This site is a class blog space for new Career and Technical Specializations and Heathcare Science teachers enrolled in the New Teacher Institute (NTI) at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Advice for a new CTE Teacher!!
Giving them just one piece of Advice is a task in itself but I will do my best. First and for most I would make sure they knew that I was right across the hall if they needed support for anything. A true sense of welcome and having a support system are probably the two most important things when starting ANY new career. But for my one piece of advice I would strongly suggest that classroom management is the most important piece of this puzzle. Once you've established a sense of control of your own classroom the rest will follow. If you fail to establish control, your year will be tough and it's hard to maintain without it. The students have to know you mean business, that your class is not the class they take a break from the rest of their classes. It's not ok to sleep in class or slack on classwork. Your class is just as important as any other classes they are taking. Don't tolerate disrespect, it only gets worse if you do. This was a problem for me in my first year, I wanted to be the "cool teacher" the one they could come to about anything but I began to realize that was my first and hardest mistake to over come. The students ran all over me my first year teaching and it was a mess. But after my WONDERFUL summer in NTI, I learned so much and I have made a huge turn around. It's ok and still "cool" to be in control of your class. My students respect me more and my days are so much smoother knowing i'm in control. The rest will come, it really will. Having classroom management is truly the most important thing in my opinion.
I definitely feel you on the "trying to be the cool teacher" thing. A lot of us are younger teachers, and surprisingly closer to the students' age than their parents, so fighting the stigma of being "young and hip" was an additional hurdle to jump.
ReplyDeleteI was told a hundred times by anyone who found out I was going into teaching to "start tough and ease off later" and I so wish I had followed that from the beginning when it came to classroom management.
We are lucky that we now have the tools to overcome these obstacles, and we can now share our wisdom with new teachers.
Classroom management is indeed the key to have a successful career as a teacher. It's like your foundation as a teacher, if you don't have a foundation, than everything around you will collapse. Although a first year classroom management plan will more than likely be changed, but you will have something in place to guide you. Students will also pick up on if you have a good classroom management plan as well, so a first year teacher should make sure that the plan is clear-concise and enforced.
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