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Dear Dr. Bird - Question of the Week

First Class!  First Tears!

Dear Dr. Bird,

Recently you spoke to our faculty to open our school year, and I want to say thanks!  I was motivated and energized, but now that we are rolling along to start the school year I am scared to death!  I am a new teacher and it’s my first semester to ever teach on my own!  After having a couple of days with the students I am exhausted and (I hate to admit it) I ended the day yesterday with tears.  A few disruptive students are starting to push their limits early and it is overwhelming to me.  I don’t want to be a witch, and I want to start things right.  I want to be the best teacher I can for the next few decades!  Help!!!!!

Young, Lost, and Sad

Dear Young,

Thanks for your kind words.  I admire your courage to say “Help!”  If you keep this up, you will have a long and energetic career as a teacher.  As you are starting your career, take a look around you and notice who is happy and who is miserable.  There are happy and miserable people in all work environments.  What separates them is ego.  I’ve known teachers who have been in the classroom for 35 years and they still have that sparkle in their eye and a smile on their face when they describe their school day.  The reason?  They talk – a lot (not gossip, not whining, not complaining).  They talk about their craft.  From research we know that the schools that improve the most will place high value on teachers helping teachers, teachers talking to teachers, teachers mentoring teachers, groups of teachers talking about what works and what doesn’t work.  The key to your sanity is to never be afraid to say Help!   The miserable ones will always lock themselves in their rooms, blame the kids, and blame the parents.  You can’t change the cards you are dealt, the only thing you can change is how you play them.  Look around your district for literacy coaches, instructional coaches, special education specialists, and simply find those happy teachers and pick their brains as much as you can.  Have lunch with them (don’t dine with the whiners! They will suck the joy out of your life!)  If you spend time with the positive ones, you will always strive to change, you will never feel alone, and you will always move forward.

Another thing I would like to commend you on is your ability to start early.  If something doesn’t feel right on the first day, it’s not a very good idea to wait until it gets worse.  A quick tip- spend your first week (or longer- however it takes) trying to establish the behavioral norms in your classroom.  The psychologist Robert Brooks offers wonderful advice by recommending that we throw the books aside to practice and talk about appropriate behaviors.  First - Create a dialogue with your students by asking them to collaborate on the classroom responsibilities.  What should be our rules for our class?  How should we act this year in order to get the most out of our classroom?  Let them voice their opinion on how students should act.  I recommend this activity for Kindergarten through Graduate School.  Why?  Because we need to talk about civility in order to create a conducive environment.  Kindergarteners need to talk about distracting others, graduate students need to talk about shutting off their cell phones and showing up to class on time.   Instead of complaining and screaming “These people should already know how to act!”  It’s far more productive to start the conversations early.  Second-  Ask your students, “How will we remember the rules?”  Post them on the board?  Tape them to the desk? Put them on a bulletin board?  Third-  What will be the consequences if you break the rules?  Leave class? 

The key for all teachers (of all years of experience and of all ages) is to make yourself vulnerable, collaborate, ask everyone for opinions (fellow teachers and students alike).  Don’t simply hope people will act a certain way- talk about it!  Keep asking for help, keep trying new things, and never give up if teaching is what you really want to do.  Thirty years ago I started out as a High School Health Teacher.  I was scared then, and still am!  I simply decided that I would rather do it scared and keep trying to do it right than to not try at all.  In the end I think it’s worth it.  I want to always do well, and it’s okay to ask for help.

The greatest tragedy in education today is not the drop-out rate of students, but what about the drop-out rate of teachers?  Research suggests that half of all the teachers who start in the business today will have left the profession within five years.  This is so sad, but I understand why.  Teaching is one of the most difficult jobs on earth (regardless of what you hear from outsiders who tell you otherwise and insist you do it for the vacations).  If it were easy, no one would ever leave these jobs.  If you believe that what you are doing is important- stick with it.  If you believe that what you are doing is meaningful- be proud.  If you believe that one of the most important jobs on earth is to teach – keep it up, I am proud of you too!

Good luck in your school year! 

Take care, Dr. Bird