Am I Making a Mistake?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been teaching for 15 years. The last 10 have been in 6th grade at a large and diverse public middle school in Northern Virginia. I don’t think having a degree in education is a necessity (my ed courses were pretty useless), but you do need thick skin, clear boundaries, excellent communication, good organization, strong work ethic, and perseverance. It’s a tough job, particularly the first couple years. And even tougher for teachers in tested subjects like language arts; lots of pressure to get good SOL scores. Expect to work most evenings and weekends those first couple years. But if you stick it out, it eventually gets easier and it can be rewarding. Plus, you get the summers.

Seek out mentors. Borrow or purchase lessons and materials from others that first year; you can reinvent the wheel later. Enforce rules consistently. Contact home for both bad and good events. Figure out what admin actually cares about and focus on that thing. Post everything online; it’s a huge pain but keeps students and parents happy and keeps admin off your back. Try to plan and teach with your co-teacher, but accept that you will probably do more work than them; it’s rarely an equal relationship. And save every positive note and email that you get; they are good to read on tough days.

Good luck.

I am saving this for future reflection and reference. TY for this very valuable advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Commonwealth Academy has a posting for a 5th grade humanities teacher.

TY I will check it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
OP, you said that you had over 20 interviews, but only this one offer. Did you receive any feedback from those interviews or did anyone give you advice as to why you did not receive other job offers?

My main concern is that you are coming into teaching as a "fall back" job and that you may not have the passion and desire to really teach. Did you think you would be a teacher as you went through college?

It takes a lot of determination and hard work to teach at any level. Yes, it can be a very fulfilling career if you really dedicate yourself to it. However, there is much, much more to teaching than the content. Especially these days. Teaching will make you think about human behavior and motivation a LOT. You will come to analyze yourself in ways that you have not had to do before. You will reflect a lot on your own strengths and weaknesses as a human being. Are you ready to be completely honest with yourself and your students? Kids can see through adults in a nanosecond. They will try you. They want to know if you truly care about them, not the content so much. It's a lot of responsibility. Are you good at gaining trust, especially with children who are going through some hard times themselves?

Teaching will test your inner strength and confidence to a degree that it has not been tested before. You have plenty of content readiness as many people do who come into teaching. What you may not have is the emotional/psychological readiness. This is why student teaching and the classes in management, methods, and child psychology are important (those pieces of the licensure). I would highly recommend that you take the licensure classes and student teach this year if possible.

I was almost 30 years old when I started teaching (in a middle school). I had worked at another career for 5 years after college. It was a huge change for me and I'm not sure I would have had the maturity to really do it if I had started straight out of college (but some people do). I went through all the classes and student teaching before I was employed. I'm glad I did. I enjoyed my career, learned a heck of a lot along the way, and met really great people. Good luck OP.

Signed,

been teaching for 32 years

Thank you for taking the time to write this from the heart and for proffering me your perspective as a teacher with considerable experience. No, I have not received any feedback nor other offers, as of yet; however, I have only been interviewing for about two weeks. I want to be an educator. I just had a different vision of how exactly that would manifest, but I trust that the universe is guiding me where to go. I believe my empathy for others and authenticity will be an asset here. I agree that I may not have the emotional/psychological readiness, and that is terrifying to me, but I won’t know that until I try my best. Rest assured, I will not be alone; I will have a co-teacher and mentors with more experience. No one ever asked, but I’m actually 46. I am still seriously considering in enrolling in the licensure program at GMU. It is another 36 hours of comprehensive coursework.

You’ve got a great attitude about this. You probably aren’t emotionally or psychologically ready, but very few new teachers are… even the ones coming to the job straight out of their education undergrad training. Where you’re ahead is that you actually realize this already and you’re not coming into it with a false sense of security.

I posted above about the alternative certification programs. Many of us came into teaching this way. Yes, the first couple years are hard, but you’ll have support. You are doing all the right things already: reading about strategies, taking notes from experienced teachers, keeping an open mind. That’s why I see this working out. (I’ve been a mentor teacher for the last ten years.)

When you get to an inevitable rough day, don’t let it crush you. This is a job with a short memory - what went wrong will blow over and you’ll get another chance. Talk to your supportive coworkers and they’ll uplift you with “I’ve been there” types of stories. And they are still standing, so you will as well.

Good luck, and welcome!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Have you ever worked in a school? Student teaching? Substitute?
The people on DCUM are generally mean and hate FCPS so I wouldn’t give their comments and validity. However, teaching in general is hard and teaching middle school is only for a very special group of people. The people who love middle school absolutely love it and wouldn’t leave. But everyone else either goes higher or lower. It’s a unique age.

Yes, I performed a practicum at INTO Mason, working with older ELs. I taught Academic English to international students who mostly matriculate into GMU once they complete their program and pass the TOEFL. I enjoyed that a lot. There are not many positions working full-time with adult ESL students that I have found. I do not have a PhD, so that seems to be precluding me from teaching at the collegiate level.

So, I am sorry but that’s not teaching in a K-12 school which is very very different and probably why you aren’t getting hired. As a teacher with a degree in education I took classes that taught classroom management, assessment, child development, how to teach, and so on. I spent 3 semesters with one full day a week in a classroom and then one whole semester student teaching all day, every day. Teaching is hard and if you love it then it’s worth it, but you will just leave it it’s not something you are passionate about and that’s not fair to the students or your colleagues. If it’s not what you actually want to do, please don’t take the job.
If you think you might like to go back and take the appropriate courses then maybe take an IA job or substitute. See what it’s actually like to work in K-12 schools without being completely alone in the classroom. You would probably learn a lot about teaching and about if you’re really interested in it as a career.

Do you also have a degree in your subject matter? Just curious.

DP. Many teachers do not have Education degrees. For example, my degree is in English and I used a county program to gain my certification. I’ve been teaching for 20 years now. I work with a lot of people who came to teaching in similar ways; some had careers in other fields before transferring to teaching.

We didn’t get the benefit of undergraduate coursework in management, etc., but we have strong content knowledge. People who go through these programs often get mentors to help them through the first year. I suspect it’s a harder route, but I stand here as proof that it can be done.

TY. There is something to be said about being an expert in whatever you intend to teach. Both of my degrees are also in English, with a concentration in linguistics. This means that not only have I studied composition, literature, writing about literature, creative writing, non-fiction writing, theory and inquiry, etc., I have also taken semester-long classes in first language acquisition, affect in language acquisition, grammar and pedagogy, syntax, semantics, pronunciation and pedagogy, etc. For my cornerstone project, I conducted a study on the effects of the lockdown on the sentence complexity of children. My practicum experience is in teaching academic English. There is something to be said about being an expert in something, if that is the something you intend to teach. Also, in what I lack in talent, I make up for with the ability to learn quickly, as well as determination and hard work.

After considering all of the input you all were kind enough to offer me here, I believe I am capable of teaching English at a MS level.

Try it - why not? You certainly seem to THINK you can do it with no practical experience. What’s the worst that happens - you crash and burn? There is a reason that a notoriously difficult school is the only one to offer you anything.

I have been thinking much more about what you wrote. You have no inkling of what I had to overcome and managed to achieve in order to be in this position where I can choose to seize this opportunity and not wait around for another, more cushier one. I wonder, why you were not the first person in line for this opening. The pay is the same. The benefits are the same. Arguably, the commute might be a bit brutal, but I there is something to be said about working somewhere your capabilities will be most appreciated. Certainly, your two degrees in education and more substantial practical experience have better enabled you to teach anything, to anyone, at any level, and in all likelihood, this school would have hired you long before me, so why would you not be overwhelmingly eager to transfer to a notoriously difficult school, where your capabilities are clearly most needed and will potentially more of an impact? I am sensing some hypocrisy here. So, if you agree to step up to this task, I shall surely stand aside.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for solidifying my choice. If anyone has any advice or words of wisdom, I would highly appreciate if you would be so kind as to share them with me and I will apply them to the best of my ability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you all for solidifying my choice. If anyone has any advice or words of wisdom, I would highly appreciate if you would be so kind as to share them with me and I will apply them to the best of my ability.

If this is OP, what was your final decision?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you all for solidifying my choice. If anyone has any advice or words of wisdom, I would highly appreciate if you would be so kind as to share them with me and I will apply them to the best of my ability.

If this is OP, what was your final decision?

I will be honored and genuinely gratefulto sign the contract.

[Anonymous]

Keep us updated. Parents need to understand why their kids’ teachers are leaving.

[Anonymous]

Classroom management, especially dealing with behaviors, is going to be really important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you accept the job please don’t leave during the year. That puts a huge burden on your colleagues and crushes the students. I have students who still talked about teachers who left two years ago. A lot of kids take it very personally.

I have carefully considered that and I am ready to make a commitment.

Don’t make that commitment at risk of your own mental and physical health. If you need to leave in the middle of the year, leave in the middle of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you all for solidifying my choice. If anyone has any advice or words of wisdom, I would highly appreciate if you would be so kind as to share them with me and I will apply them to the best of my ability.

If this is OP, what was your final decision?

I will be honored and genuinely gratefulto sign the contract.

Congratulations, OP! You’ve got this.

I’ve said this before, but it seems worth repeating: force yourself to bounce back from those bad days. You get chances to start over, and it gets easier.

When you feel overwhelmed, remember what you’ve already accomplished and don’t focus as much on what still needs to get done. You won’t be able to get it all done, but you can do a great job on a lot of it.

Don’t take it personally when a student says something cruel. It’s hard not to, but that insult came from a child who is likely feeling scared or insecure. You’ll develop a thick skin if you don’t have one already.

Sometimes administrators are helpful, but the best help will come from other teachers. They are in there with you, whereas administrators have been out of the classroom so they may not remember what it’s really like. If your observations aren’t great at first, don’t worry too much. Ask a fellow teacher to take a look at them and see what advice they have.

Find yourself a quiet place in the building. You may not get a lot of time there, but 20 minutes to yourself is precious and calming. I found a bench in a back hallway that’s my spot, and it gives me a break from the classroom. Sometimes the same walls get claustrophobic.

Be the teacher who knows the students. That’s the best thing you can do to develop strong classroom management. Go to after school activities and see them in a different environment. They’ll remember you cared enough to stop by.

Give yourself 10 minutes at the end of the day to triage. What needs to be done before you leave? What can you take home? What can wait for the morning? I keep a notebook at my desk with running to-do list. I highlight the ones I have to get done *that day*. (Also: I don’t throw away old pages. I keep them as a reminder of all I’ve accomplished. It makes me feel better.)

Hope some of this helps!

[Anonymous]

Here's my advice. If you are assaulted by a student, file a police report no matter how much your admin pressures or threatens you. Also, know that sitting in your car before or after work, crying, because it is just so hard is typical. Don't feel ashamed or wonder if something is wrong with you. All of us have done it, frequently. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes you learn to stop caring, but the crying does decrease over the years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's my advice. If you are assaulted by a student, file a police report no matter how much your admin pressures or threatens you. Also, know that sitting in your car before or after work, crying, because it is just so hard is typical. Don't feel ashamed or wonder if something is wrong with you. All of us have done it, frequently. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes you learn to stop caring, but the crying does decrease over the years.

I’m the PP and I second this. Crying in your car is common, I’m afraid. Nothing is wrong with you if/when this happens to you. You’re just tasked with a demanding job that wears away at your mental and emotional strength. The only people who will “get it” are other teachers who have been there… and there are many of us. You have support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's my advice. If you are assaulted by a student, file a police report no matter how much your admin pressures or threatens you. Also, know that sitting in your car before or after work, crying, because it is just so hard is typical. Don't feel ashamed or wonder if something is wrong with you. All of us have done it, frequently. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes you learn to stop caring, but the crying does decrease over the years.

+1. Try to find a trusted colleague or two as soon as you can. They will be your lifeline. Also, don't hesitate to submit discipline referrals. Administrators who are not good at their jobs will try to gaslight you into not submitting referrals but your first concern besides safety is to cover your own a**. A student who makes threats, puts hands on anyone or tries to, or destroys school property needs to be written up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you all for solidifying my choice. If anyone has any advice or words of wisdom, I would highly appreciate if you would be so kind as to share them with me and I will apply them to the best of my ability.

If this is OP, what was your final decision?

I will be honored and genuinely gratefulto sign the contract.

Congratulations on making this decision and finding a job. I’ve been following and read all of the posts. I’m the experienced teacher who posted some of the worst things you could encounter and told you to compartmentalize.

You read every response and thoughtfully responded to everyone. You seem like you want to learn and eager to try. That’s fantastic. There will be bumps and there will be challenges. There are many of us out here that will support and help you. Please post if you need advice and encouragement at any time. I’ve been teaching a different content area for almost 30 years now but so much of it is classroom behavior, how to deal with students or families or admin or other teachers, what to do when….

Also more advice, do not spend a lot of your own money on your classroom. Its a slippery slope and some teachers spend way to much on things you don’t actually need. Your room doesn’t need to look Pinterest perfect.