The Best Advice You Will Get All Year.... Priceless

Six boxes of colored pencils: $10.00

New clothes for picture day: $52.00

A current year agenda book: $12.00

The advice you get from New Teachers Newsletter.... priceless.

You will get a lot of advice from people in education over your career.  Some of it is worthless, some of it is valuable, but there will be something out there that is without a price tag.  For me it was never given.  If there was one thing I wish someone had told me my first year, it is this:

Do not be a friend.

Everyone wants to be the cool teacher.  EVERYONE.  If you say you don't, you're lying. And that means you want to be the cool teacher even more because the perception is that the cool teacher can't care about being the cool teacher. So, stop lying to yourself, because you aren't fooling any of us.

I distinctly remember my first day: I remember how the classroom was set up, what I was wearing, and exactly how I was leaning against the teacher's desk with ten minutes to go in the period, just shooting the breeze with the 8th graders, because we had discussed the syllabus and, h'well, that's all we needed to cover the first day.  Because I was, after all, the cool teacher.

I also remember how the rest of that year the students grew increasingly unruly, loud, obnoxious, and rude.  I will always remember the bad days of that class, even though there were so many of them.  Starting off relaxed and trying to establish order after that did not work for me.  So please, please - Please! Learn from my mistakes and do not try to be a friend.

As an authority figure you need to establish authority.  That means communicating the expectations of your class as early as possible. Some will argue that means no smiling! no laughing! no fun!  I do not subscribe to that theory because that is not me.  However, classroom management is not a natural skill, and depending on your group of students that skill will need to be refined by the year.

You can do this in a friendly way.  But that does not mean you are a friend.  Establishing rules is vital in any relationship: parent/child, husband/wife, employer/employee, even between friends (did you honestly go to that party and not invite me?) so don't feel like a meanie.  Because the 'cool teacher' who has no rules always ends up being the hated teacher when they try to crack down on the ridiculosity that becomes their class.

There you go, the best advice you will get all year.  

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