The New Teacher Advice Column

If you haven’t already read part 1 of our New Teacher Advice Column, you can find it here.

Teaching in the beginning stages can be challenging, even on the good days!

One thing that can make the transition into teacher life easier is when teachers stick together and help each other out. They say we are stronger together, and that is so true when it comes to educators!

With this in mind, we asked our amazing community of teachers this question:

What is one piece of advice you would give a new teacher?

The response was incredible! Here is a highlight reel of what they told us:

The person who is going to learn the most in your classroom is you!

You’re going to make mistakes… with planning, teaching, managing a child’s behaviour and that’s ok.
Pencils are NOT gold. There are 1,478,923 other ways to teach responsibility in your classroom. Do you need to raise your blood pressure and fuss every time a kid needs one? Nope! Just give them the dang pencil.

Create relationships with the support staff, especially the school secretary (read about ways you can do that here).
Progress, over perfection, remember that sometimes done is better than perfect.

Remember, they’re not giving you a hard time; they’re having a hard time. The kids that are the hardest are often the ones that need you the most.
You get better EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. The first year is pretty much bootcamp.
You can’t win them all. You can try to teach them all but do not let the one you can’t get to take the wind out of your sails, the others need you. Someone else will be able to meet the needs of that student.
Enjoy the kids. You’re not just a teacher to them, you’re so much more.

Tell children they are important and belong in a sincere way
Create a tradition at the start that will keep track of every student that you teach. Take a photo of every class, have them sign a book, keep a file of every class list, etc. I didn’t, but I wish I had documented my 20+ years.
It’s okay to ask for help, and it’s totally okay to go at your pace. You would never expect to run alongside and keep up with a veteran marathon runner on your very first run so it’s okay if you can’t keep up step for step with the veteran teachers. Just do what you can, and that’s enough!

“It was my first day of teaching. I told my teacher friend that I was scared and she said, just don’t let the children know!” Lynda

We know these words of wisdom from colleagues and teachers all over the world will help you to remember that you are not alone, but in it together with us!

If you found these tips helpful, you will want to get your hands on the FREE document we put together with all the teacher advice we collected.

To make it easier to absorb all the excellent teaching advice, we have organised the feedback into categories, from classroom set up to communicating with parents to managing behaviour. We have covered it all!