First Year Priorities

Dear Sarah,

I am going into my first year of teaching. If you could give a list of your top 5 personal priorities, what would they be?

Sincerely,

First Year Priorities

Dear First Year Priorities,

Your question has really made me pause ever since I first read it; largely because of that one word you added, “personal.” You didn’t ask about classroom management or arranging desks. You didn’t ask about assessment or lesson planning. (All of which are mightily important and worth all kinds of time and care.) Instead, I think you have some wisdom beyond your years, because your question seems to know that unless we’re real, live, human beings in the classroom, our students might comply with, but they probably won’t trust us.

So, here you go. A list of my top 5 priorities for keeping the person in teaching.

1. Know your students. Everyone has two stories: their life story and their learning story. You have to read both of them. Again and again. It will remind you that everyone is more than a test score.
2. Don’t be perfect. Let’s face it, none of us are. So why pretend? Be transparent about your own learning struggles, and more importantly how you used them to launch you into the rest of your life.
3. Focus on the smallest of positive moments. There have been years when I have had to write down 3 good things that happened every day, and often they were things like: George brought his pencil. Learning isn’t like the movies with these huge epiphany moments. Usually, it’s the momentum of all kinds of tiny changes that finally coalesce. So watch for and take pride in those.
4. Laugh. Every single day. I took myself WAY too seriously the first couple of years I was in the classroom. And it prevented me from being fully present. It kept me worried more about myself than the kids in front of me. I learned that the more I laughed with my students, the more I connected with them.
5. Throw yourself into life. Yes, throw yourself into your classroom, but in equal measure, throw yourself into living. I’ve learned that the less of a life I have, the more difficult it is to connect with my students, which can be a little contrary to logic. But if we’re going to bring the rest of the world inside our four classroom walls, we better have pathways to it.

With Teacher2Teacher