Survival Tips for a New High School Teacher?

October 10, 2009 9:42 AM

Help: I am a first year high school teacher.

I'm a month into my first year teaching high school English, and while I love the kids and my colleagues, and have had some great classes, many days leave me feeling ground to a mushy pulp and barely able to dial the pizza delivery number when I get home.

Any tips on the following would be much appreciated:

How do I manage my time and energy to as not to be totally exhausted?

How can I manage my energy in the classroom so as to sustain some level of energy all day long?

What can I do to *completely* recharge on the weekends? I'm thinking about getting a massage today.

Any general tips for making things easier on myself?


I'm trying to do my lesson planning at school, so my time is my own when I get home, but I'm often so worn down that all I can do in my "off time" is lie on the couch or take a bath. Everyone says it gets easier, but what can I do to survive this first year?

posted by airguitar2 to work & money (20 comments total)

Sorry if this is dumb, but do you drink coffee? Caffeine sounds like it could also help here. It's also possible that you're crashing from not eating enough, maybe bring some snacks to eat in between classes.

Something good that you could do with your classes where you could take a backseat is called a harkness discussion.

No offense, but if you can't summon enough energy during the day, teaching might not be for you. The best teachers I've had were the ones who were energetic, which made the class interesting and fun. If you're falling asleep while teaching, the kids will be too.

I'm a highschool student myself, so if you want any more advice from that point of view you can memail me.
posted by kylej at 9:58 AM on October 10, 2009

Do you wear good shoes? I know we all mocked the teachers in high school who wore "sensible" shoes, but now that I'm their age, I know they were on to a good thing. If I wear good shoes with support and cushioning, I'm not nearly as tired when I get home as when I wear my less-supportive but admittedly more stylish flats.

Is there any way you can grab a few 5-10 minute periods of time during the day when you can sit in a quiet spot (ha!) and maybe meditate or even just close your eyes and rest? Can you go out to your car and listen to some quiet and relaxing music (or blessed slience) for a little while?

Also, remember the classics: eat well, get enough sleep, exercise.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 10:39 AM on October 10, 2009

How much lecturing do you do in your classes? Talking all day will wear anyone out. Can you try to bring in more student-centered activities, like class discussions or an independent study unit? Maybe instituting a warm-up activity at the beginning of every period will give you enough down time to refocus yourself. Since you're an English teacher it'd be a snap to have them take 5 minutes at the beginning of class to write a response to a prompt about a poem or the book they're reading or whatever, and it'll help both you and the students ground yourselves for the class. It'll take some time for your students to internalize your expectations enough that you can really stand back and let them run with the activity you've planned, but any time you're not performing for them will help you.

You don't mention what seems to be tiring you out the most. Is it the administrative work? Is it having to answer the constant barrage of questions about homework and solve every student's problems because they forgot their homework in their locker and don't have a pencil and can I go to the bathroom? Maybe take a look at your policies and procedures. Some of them may encourage the students to give up all responsibility. You're probably stuck with your current rules for the rest of the semester, but designing a system that makes you the last resource instead of the first means you can save your energy for the important stuff. A student was absent yesterday? Go check the wall calendar for yesterday's agenda and get their own copies of assignments and notes from the blue folder. A student has a late assignment? That goes in the period 2 folder in the filing cabinet.

Are you tired from classroom management? It's definitely exhausting, but you have to stay consistent with it in order for the problems to get less frequent. One trick I learned recently in my education class was that changing the way you ask students questions can have a huge impact on their engagement with the material. We tend to ask a general question and then call on the student who raises their hand, or sometimes directly address a student by asking, "Johnny, what is one of the themes of this book?" Both those allow the students who don't raise their hands or get called on to tune out as soon as they know they're not accountable. If you ask a question, wait a few moments to let them process it, and then call on a student by name it raises their level of concern because nobody knows who will have to answer. During the moments you pause between the question and calling out a name most of them will be engaged in the question, trying to come up with an answer in case they're called on (and therefore not texting/sleeping/whatever). It'll help students engage the material and lower your class management problems. It can also help you differentiate your instruction. Tell students outright this is the new procedure for answering questions in class, that everyone will be called on at some point, and you'll start to see improvement immediately.

I'm still in the teacher education program at my college, so my apologies if I'm totally misunderstanding your problems. This is the advice my professors have given us for our first year, and these are the problems I've seen other first year teachers struggle with. Mefimail me if you'd like to talk; I'm in social studies and student teaching next semester but I'm sure we could help each other out.
posted by lilac girl at 11:07 AM on October 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

If anyone wonders why you're tired and doesn't think you're cut out to be a teacher, don't listen to them. The first year spent teaching is exhausting.

Get lots of sleep, design projects that can be marked quickly and easily (save the more creative lessons for next year, or just scale them down), design lessons where you only spend 10-20% of the time talking.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:15 AM on October 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

I'm in my ninth year of teaching, and I am always exhausted this time of year. At the start of the year you're still figuring out what makes your kids tick, and they're getting used to your class routines. I always have one weekend day where I don't do anything remotely school related. I'm actually in bed reading and checking mefi on my phone. I went to bed at 8:00 last night and slept until 7:00.

But, it does get better. I should have normal energy levels in the next couple of weeks. You might not feel like yourself for a bit longer as a new teacher. I've noticed that newbies get a bit of a rebound after winter break. So...my opinion is that what you are going through is normal, and it sounds like you're already doing what you can to maintain a life outside of teaching.
posted by shrabster at 11:28 AM on October 10, 2009

So, yeah, I've taught public school, and I understand the feeling. Your first year is going to be rough, mainly because you're creating every lesson from scratch. Your lesson planning taking up such a large chunk of your time because you don't have a bag of tricks to pull from yet. You'll develop that. It will get better.

So, for the rest of this. There is no way to not be completely exhausted (yes, that was a double negative, I know). It's going to happen. You have to deal with that, unfortunately. When I was teaching full time (I'm back for my masters now), I would go to sleep at ridiculously early hours, and that's unfortunate, because I liked doing other things, but that wasn't always an option. I was/am a music teacher as well, so I didn't even have all of my weekends to myself (lots of contests).

Managing your energy is your classroom is a whole other issue. I learned very quickly that as much as I wanted to be *on* all of the time, it was almost impossible. You can't push your energy that hard, that long, and not expect to burn out very quickly. You need to conserve energy - if you're a very high energy, bouncy, louder person like me, you need to force yourself to take some of the edge off for other times when you'll actually need it. The kids will respond as well.

Massage is good. Wine is good. Movies are good. Seeing people who are over the age off 21 is better. You need to get away from it. Teachers tend to let their professional lives bleed over into their personal lives, and one of the only ways I managed to survive was to cordon that bit off for a while. Sunday evenings, for me, often felt not like end of a relaxing weekend, but a time when I looked back and realized that not only had I done nothing I'd wanted that weekend, I'd managed to not be rested at all.

Seriously, go hang out with someone your ages. Preferably people who aren't teachers.

Be easy on yourself. This is probably the most important thing of all. I went into teaching thinking I had so many brand new ideas! I was going to be inspirational! I was going to change lives right away! I was going to be Mr. Fucking Holland! And you know what? Then came papers, and parent conferences, and staff meetings, and "Oh, we didn't tell you that you needed to play for the Pep Rally?" and "We want to hear Low Rider, not your concert music!" Etc. etc. Be easy on yourself. You're new, and the learning curve is steep.

If you want to vent, or anything else, feel free to MeMail me.

It's Saturday morning/afternoon right now (I assume you're in the US) - go for a walk, have a nice lunch, and give yourself permission to do nothing. Go get that massage. Realize that you need to take care of yourself.
posted by SNWidget at 11:44 AM on October 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Pizza? You need to start eating right and taking care of yourself. Take vitamins, make your lunch, cook healthy nutritious food and pack your lunches. Also, try to get a little exercise when you have a free period, if your school has a decent gym with exercise bikes or a running track.
posted by anniecat at 12:00 PM on October 10, 2009

I only teach in an after school program, about 2-3 hours at a stretch, so I know it's not the same thing, but I've been doing it for 12 years and I still finish each day absolutely drained. I recharge by having a really good dinner, chilling in a bubble bath and then in front of the tube, reading trash novels and Metafilter, and then getting up and doing it all over again the next day. I don't expect to have energy after working (of course, I'm 53, at 20some years younger than me ymmv.)

I don't actually resent that drained feeling. I kind of like it. I like the idea that I've just given a big chunk of myself to a bunch of kids. I always feel like if I've got energy left after teaching, I have not given it as much as I could have.
posted by nax at 12:36 PM on October 10, 2009

I am in my fifth year teaching high school English, but I feel a bit like it's my first year again because I am pregnant (and therefore, just as wiped out as I was during my first year!). I have a few tips which may or may not be helpful, but here goes:
1.) I HATE school lunch where I work, so I almost always pack my lunch. Because I prefer a hot lunch, at least on most days, my lunch is often leftovers from the previous night's dinner. Now, I know you said you're so tired that you can barely call for pizza, but eating "real" food will definitely help you. I enjoy cooking and often cook a couple of big meals on Sunday afternoon, then I use those leftovers to get me through the beginning of the week. A pot of stew or chili can go a long way! After work, instead of plopping down on the couch, I put on some good tunes and get cooking at least two or three nights per week. Of course, this only works if you enjoy cooking. . . try to think of it as a way to unwind and treat yourself well.
2.) One more thing about lunch: use your lunch period to take a REAL break. It's tempting to grade or plan lessons and eat, but I find I am much more refreshed by sitting for at least half of my lunch period and focusing on my yummy, homemade lunch and connecting with colleagues. Sure, we often end up talking about work, but that's provided me with some of my best teaching ideas. Let yourself have a real lunch break if you aren't already doing that.
3.) I was never the kind of teacher who started the class with a quiet activity before this year. I preferred to be at the front of the class and start teaching right away. Now, with my "condition" being what it is, I find even 5 minutes of quiet to start each class helps me catch my breath. I try to have a "do now/due now" activity on the board most days, and my students have gotten used to the routine. This allows me to sit for a minute, maybe respond to a parent email if necessary, set up my technology or return graded papers without having to settle the class afterwards. Part of the trick to this has been finding useful activities that act as a springboard into my objective for the day but which don't add to my grading burden. I'm still figuring that part out! I suppose there may be people who question giving up 25-30 minutes of instruction time per week on activities like this; however, it seems to me to get the students on task more efficiently than trying to quiet them down from socializing while waiting for the bell to ring. Plus, it has been helping me to draw out the quieter kids' ideas. For instance, if they write down a response to a discussion question related to their reading, I know I can call on them without making them too terribly uncomfortable - something I am especially sensitive about with my freshmen classes at this time of the year.
4.) Group projects can be great vehicles for critical thinking and cooperative learning, and they can be a boon to you in terms of grading. About once a quarter, I allow the students to use a couple of class days to work together (in part because my school is regional, and the kids are so far-flung I don't want to force them to find ways to get together outside of school). Then, they proudly present for a couple of days, and rather than having 130 papers to grade, I have 26 or 30 projects/presentations to grade instead. I have some group projects that are easily adaptable to various works of literature which I would be glad to share if you MeMail me. After we do the first one, the kids actually beg to do more of them because they're lots of fun!
5.) Use whatever resources your school has to help you create quizzes and the like. For instance, if your vocabulary book comes with a test-making CD, don't be shy about using it. My school subscribes to E-notes, which is helpful for writing simple reading quizzes. I think you can purchase a single subscription if your school doesn't already have it. Perfection Learning is another affordable source for literature-based test and essay questions.
6.) Allow yourself at least one day without schoolwork on most weekends.
7.) Remember, this is one of the longest stretches of the year without vacation time. At least at my school, I went back August 25 and aside from Labor Day there are no days off until November. That's a marathon compared to the rest of the year!
Good luck. It does get easier, but there are always ways to work more efficiently to preserve your sanity. I'll be watching this thread for tips to help me survive until my maternity leave!
posted by katie at 12:38 PM on October 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

Cut some time by borrowing lessons, activities, lectures or ideas for your class online. Make Google work for you. Search by file types. Many lectures, worksheets, lesson plans are easily found if you search by file type. Look for PPT, PDF, DOC files and it really works wonders.

Advanced Google Search

There are lots of quality content from other teachers online, so use it and make it your own.
posted by dealing away at 1:14 PM on October 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Along the lines of dealing away's suggestion, Dana Huff is the author of my favorite English teaching blog. Lots of teacher blogs seem to focus on whining about the workload and/or administration, but Dana consistently avoids all of that and shares great ideas and worksheets. She seems like an amazing teacher.

In general, "beg, borrow and steal" is my mantra when it comes to thinking up lessons plans and creating tests and worksheets. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, just adapt what you find to your class and to your students' needs.
posted by katie at 1:24 PM on October 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

SNWidget is a smart person (maybe I'm just saying that because he's also a music teacher, though?...:)

It is your first year. It *will* be exhausting, it *will* be sucky, it *will* be lame....but it gets better! It will, if you're lucky, also be fun and rewarding- even if it's exhausting for a while. My second year was infinitely better than my first, my third was solid, and in my fourth year I finally felt like I really knew what I was doing and could relax and have fun with the kids *and* get things done. Year nine now, and I can't think of a job I would love more.

Please ignore the high school kid who said you might not be cut out to be a teacher- in general, those who have only experienced school as a student in a classroom have no idea how much work is involved on the other side.

The people above have great advice. Something I don't see up there: find a mentor who has taught your subject before and is willing to help you. Many districts have an official program set up for first-year or new-to-subject teachers, and it can be enormously beneficial if you find the right person. My district pays a stipend and provides substitute days for the mentor to come watch/help the mentee for a day or two and the mentee to come watch the mentor and has them meet together on a bimonthly basis. If there is nothing official, however, I guarantee that a person who is willing to help you who has a lot to offer exists on your staff or in your district. Make connections. Steal liberally.

Don't neglect yourself, don't neglect your relationships with friends and family. The problem with teaching is that there is ALWAYS more that you can do to make it better for your kids, and you can start to feel really guilty for not spending your entire life planning and grading and meeting with students. You will not be a better teacher if you let it consume your life- you will be a burned-out teacher, and like many teachers you won't last past the first three years. Set aside time for yourself. Block out the time that you think you can reasonably give to school and the kids, and then leave. Go home when the bell rings on Fridays, and don't let yourself think about it again until Sunday. The work will be there when you come back.

Other miscellany: Get some good comfortable shoes- Keens, Danskos, something like that- for being on your feet all day. Understand that you can't make everyone happy all the time, and that it will make you crazy to try. Eat breakfast, and bring a quick healthy lunch with you to school. Realize that you can't be "on" all the time and that not every single bit of every tiny worksheet needs to be graded- sometimes you can just check that they did it, and sometimes you can go over it all with a fine-toothed comb. Running your classroom efficiently, with procedures for everything, will save a lot of your energy.
posted by charmedimsure at 2:14 PM on October 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

When I was teaching English for my first year, I fell into to the same pattern. Completely exhausted. I was, like most first-year teachers, giving it my all and was probably over-preparing my lessons. In particular, the amount of time I spent grading papers was insane. By Christmas break, I'd developed a better system of marking papers that I adapted from a book I'd found.

Because so many of the comments I was writing on students' papers were repeated, I figured it'd be easier to write a single number than the entire comment. So I created a simple rubric/matrix where:

1 = wordy
2 = wrong word
3 = off topic
21 = Excellent point
22 = great sentence

I loaded all the "negative" comments in the front of the list and the positive ones at the end (with the divider being 20).

And so on. I think I had about 30 of these comments on the grading sheet. I found it a lot faster even than using standard editorial marks and allowed me to add more and unique comments that would show up. These grading sheets were posted around the room and each student was given one to which to refer when reading their graded paper. By my second year I was teaching both my students how to read standard editorial marks in addition to my own numbered marking system. I can't even tell you how much time this saved me in grading papers.

Another unique advantage to this system was that it allowed me to "track" my students in a simple Excel spreadsheet. Because the marks were simple numbers, I could very easily add the string of numbers in cells next to each students name, so that after having written four papers, a student's "track" might look like this:

Jones, Sally:
Paper 1: 5, 6, 12, 17, 18, 19, 22, 26, 28, 30
Paper 2: 5, 6, 17, 22, 22, 30
Paper 3: 1, 5, 17, 22, 24,
Paper 4: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 30

Sally obviously didn't work very hard on Paper 4. It gave me a historical way to "track" my students' progress. Even better, during Parent-Teacher conferences, I could pull out this "comment tracking system" and show parents improvement or lack of improvement in a way that makes sense.

There are other ways you might modify this type of system. One way would be to assign negative values to negative comments and positive values to positive comments and offer a "total" alongside the grade. I tried this once but quickly found that my "negative" comments outweighed my "positive" ones and it throws off the total. This is probably just the nature of paper-grading.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 2:26 PM on October 10, 2009 [5 favorites]

Oh, and a felt-tip pen is way better than a ball-point. Requires less pressure and is easier on your writing hand. One year I played around with different colors when marking papers. Positive comments/numbers were in blue and negative comments/numbers were in red. And green was for neither, or neutral or informative comments. I only did this color system one year but it was an interesting experiment.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 2:57 PM on October 10, 2009

I agree with supersquirrel- the classics are underestimated. Eat right. Never go without breakfast. Get enough sleep and exercise. Sounds too simple but this really is important.

Don't use sort forms or cut corners. Be conscientious always. Otherwise the regret wears away at you. This is a job where you have to have more integrity and more commitment than in the average career. You can do it, too. There are no more important people to be conscientious for than children.

Sounds like you are and that's why you're tired and that's a good kind of tired to be. I've been teaching for 21 years and it doesn't really get much easier, you just build up your stamina. You will get better able to manage the energy output but it's never easy.

The best way to re-charge is to have loving relationships in your life. People who really know just what it is to be a teacher.

It seems to be quite fashionable to hate teachers. Many people carry around their past experiences in school for a lifetime and the stories of how terrible their teachers were are magnified as those stories are recited year after year. I'm not saying that some of the stories are not true. I just recommend that you make sure that you don't spend off hours around people who will rag off teachers for entertainment. Just like a lawyer or a doctor in a social situation is often asked for free advice; teachers are often asked to listen to all of the horrible stories people like to tell about teachers. Everyone feels free to criticize when most people would never dream of even spending an hour with a room full of children or teens.

So make sure time off is time off and that you get the love and appreciation and understanding you need to do a really difficult and demanding job. If you are single, make sure you don't remain so for long. You really need someone in your camp. You need people to love and believe in you and then you can carry that back into the classroom. When that happens the children will GIVE you energy instead of drain it.
posted by ofelia at 3:57 PM on October 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

One of the best English teachers at my high school, who had been there forever, also taught yoga classes through the local experimental college. He started out each (English) class with five minutes of breathing exercises and meditation. At the time, I only considered the calming effect it had on us, the students. But in hindsight, I bet it did him a lot of good, too.
posted by hades at 4:50 PM on October 10, 2009

The college profs that you used to worship before you started teaching would probably be terrible public high school teachers because it is harder work. Not just different work. Harder work. So don't feel inadequate. I've been in a public h.s. classroom for 15 years now, and it has been the best and worst of times. But overall, I have to say that almost every every teacher who has taught will refer to their first year as their toughest. You will get better at it as you have gotten better at everything else you have done over time. Practice...you know.

I know that you will do well because you seem to be reflective person. HS students like that. And it is far to rare a quality in the classroom. After 15 years, I must admit that I still love my job. And it wasn't until recently that I found an organizational aperture which has made my life a hell of a lot easier in the classroom. It is....mornings. I used to arrive at school about 15 minutes before the first bell, but I have learned that arriving to school early can make or break a day sometimes. I would recommend AT LEAST a forty-five minute window. Mornings give me time to think about my day or tweak my plans. I have time to straighten my desk or grade a set of papers. But arriving at the work site early also eliminates the temptation to slide into the teachers lounge and gab for awhile. This is not a problem in the mornings because only teachers who are busy are at school this early. I know I said forty-five minutes, but I arrive about an hour and a half earlier than I need to be there and it has literally transformed my life. I am more organized and together. I know that this may sound impossible. I would have never believed that I could pull it off, but now that I have been doing this for a few years, I can't imagine not having the mornings to get my day together. Just give it a shot. Ben Franklin's, "Early to bed" deal has some teeth. Best of luck to you. Oh yeah, also remember that anyone who has not taught in a public school will ever really understand what you do. And those who have been removed from it for a couple of years forget rather easily, so there is a tinny resonance to all of their answers, but you can usually depend on your colleagues for some good venting time when you need it. p.s. don't eat the hamburgers in the cafeteria...or anything from there if you can help it :)
posted by boots77 at 8:06 PM on October 10, 2009

"far TOO rare a quality" is more like it. The adverb kind. Sorry about this and other typos. As I said, I get up rather early and was up late typing this. Best.
posted by boots77 at 9:22 AM on October 11, 2009

thanks, all, for these wonderful suggestions. keep 'em coming.

i took both days this weekend to literally stay in bed and read a book, and i already feel better. boots77, i'm going to try the early-to-work thing, and try to get serious work done in the morning. knowing where to draw boundaries seems to help, too. this is definitely the hardest job i've ever had, and i've worked as a journalist, radio producer, and college teacher. i'm going to take all these suggestions to heart... :) thanks for the moral support, too. just knowing that this is a normal response, and that it's ok to feel overwhelmed is helpful.
posted by airguitar2 at 10:35 AM on October 11, 2009

I teach in a different setting - English classes in a private school abroad with all of my teaching between four and nine in the afternoon/evening - but I'm in hours before classes too. I never take work home and roll up around noon or one - so about nine hours a day, with lots of time for breaks and lunch; half the day is lesson planning. So it's a long day, but a low-intensity one. It also means I NEVER wait in line to use the photocopier.
posted by mdonley at 12:45 PM on October 11, 2009