Hindsight is 20:20

@Mrkempnz asked the following question on Twitter...

"what would you do differently if you were a first year teacher again? ......"

... and it got me thinking.

I make little secret of the fact that I hardly enjoyed a minute of my first year of teaching. I was ill-prepared, lacking resilience, lacking experience, lacking knowledge... I really consider myself lucky that I am still in teaching at all.

My immediate thought: EVERYTHING!

I should never have accepted the first job I was offered. I was desperate to start teaching. I had done quite well at uni, and received excellent feedback from my supervising teachers. I was told by two of my placement schools that I had I been qualified, they would have offered me a job. (Because of this, I was probably a little bit cocky!) When I was called within a couple of hours of my first interview, and offered the job, I didn't hesitate, of course I said yes!

I should have done my research. The school and I were not a good fit. I had zero ESL training, and being a young, naive, female, inexperienced teacher, with no kids of my own, who wasn't local, I was immediately seen as an outsider, by both the children and their families.

My first day:
"Miss, you got kids?"
"No"
"You live in *******?"
"No"
"You Muslim?"
"No"
"Well MY dad says I don't gotta listen to you!"
"..."

I should have worked on relationships. Now, the relationships are the very first thing I establish in my classroom. There is little need for 'rules' if a community is established in which there is an understanding of mutual respect. An older teacher said to me "Don't worry about the curriculum yet". I felt it was all I had to cling to. I was wrong. I had no idea how to build rapport with my students.

I felt that I couldn't be myself.

All I did in my first week of teaching was yell, sleep and cry. I was totally unprepared for just how exhausting it was. I had a management plan, given to me by the school, and was told I had to use it. It involved a clipboard, with 'behaviour tracking sheets'. The students would have their name recorded, marked as a warning, then their number would be circled the more they misbehaved. There would be consequences - "Time outs" (I had a "time out table", whatever that means), exiting the room, etc, depending on what the student did. I suppose, it is sound in theory (though it has NEVER worked for me - it just doesn't fit with who I am as a teacher). But I had that chart FULL every day, usually before recess. It was impossible to manage, to follow up on. I had little concept of 'tactically ignore', and every indiscretion was met with the same level of response. What reason did the kids have to show me their best side? If you asked me what my management plan was now, I couldn't explain it, or tell you the steps. There is no time out table, or list of names with crosses. There is no 'one size fits all approach'. But I know that I could walk into any class in the school (and I now work in a secondary college that many consider 'challenging'), and know that I would be in control.

I knew something was wrong - with my teaching - but I didn't know how to fix it. I became so incredibly frustrated - other teachers would walk into my room, and it would be silent, the kids perfect angels. They would leave, and it would be back to mayhem.

I didn't show my students how to be successful. I probably had high expectations, but I know I didn't model them effectively. I was inconsistent. I didn't require them to be respectful - to myself, or each other - consistently enough. They were so awful to each other, it makes me shudder just to think of it. The community relationship was severely damaged. 'Transition times' were a nightmare. I didn't have a clear enough idea of what routines I wanted in place - so how could my students? My classroom must have been a stressful, erratic place that year.

The former principal of my current school once shared the following quote:

"I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis
will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized."
~Haim Ginott

I wish someone had shared that with me in my first year. I knew it, I felt it, but I couldn't articulate it. I look back on my first year of teaching, and the only thing I feel proud of is that I made it through. I don't know if I did much good for my students that year, and that I truly regret.

Now, I can look back on that year, and realise how far I have come. I can articulate, identify and explain all the things that went wrong. More importantly, I do everything in my power to avoid those same mistakes. My principal suggested at one point in that year, that teaching wasn't for me. I was deeply hurt by that - I knew I wanted to teach. I knew I could be good at it - but I didn't know how.

Thankfully, the school community I am now part of, has allowed me to become the teacher I always wanted to be. My classroom is a safe, challenging place, where I am myself, and my students flourish.