The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

If you are considering teaching right out of college, read this first

February 24, 2011 by Jeremy Jones

Below is an email exchange between myself and a prospective teacher from my Alma Mater Vanderbilt University.  I thought that it was such a great question and that many other prospective teachers graduating from college might have the same fears and hesitations about what classroom life could be like.  I wanted to share with other people who may or may not be interested in helping us prepare more low-income students from Houston for college graduation.

My first question is, you mentioned that you were having a first-year teacher crisis when you came up here looking at Peabody: how did you get through it, why did you stay?

This is the best question of all time. I was definitely feeling the pressure, weight, and intense stress of being a first-year teacher with no formal training. Essentially, when I walked into my school, I was singly in charge of the 9th grade English curriculum and I knew nothing of what it could look like. The district and my campus was still developing. Ninth grade was the oldest grade at that campus at the time, and they hadn’t even been there since 6th grade because they were a this “pilot class.”   Basically, we wanted to serve more students in the neighborhood and build the high school faster, so we tacked on a 9th grade class of students who had never been at YES Prep. I felt like I was in the middle of science experiment of education reform (and I was.)

At this point, there were no common assessments, no common curricula, and my mentor was at a different campus. I had an extremely supportive mentor and instructional coach through my first year – they really got me through it. They helped me unit plan, lesson plan, etc… on Saturdays… whenever I needed them. But I was making units and lessons and everything from scratch because my kids were so far behind and we had never done this sort of thing before as a district.  It was very overwhelming at first. I got over it because Hurricane Ike gave me a week off school in September (I’m actually serious) and mostly because of the relationships I built with staff at my campus. We were in the trenches together and I became SO CLOSE with the members of my team. In addition to that, my life kept getting incrementally easier. By December, I was like a different person. I KNEW how to teach (sort of) and I KNEW our school and I KNEW the people and I KNEW the kids, and they were beautiful and crazy and fun and sometimes scared me but I loved them.

I stayed at YES Prep East End through my second year as part of my Teach For America obligation, but by then I knew I’d be sticking around much longer. I could see so many opportunities for professional growth in any direction that I wanted to take it, and I wasn’t ready to be out of the classroom. My administrators were letting me do things I loved… like take over service learning and help with recruitment. Getting those opportunities invested me even more in my work and being an advocate for my students. Now, those first kids are in my 11th grade English class. They are different people and they are all going to college. And… it’s just still inspiring. Daily.

Also… you should know: things have changed a LOT. We now have common assessments. We now have scope and sequence and objectives documents for every single course. We now have days of school dedicated to planning with the teachers who teach the same course across the district. We are moving in the next year to a new way of compensating teachers. Things have changed a LOT in two years for the better, but that support is still there, for sure.
 

--
0 Comments
Be the first to leave a comment