ALT-3 Surviving your first Year as a Teacher
The problem is, everything you were ever taught in teachers' college is useless once you step in the doors of your own classroom. All the theories in the world aren't going to prepare you for a class full of teenagers who truly believe that the only difference between you and them is a few years.
I don't claim to be an expert but I could fill a room with what I didn't know on August 9th, 2006. So if any of this can help, try it, take it, use it. Here's everything I wish I had known to get through my first year of teaching:
1. In teachers' college people kept saying that you shouldn't smile until Christmas. I thought these people were evil, but now I know the truth. If you start the year smiling, you finish the year screaming.
2. Bribery is completely acceptable form of motivation. Teenagers can still be bought off with a five-cent piece of candy.
3. Seating plans are a necessary evil.
4. Don't tell them too much about yourself too quickly. The line between teacher and friend and thin, and very easily blurred.
5. Deadlines are deadlines. If you start letting students turn things in late then the week before report cards will be absolute hell every time.
6. Extra work is not a good punishment for students, but if you're interested in punishing yourself for something...
7. Don't second guess yourself. Just because the entire class says they didn't know about the test, it doesn't mean you didn't tell them. (It took until the second or third time that it happened until I realized that was true).
8. Teenagers don't like being told when they're wrong. For all the nagging in the world, they are still going to make mistakes. Sometimes you just have to give them enough rope to hang themselves (pardon the metaphor).
So this I know is true, but I'm sure you won't take it from me. The only thing you can truly believe me on is the fact that probably, you'll have to learn these things for yourself and you'll spend Christmas to the end of the year punishing yourself for it.
