 students you trust in the class and instruct them all to go straight to an SRO or a Principal because there's not enough time to fiddle with the phone when two kids are punching each other in the face.
5. You will be exposed to some of your students' serious issues. The first week of school back in August, I had a student in the SPED program tell me that he had a knife and was going to kill himself. Needless to say, I was not expecting to hear something like this so early in the year. All I could do was keep a calm face as I was freaking out on the inside and when I got into my car that afternoon I started crying. Some of your students may have rough issues at home or a difficult past, and they bring that baggage with them to school everyday. One of my students' mother put her up for adoption as a high school freshmen while another lives with an old friend of his mother's because his parents are out of the picture. Some students have major health problems ranging from broken bones to diabetes, mental health issues, and even cancer. Your heart aches for these kids all while reminding you just how grateful you should be for your own imperfect life.
I'm sure I could probably keep on going, and maybe I will in a future post, but I think this pretty much sums up a lot of my experience from this past year. Now I get to look forward to a whole new set of challenges I'm sure that I'll face in year two.
Leave me a comment if you've faced some of these same issues or if you have any heads ups for what I can expect for next year as a second-year teacher.
