Tips For New Teachers - Helpful Hints For a Successful School Year

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Well, it's a new year, and with it comes new hopes, new dreams, new possibilities and for new teachers, this means doing something different and potentially rewarding with your classroom management or teaching plan. While all teachers can adjust their instruction and teaching style at any point during the year, the beginning of a new year is always a great time to do this because it's a psychological reminder that we can do things different and better.

Take a few minutes to consider a few teaching tips to help you start out the new year as a more successful and confident teacher:

Become organized. Notice I did not say "Super" organized but when you consider all the areas of responsibility from following-through classroom assignments, lesson plans and discipline related issues, not being on top of the ball can cause great havoc. Add to this the issue of following through quick adds to extreme pressure. Whether you use a traditional teacher planner, software, file cabinets, find a way that works for you and stick to it.

Don't check every assignment. Don't plan to bring all classroom tasks home unless you full intend to mark assignments over the weekend. Stick to a routine that you can manage and more importantly, avoid the temptation of taking every assignment to mark. Students need time to process information and by evaluating every assignment, you are not honestly giving enough opportunities to practice in class.

Create a supportive teaching environment. Do you have a supportive teaching environment? Making sure you have one or more of the following support systems intact; a teacher mentor or teacher coach, supportive colleagues and a supportive principal. The more these work with you, the better you will feel, no matter what time of day and how bad a teaching day you will have.

Understand all deadlines and responsibilities. Each school and each course has varied deadlines and responsibilities; multiply these by more than one course, perhaps more than one school, and you quickly can be overwhelmed. Make a master list of the "must-do" deadlines and responsibilities, then check it daily-you never want to lose control of what must be done and when.

Honestly evaluate your teaching efforts from 2008 to see how far you have come as a new teacher.

New teachers often don't know what they are doing right in the classroom and most of the time, they think they aren't on the right track at all. The only way to mature as a new teacher is to honestly evaluate your teaching efforts from 2008. use the following questions to help you pinpoint your successes and areas where you need to improve:

• What worked?


• What didn't?


• What's next?

Use these questions to determine your future actions. You can also use these questions to keep a log of where you feel you need to improve.

Experiment with one new activity or teaching approach this year. You may be satisfied with what is going right, but it can quickly become boring to you and possibly your students. Think outside the box with an added activity, strategy, approach, etc.

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Source by Dorit Sasson