The Organized Teacher and Mentor
Summing Up the End of the School Year: Tips, Questions and Thoughts
It is not so easy to become organized in your thoughts and make a decision to continue to teach especially if you had a difficult year. Teacher mentors can help.
The problems new teachers face cannot be solved in your first year of teaching, but they can be adequately discussed and shared with a teacher mentor. You might not receive all the answers you need about how to know if you should be a teacher. After all, the first year has many ups and downs. However, here are some points to focus on with your teacher mentor, which may help give you the bigger picture you are lacking in order to make a decision to continue teaching.
Always Focus on the Positive
This life long habit will eventually get you prepared for becoming your own life coach or your own mentor. Together with your mentor try to sum up the important points of your first year in terms of classroom management. You've prevailed and persisted. This is already an important point. Many other new teachers might have given up on the battle. Have the teacher mentor share with you some of your strengths and how they helped you deal with difficult classroom management issues.
Look Over Your Lessons
How have you improved in your lesson planning? Have you implemented any of the ideas you or your mentor suggested? Are you now feeling a bit more comfortable putting theory into practice? Where else do you need to improve?
By now you have realized that lesson planning is more than just a pre-while and post orientation; it involves building a dialogue with your students and getting to know them beyond the face of lesson planning. Is it easier now to relate to your students?
In addition, there are many sub-topics for new teacher support. Rate yourself on the following a scale of 1-5 (5 is the highest) Here are a few main general areas.
- giving and checking homework
- anticipating and dealing with discipline problems
- administering tests and dealing with test anxiety
- regaining class control
- implementing pair and group work
- Exercising spontaneity (having fun in the classroom)
- Dealing with very difficult students
In which area(s) do you work harder at? Which areas are coming to you much more naturally? You might surprise yourself at how well you have actually handled the more difficult side of classroom managment and now you are free to think about other procedural areas. List the steps you think you will need to take in order to reach your goals.
Positive teacher mentors can share pespective on these issues as well and hopefully, it will give you more perspective on what you actually need to do in order to take more positive action. As a result, you will look forward to the next year of teaching with a more revived sense of energy and purpose.
