These are the 5 things I have learned, and wish I had know when I started teaching.

1. You are not a bad teacher
2. It’s okay to use premade curriculum
3. Use the buddy system! No flying solo
4. Find a system that works before you focus on improving
5. Every class period is a change to start over

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You are not a bad teacher, you just don’t know how to teach yet.

When I got out of teaching school, I felt like I should know how to be a teacher, and I was devastated to realize that I really did not have any idea what I was doing. It brought me to the conclusion that it was possible that in-class learning about teaching theory and especially the EdTPA (I have another post exploring the flaws in that) was essentially worthless to me when it came to actually teaching a class.

What I needed was someone to tell me, “Here, look at this; this is what you do. Don’t worry about putting up your learning objectives, don’t worry about making a 4-page lesson plan. Just focus on using this textbook or curriculum or program, and maybe think about a project you might want to try to supplement it when you are ready.”

In my experience, there was not a lot of onboarding into my district; it was a “here you go, don’t mess it up.” Mess it up I did for months before I started to figure out what I was doing. During the lag when I was catching up with the best teacher I could be, I was not a bad teacher; I was just learning.

It’s the okay to use premade curriculum

“You do not need to reinvent the wheel” is maybe the most important phrase for teachers. Many feel like if they do not use their own original lessons that they are less than, or are being lazy. I disagree with this notion. I believe that curricular creation and teaching are not one and the same. Curricular creation is a separate branch of the education system that has its own specialists and training. Teachers do not need to make their own curriculum to be good teachers. The choosing of the correct lessons and practices for your class’s particular learning environment is what makes your teaching effective.

Use the buddy system! No Flying Solo

In the big picture, this is the PLC, or Professional Learning Community. A PLC can be as small as with your subject matter teachers, or as big as a whole teaching staff. It’s the fancy way of saying your co-workers. But just hanging out with your co-workers does not a PLC make. A PLC is not a gossip corner or a clique like in high school, although it can easily become that. PLCs should be structured for conversation and solution-oriented to observed problems. Full disclosure, I work at a very small school with a grand total of 7 teachers, and we have been working together for 3 years, so your mileage may vary. Nevertheless, our PLC works best when we have a defined problem, either home-grown or passed down from admin, that we need to work together for a solution.

I will warn you that each teacher has their own philosophy when it comes to teaching, and you will find some older teachers who have cut-and-dried opinions on what the best solutions are. In these situations, it is best to lay low and try to change things in subtle ways. Many experienced teachers in my circumstances have big egos and do not like being told what to do by anyone, let alone a new teacher. The beauty of all of this is that while school-wide policies and standards can be made in PLCs, you and you alone are the leader of your own classroom. You can take what you think will work and try new things with your own students.

The second type of group you should cultivate is having a teaching buddy. This could be another grade-level teacher, someone in your subject area, or someone who is in a different grade and/or subject altogether. This is where the pressure of not gossiping and complaining can be released. I personally talk so much about other members of the PLC all the time with them. We dissect all the terrible ideas that our colleagues have, lampoon the awful choices of some of our students, and most of all, we get to vent about parents and admin (the duopoly of most of our problems).

Many will say that it is not a good idea to have negativity in the workplace and that it can bring you down. I would contend that we all need a pressure valve to be able to let off steam when we are in a high-stress field.

Find a system that works before you focus on improving

There is something that my master teacher said to me that has stuck with me. She said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you still have to have something.” I struggled with letting perfection rob the good out of my first attempts at lesson planning. At school, they give you a four-page lesson template and expect you to have detailed answers on each and every section. So, I felt like I needed to differentiate for all learners, provide ELD and SpecEd support, have perfect learning objectives, and have it fit into an overall unit plan for each lesson. I felt like if each lesson did not have each of those things, then it was a failure, and my mind told me it was not worth doing. I have found that that mentality was very harmful to my professional growth.

The lesson plan templates we were given in college are ideal circumstances. They would not teach us that it is okay to not be perfect because they wanted us to aspire to be a teacher who could handle all learners’ needs. While a noble pursuit, it is harmful to expect perfect lessons from first-year teachers. What teachers need to do is start small and figure out how to manage a classroom and teaching a lesson before they are asked to create. We need to find a system that works for us and establish a working baseline before we try to become better at something.

It often interests me that the teaching of teachers does not always follow the best practices of teaching that they want us to use with our future students. That is a topic for another post.

Every class period is a change to start over

This is my understanding of the Growth Mindset, and it applies to my students as they learn and to my practice of teaching. Every new class, every new day, every new interaction with students or parents, every new assignment or test, and even every warm-up for your students is a new chance to do better than the last.

I screw up a lot. I forget to say things in lectures, I give the answer away in my asking of the question, and I have lazy days where I just have the students do book work. I spend periods behind my desk trying to recoup. I have yelled at students, told them to “shut up,” and taken a joke or two too far. I am a flawed teacher. The key that keeps me going is the fact that every class is a chance to reflect on what I did wrong and try to do better next time.

The advice I give to my teacher buddies, and that I give to you, is that you only fail if you give up. If something did not work, then it is only a failure if you do not try to make a change. This advice also works for blundering your queen in Chess, classroom management, and bad interactions with parents. Take the good and the bad from the past interaction and move forward, trying something NEW. We get to mess up as teachers. Even the best teacher from your childhood that inspired you to teach messed up a lot. The messing up is what everyone does, but the exceptional teachers learn from their mess ups and work to do better the next class period.

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If these saturations feel familiar, then congratulations you are a struggling professional in a high-stress industry, and you are also in good company. The best thing you can do is remember that you are learning and growing each day. Do not be hard on yourself as long as you are striving to improve. Ask for help from your colleagues, and feel free to use what has worked for them. Your own personal style and learning philosophy can come later, just figure out what works best for today, and think about what can be done to make small improvements. Overall, if you want to be a good teacher, just trying is what it takes.

-Mark N. Warner