Page Content
Steven W. Simpson
The following article is reprinted with permission of the author. Minor changes have been made to the original text in order to conform to ATA style.
I received a nice letter from "a newly-minted teacher in Texas." She is going to be a special education language arts teacher and is excited to have her first class. I told her good luck. She is going to need it. Do you remember your first class? How did we survive our first year as a teacher?
My first teaching job, back in the day, was in Snoqualmie, what was then a small, rural logging town in Washington State. Like all good first-year teachers, I was full of myself and figured I knew just the right way to teach my classes. Making matters worse, I was a graduate of the Evergreen State College, Washington’s first public, alternative, interdisciplinary institution of higher learning. I was a "Greener" through and through, and planned to take my Greener values into the public high school where I worked. (I still do.)
The hiring process was revealing. I was nervous and wanted the job badly. I had a wife and a new baby, and I needed the job. I was spiffed up and ready to impress the committee. When I walked into the interview room, I got my first taste of the real world of teaching. Sitting at the table were three old-timers—20-year teachers. They gave me the fish eye for about 30 minutes while I tried to impress them with how great I was. A good time was had by all.
In the end they offered me the job. They told me later they had a better-qualified applicant, but they hired me because they liked the article I had published about experiential education and I was a Vietnam vet. They said they wanted someone in the department who had some unusual experiences, someone who would try new things in the classroom. Well, I tried a bunch of new things in the classroom. They worked well, but very nearly killed me. They very nearly killed my principal, too, but he was a good guy and trusted me. I learned a great deal that first year about teaching and about myself.
I wanted all my students to be involved in their own education, so we created what we called "class covenants." A covenant is a binding agreement enforceable from within. We agreed on what we would study, how we would grade, what behaviour expectations would be, and we all signed it. It was great. Unfortunately, we spent about half the year discussing process, education law, sociology, assessment and a variety of other interesting subjects. What we did not discuss so much was the required ninth grade English curriculum. I learned that first year how easily a new teacher can get lost, how easily a new teacher can get caught up in the emotional drama of young people and forget the responsibility that goes with being the only adult and the teacher in the room.
In addition to wandering all over the known universe of learning, I was working about five million hours a week. I was creating lesson plans, reading articles, grading papers, doing all of the work of a normal teacher, plus all the extra hours needed when I would screw something up and need to do it over. My lesson plans would blow up, kids would pitch the usual fits, I would get behind grading papers or calculating grades, and I would look in the mirror and see a tired, beaten up, worn out looking stranger. I wondered what happened to that happy, energetic, joyful person so eager to teach. I was a mess.
I realized the mistake I had made trying to reinvent education in my first year. I realized the mistake I made getting too involved with the raging emotional rollercoaster all kids are. I realized I was too arrogant and self-absorbed to simply walk across the hall and ask one of those wise old teachers to help me sort the mess out. The only good news was that underneath all of the fatigue and embarrassment, I still loved the job. And my principal and fellow teachers still liked and supported me. They knew how badly I was messing up my first year. They knew I was making all the classic first-year stupid mistakes. And that was okay. It is something we all go through, and they decided that under all the foolishness was a good heart and a good teacher. They told me all this later. My first year, by my own choice, they let me suffer my self-inflicted wounds.
I survived that year. The next year I still used some of my tricks, but I taught more English and less Evergreen process. I spent more time talking with the experienced teachers about classroom management and lesson plans. I aged, not always gracefully. And now I am one of those older teachers who sit around giving the new guys the fish eye. I see how tired they are and I hear their classes blowing up on them. Still, I like them. They are good people and will be good teachers. They have big brains and big hearts. As far as I can tell, that is what counts.
The woman who sent me the letter, filled with the excitement of new adventure, will do fine. She will suffer her own failures and feel her own pain. But she is a caring and energetic person, a special education teacher, a good soul. That will be enough if she has the strength to stay with it.
So give it up for all of those new teachers. Buy them lunch. Send them a PowerPoint on something. Give them flowers or some chocolate. Pat them on the shoulder and solve a problem for them now and then. They are new teachers and they are the best.
Steven W. Simpson is editor of EdNet Briefs (www.edbriefs.com).
Also In the News
