Easily Excitable

Happy first day of August! If you’re a teacher, you might be feeling excitement. Perhaps some joy. Maybe a little trepidation. Might even be a little dread mixed in there. 

I’m on the verge of year ten, which SURELY can’t be right. I feel like it was just last year that I, at the ripe old age of 22, was given my own classroom. 

Me! With no teaching degree (I was working on it, okay?)! Me! With no student-teaching experience! Me! Stupid, stupid, stupid me!

But you know what I did that first year? I survived. I lived to tell the tale. And I actually love my job now.

I wish I had the skills and wisdom to be your first-year-of-teaching fairy godmother. 

L.O.L.

If God gave you a fairy godmother as awful as me, I’m so sorry. 

Wonders of the worst kind happened in my classroom (i.e.- a student pierced his ear while we were watching a play on the projector), so I can’t say you should listen to me. 

All this time later?

Well, I don’t like to brag, but a kid hasn’t pierced his ear in nine years, so there is that. 

Over 10 years, I have accumulated a few (questionably) helpful hints, and I’d like to share them with you. 

Take them or leave them. Here they are: 

1. Don’t quit. And especially don’t quit in January.  

Seriously. That’s it. That’s how you get better. 

I heard someone say the other day that a good student (and therefore, a good hire) is someone who “takes a bite of the ‘crap’ (he didn’t say crap, but I will because my grandmothers read this blog) sandwich and asks to take another bite.”

Ultimately? That’s the key to becoming a good teacher. Don’t quit after the first year: your growth from your starting point- after a single year!- will be exponential.  

You will never again be as bad as you were the first year! This is the most reassuring thought you can possibly have!

Further, even as you get along in your career, in the month of January, you may be tempted to nitpick your job and think you’re not cut out for this. January is a slog: it’s bleak and sad outside. 

You’re coming off the high of the holidays. Plus, you’re pale and you feel ugly, which never helps. 

Chances are, you just need some sunlight, not a whole new career path. 

My career hack for January? Teach something you love. 

For me, in the past, it’s been The Secret Life of Bees and A Raisin in the Sun. This made all the difference. 

2. The worst thing that can happen on the first day of school…

On the first day of my first year of teaching, Momma wrote me a note of encouragement.

She’d seen my nerves kick up that week before, and I’m sure I looked like I was heading to my own execution. 

In her letter, along with a lot of reassurance, she wrote (I kid you not), “The worst thing that can happen is that you pass gas while you’re talking. But even that will be funny eventually.”

She had a great point. 

Even after teaching for ten years, I will inevitably forget something and have to scramble just a little bit on the first day of school. It’s good for the soul: it keeps me humble. 

Yes, that first day is nerve-wracking, particularly before first period. I still feel the nerves, too. 

The good news? The first day is actually one of the easiest. Your objective is simple: get ‘em in, get ‘em fed, get ‘em gone. 

Start firm, but kind. 

3. And piggybacking on my Momma’s note? Have a sense of humor.

Believe in your heart that most of the classroom mishaps will, in fact, make for great stories one day. One of the best parts of the job is that kids of all ages are hilarious. 

Learn to laugh and see the humor happening before your eyes. If you seek it out, you’ll find it. 

In one year, you will have enough stories to fill an entire stand-up comedy hour. Few jobs provide that. 

 Part of loving your job is the ability to laugh. 

4. Get comfortable shoes. 

You will sit very little, and the concrete-based floors will not be friendly to your feet or your back. Two of my favorite brands are Hey Dudes and Vionic. Vionic is orthopedic, but they don’t look like it. 

I wear the same pair of shoes every day of the year, except for the first two weeks, during which I will rotate out a pair of Clarks heels. 

Not for everyone, but it works for me. 

5. Eat a good lunch. 

Something not too big (you might get sleepy), but with protein. I ate side salads with no protein and with red onion that first year and called it lunch. 

The product? By the day’s end, I was bloated, my stomach killed me, my feet ached (read #5), and I was mad as a hornet. 

I favor a larger salad with protein now. SANS RED ONIONS.

6. Let habit and routine be your best friends. 

I start every class the same way. When I was in teacher school, my professor told us to start every day with an affirmation, or a shared statement everyone in the class said aloud. 

That first year? We recited, I kid you not, the lines out of the book, The Help (adjusted a little bit for grammar): “I am kind. I am smart. I am important.”

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! I’m so embarrassed by me.

Now, we’ve gotten a little better: this is what my kids say everyday at the beginning of class:

“Today, I commit to being the best I can be. Today, I will rise above the expectations others have of me. Today, I will make decisions with the knowledge that today’s actions will affect tomorrow’s outcomes. I am more than a number, stereotype, or test score. I can be more than I ever imagined, and it all starts with my choices today.”

It’s hokey, I know, but it helps me more than it helps the kids. Here’s why: 

You will find the failures of the previous class difficult to get around at times. Other times, you’ll be scattered. Beginning each class the same way every day will shake you out of both. 

7. You don’t know what you don’t know. 

Ask for help. Please. I know that sometimes it will feel like your classroom is on fire, and you’re ashamed for anyone to know that. 

Your professors did the best they could to prepare you for teaching, but on-the-job-training is now what you’ll be doing for 180 days. 

Have the humility to ask other teachers for help. Your questions will be a lot more practical than you think, and your fellow teachers will find solutions more easily than you can imagine. 

More often than not, your questions will revolve around various jams in the copy machines: your fellow teachers know exactly how many times to kick that machine to make it go right into gear. 

8. Find the style of teaching that works for you. 

For some teachers, lecturing is the best method. They’re excellent at speaking, and they convey lessons beautifully this way.

I would love to learn from them. 

Personally? I can’t do much lecturing: I’m way too easy to get off track, and after fifteen minutes of waxing spiritual about my golden retriever, I’ll wonder how we all got here. 

For me and myself, I like a loud classroom. I like games and discussion. I like going out on the bus ramp and diagramming sentences using sidewalk chalk. 

This isn’t the better way for all: it’s just the best way for me. 

Find your style- find the method that’s both comfortable for you and puts you just a little out of your comfort zone, and roll with it. 

9. Enjoy your adult teacher friends. 

When you’re surrounded by kids or teenagers, adult conversation is a God-send. 

Enjoy it. Don’t work through lunch if you can help it. 

You need to talk to normal human beings: my teacher friends have been the difference-makers in my career. 

10. Build some boundaries, please. As best you can. 

In my first year of teaching, I would get to the school around 6:15-6:30am. I would then leave and go to my Masters courses in Macon, which would last until 8pm. If I didn’t have night classes, I would stay and work until 5pm. 

On Saturdays? I would wake up and lesson plan/ work on Masters assignments from 9 until 2 or 3. 

Teacher burn out is a real thing. 

It’s near impossible to have boundaries that first year, but please try your best. Teaching is a profession that will take every bit of your life you allow it to. 

I still lesson plan and grade papers after school now, but I do it in the backyard in a rocking lawn chair. And I do it after working out. That leaves me in a much better mental spot. 

11. If you mess up, you get a new day tomorrow. 

Mistakes will happen. 

You may spend a couple of nights wondering if you’ll get an email from a parent or a call into the principal’s office for a stupid comment you made. 

The most likely scenario, though? Those kids will make you so mad, you want to spit. Just do what normal people do, and punch your steering wheel when you get out to your car.

Shake it off that evening, and come in the next day ready for a fresh start. 

12. Have a great attitude. 

Don’t complain. At times, it’s hard not to do. 

Discipline yourself to make the best of everything, even when the kids are asking for extra credit on the last week of school. 

Even when- YET AGAIN- five students didn’t put their names on their papers. 

Even when you spill fruit punch on your white shirt. 

Even when you’re teaching that concept you struggle with. 

Internalize the phrase, “It’s just a bump in the road,” and recognize that most annoyances are small in the grand scheme of things. 

Teaching is challenging. I know, I know- DUH.

To some degree, you aren’t allowed to have bad days. It’ll, at times, be a ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ deal, and that’s okay. 

But I have grown more as a human being from this career than I ever thought possible. It’s grown my relationship with Christ more than just about anything else. 

The fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? 

You will daily have a gut-check on these qualities: dealing with kids will show how you’re coming along in these areas. 

Let teaching stretch you. 

Love your job, and love the kids this job brings you. Realize every day the privilege and the influence you have. Know that you won’t see the fruit right away, and many impacts you’ll never see. Be okay with that. 

Believe daily that you are blessed to do this job: it isn’t easy, but many people work their whole lives to have a C-suite that’s smaller than your classroom. 

Granted, they’ll make a lot more money than us, but who’s counting?! Plus, there’s no way they’ll have better stories than us!

Have fun, laugh a bunch, learn a lot, and realize you’ll never have another first year of teaching.

That will be a good thing, but it’s also a time you’ll somehow look back with nostalgia, and you’ll appreciate how adorable you were, doing such a terrible job, but working so hard at it. 

Godspeed. I’m cheering you on!