Being a first year teacher is hard. There are people who say that they cried every day of their first year teaching. I’m not one of those people, but I can tell you, it was super hard. Let me start off by saying that every teaching situation is different. Everyone’s education to becoming a teacher is different. Just because you’re teaching in a “great” school (by whoever’s standards) doesn’t mean you will have a “fun” or “easy” job. Just because you’re teaching in a not so great school doesn’t mean that you are going to have a bad year. It’s just different.
Let me tell you about me.
For those who don’t know, Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens are also technically part of New York City, but the locals will say “the city” and only mean Manhattan. The five together are the boroughs that make up NYC. I applied in an open market system, basically saying any schools in Brooklyn and Queens could call me. Three make contact within a few hours. I got a call for an interview, went to the interview the next day and was hired on the spot. It was sort of a whirlwind. And going in as a first year teacher, I had no idea what I was doing.
I got a tour of the school after I accepted the job (I don’t recommend this). My classroom was going to be a retired art classroom (so no lab). It was lined with cabinets (full of trash). The chemistry stockroom was a junk closet (so no chemicals). This was very different from my student teaching situation, and my experience as a high school student, so I knew I was going to have to adapt quickly. I was given the NYC Chemistry Scope and Sequence, which is horrible, but regardless I was excited. Then I went home and started rewriting the curriculum right away.
Curriculum Writing as a First Year Teacher
I did my curriculum writing based on what I had learned during student teaching. It didn’t go so well, once I was actually teaching. My students were not scheduled for the amount of time that they should have been with me. The kids were being short changed and I had to do my best to make up the difference. I learned about the discrepancy five days before school started. There was nothing I could do about that aside from making sure I was super effective in my planning going forward.
My school had a format where they wanted the HW/weekly schedule given to the kids each Monday, which put me into weekly lesson planning from the jump. This isn’t how my brain works at all. It wasn’t until the day before Christmas break of my first year of teaching that my lesson/unit/curriculum planning clicked.
What to do when the planning system doesn’t work
I was so frustrated with planning a whole week and having something happen during the week that ruined the plans. You see, in this particular school, the kids went on field trips ALL THE TIME. It was so hard to teach my class without 90-100% of the kids there, and thus all my plans would shift. Instead I decided to plan backwards. I started with the test and planned from the backend.
Ya see, I had never taken a curriculum or unit planning course in college so this wasn’t intuitive in that sense. I was so exhausted and tired and frustrated (as a first year teacher would be), and I decided that my admin had it all wrong and I was going to do my planning in a way that made sense to me. Maybe it’s arrogance, many it’s my Type 8 personality but I always find a way to do things my way. In my house the phrases “don’t tell me what to do” and “Kelsey always gets what she wants” are pretty common.
That’s where my life changed. Once I started Unit Planning from the test and working toward the present day, my life literally became simpler. It was the biggest breath of fresh air to be planned two to three weeks in advance.
My Curriculum Writing Strategy Now:
- Look at the standards – find out what the kids are supposed to learn this year.
- Cut the standards into tiny strips of paper. Sit on your floor and sort them into categories – these will become your units.
- Sequence the categories/units in a way that creates some flow. For instance, solutions should be close to Acid Base, but should also be close to Properties of Matter.
- Sort the standards into lessons. If they kids need to know Arrhenius, Bronsted-Lowry and Lewis Acids and Bases, decide if they are learning all three in one lesson, or if that will be a few different lessons.
- Put those lessons in an order that makes sense. Usually the easy stuff comes in the beginning and the harder stuff goes to the end.
- Now plan a lesson. Take one chunk of standards (in my case 2-4) and organize them into a 5 Es lesson.
- Get them Engaged (Do Now or Demo)
- Explore the topic a bit (Talk about Do Now or Demo)
- Explain the chemistry (Teach)
- Elaborate on that knowledge (Student Practice) and
- Evaluate their learning (Formative Assessment)
I can’t explain to you what this type of planning has done for my life. I’m on year four now. Here and there I have reordered my lessons, and even units, but my planning time after my first year of teaching was one tenth of what it was the first year. I’ll tell you, I’m pretty freaking good at it. I have a few templates to keep me straight in how I plan. I have one for myself, one for admin, and one for students.
First Year Teacher Tips
If you are struggling as a first year teacher, I get it. We all get it. The most important thing you can do this year is figure out these three things:
- Your classroom management strategy – Mine changes every year depending on the kids I have. Get creative. Talk to other teachers. I tend to use a lot of elementary school strategies and modify them for high schoolers. If something isn’t working – change it. A new quarter, or month, or unit of study is a great time to transition to something new.
- Your paperflow – figure out how you personally are going to handle papers coming in to you, and papers going back to your students. I like one turn in basket and an outgoing basket per class. You can read more about the tools I use to organize my classroom, in this blog post.
- YOUR LESSONS, UNITS AND CURRICULUM – unless you standards change, this is something you can hold on to for a long time. I’ve written two curriculums so far and I’m prepping for my third. It gets easier each time because you have more experience and more plans to work from.
If you are interested in more of my first year teacher tips, specifically what I think you need to get your classroom up and running, check out this blog post!
