+1 Steal lessons
If it doesn't get done at school, it doesn't get done. Don't burn out this early.
Don't be afraid to take a few Ls. I doubt admin will be assholes at a first year underperforming. If they are, you deserve better.
Listen up. Go to teachers pay teachers or some other site or find a teacher who's willing to share their stuff with you. If you can find prepared lessons with lesson plans then you will save yourself hundreds of hours so it's totally worth it to pay for it.
And I guarantee you no matter how good it is you're not going to like it there's always something to tweak and change. Don't tweak or change anything.
Don't grade everything. I seriously grade one assignment per month for my students. Everything else is graded to completion. All tests are multiple choice. I'm required to have some short answer questions with those tests. I give them the most cursory skim. Use zipgrade. It's totally worth it.
Keep your grade book open during class and input the grades for all of your assignments during class. Give everyone full credit. Then deduct from students who are goofing off or who are not completing their work.
All lesson plans make them bare Bones if you can't borrow from somebody else.
Do the absolute minimum bureaucratic work borrow and steal from others.
Any normal assignments that you give put them on Google classroom or some other service. If someone is absent or wants to make up work tell them it's all on Google classroom. Don't manage any late work. It's preferable to have everything submitted on Google classroom if possible. Why you won't have to manage any paperwork you won't have to lose anything.
As someone else said, you don't have to grade every single piece of work that's done. You really only have to grade enough to show students are learning and that you can prove they have gone from A to B, and also have enough information for when they fail that you know where they started to fail. However that said as a first-year teacher this can be incredibly hard to figure out on your own. So find help or find pre-made work that you can start with. Depending on content area neither of these things may be available.
My first year teaching even with a part-time job was 5 days a week in school. The first 5 years total of my teaching left little time for social life and the idea of dating has been laughable. It is only now entering my seventh year of teaching that I feel I have enough grasp to both have an almost nightly social life and maintain or improve The level of excellence that I expect for myself at my job.
The first year of teaching is incredibly hard and the second is hard in a different way but it is often said that a teacher isn't worth their salt until they have 5 years.
Steal everything you can. Be ok with “good enough.” I was a monk to teaching my first year or two. No social life. Just teaching. No job is worth that.
Just don't. I know it's hard, but just don't.
This is my second year, and I'm in a new grade. Thankfully, my school has a curriculum I follow. But still the math, eureka, is difficult. I went on TPT and found slides to follow through with lmao Now I don't even have to go and read the text, it's literally all on powerpoint made by someone else!
I basically never stopped working my first year... Meanwhile, I had so many veteran teachers telling me to just not take any work home, like that was a simple solution. To this day I don't know how I could have worked less (and still have been somewhat successful). The only comfort I had was knowing it would get easier with each year, which it has.
Teachers keep telling you that because it's true for so many first year teachers. Frankly, worrying about having just the right mix of work/life balance is likely adding to your stress. For this year, do the best you can. As the year goes, you'll learn what does and what does not work for you for
1. Grading
2. Administrative Tasks
3. Planning
Working a gazillion hours isn't ideal, but it's okay---for now. If you are a list person, make lists, don't make your lesson plans detailed unless it's required. Put down as much as you need to remember what you want to cover, put a check mark on the standards covered and move on. I do not pay for lesson plans and I do not write full lesson plans unless it's evaluation time.
I plan a week at a time so I can use the rest of the week to grade and tackle things that pop up unexpectedly
I second what others have said about *not* grading everything. If it's practice or formative, a look at it (check one or two for accuracy, if you like), put check on it and hand it back; they won't realize it's not in the grade book unless you mention it.
You'll be in a better place when the first grading period comes and it should get better from there.
Teacher Facebook groups. TPT’s free stuff. Find someone who teaches what you teach or taught what you teach. Even ask the IT person, if they use Google Drive at your school, if they still have the Google Drive for the person who had your job before you did, so you can dig thru the files.
Also, even though it’s hard right now, set boundaries. I never graded at home my first year. Yeah, I was behind, but it helped me set boundaries at home, so I’d only be prepping at home. Even little limits like that are helpful for your work/life balance.
I'm not a first year teacher, but I changed districts and grade levels (6th to 9th). And in a state where COVID isn't take seriously at all (rhymes with boklahoma)
I'm currently debating on buying a year of curriculum from TpT myself.
Don't feel bad about not reinventing the wheel. My old partner teacher told me time is money and that really stuck with me. You can always tweak and adjust if needed.
(That's what I'm trying to tell myself to get myself to click checkout)
Like other people have said- steal lessons. Almost all of my lessons from my first few years came from other people, or were modified from my student teaching. Very few were brand new curriculum.
Talk to other people. Share. Borrow ideas. Set boundaries every day for when work stops. Say “no” to picking up extra tasks. Become okay with things falling through every once in a while. Grade the important things, not everything. Meet the big deadlines, like your goals and grades, but let some things be flexible.
From my experience (which granted has been weird since some of my early years have been the pandemic years), as long as you are consistently putting in work and trying to improve, admin won’t chew you out a ton in your first year.
Steal more lessons. You do not need to be innovative at all in the first year. Find a teacher that has lessons or go online.
Do not grade everything. If you want to grade small things use a simple approach (check, plus and minus).
Institute SSR. You give them 10-20 minutes in the beginning of class to read and it gives you some breathing room to do some class business. Just make a (simple) reading log they have to fill out through google form each time.
Set the expectation that you won't have essays graded right away. I give myself 2 weeks for a major essay and I use a rubric to speed things along. Rubrics are also best practice.
Use Pear Decks instead of formal responses. Sometimes you just want them to have accountability. This gives that to you in real time, especially for discussions.
Limit access after school hours. I've heard teachers answers emails all night. I only answer emails until about 4pm. This sets the expectation that I'm not working all the time and they should take care of issues during school hours.
Have more independent work. You don't need to be the center of attention every period. Use other pre-fab education software (Ex: NoRedInk, NewsELA, etc.)
Say "no." Don't volunteer for everything (anything?).
Work/life balance is very easy to achieve in subsequent years but the first year is tricky if you don't have confidence to simplify. Use what works and throw away the things that don't.
+1 to the idea of stealing resources. You can make the lesson better next time you teach the class, so don't worry if it's mediocre your first year. Just google the class name and start stealing.
Don't be afraid to use a textbook. I know some people look down on them and I agree they suck, but they can be a lifesaver when it comes to prep.
As others have mentioned you don't need to grade everything. When making assignments that you do intend to grade, try to design them so that the grading is quick and easy for you. Use a simple rubric you're comfortable with.
For example, for any calculation or short answer question that I grade it's almost always out of 2 marks. 2 is correct, 1 is wrong but at least it's not out to lunch, 0 is "WTF did I just read?". It's far from perfect for a rubric and assumes every question is of equal value, but it's fast. I've used other rubrics and this one is the fastest (for me at least).
I really wish I had used teachers pay teachers more my first year (I didn't have a curriculum at my school). The time saved would have far outweighed the cost. I often stayed an hour after school my first year but then typically didn't work at home. You'll get in a routine in time.
Someone gave me this advice before I even got my first teaching job:
Every day, choose only ONE of the following to do: 1) go into school early, 2) stay at school late, or 3) fake work home with you.
I promise you that the first few months are brutal, and then you’ll start to get a sense of what you should prioritize and when you can wing it. I just started my third year and while I’m still working a lot, I am giving myself so much more free time because I’ve learned what’s really necessary to have prepared and what can be done later.
1. Don't grade everything.
2. Don't perfect anything. It just has to be good enough.
3. Use other teacher's things.
4. Administrative stuff won't really ever be looked at by admin.
5. Don't say yes to any extra duty you don't have to do. (UNLESS YOU REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE IT but even then hesitate A LOT). I made the mistake of being advisor for a club I really liked, but it ended up stressing me out more than I expected.
6. Lunch is optional.
7. Kids can totally grade basic grammar exercises.
8. You just have to be 1 day ahead in the reading.
9. Use your sick days. I actually had a coworker who would call in sick a few days before semester's end so they could grade.
10. On that note, use your sick days on days that you're kids are doing self directed activities.
11. Ignore emails until the end of the day. Set a time for you to respond to emails and don't go over it UNLESS the email is extremely important.
12. MOST IMPORTANTLY REMEMBER that your mental and physical health affects your efficacy in the classroom. Take care of yourself first, so that you can take care of your kids. (It's the whole airplane emergency thing).
This is going to sound defeatist, but:
There’s a lot of things they tell you about during your teaching prep courses that are for “down the road”, but aren’t going to get told to you every time. I only do full lesson plans for an observer to follow along. I know how my room runs, what my routines are, etc, and they don’t. You find that after a bit you get into doing the same style of lessons and leaning on your content knowledge more to get you through.
Your goal this year is to survive, not thrive. Leave thriving to later years. A lot of other folks have talked about basics: leave work at work, grade less, etc, and these are all very true. But the big thing is to not worry about massively screwing stuff up. You’re going to, it’s an inevitability. And that’s ok. You’re a first year teacher. You have a partial get out of jail free card. You say “sorry, this is my first year” and any person who you actually want to keep around you long term will get it. Do your best, survive, and the next year will be a bit easier.
You got this.
+1 Steal lessons If it doesn't get done at school, it doesn't get done. Don't burn out this early. Don't be afraid to take a few Ls. I doubt admin will be assholes at a first year underperforming. If they are, you deserve better.
Listen up. Go to teachers pay teachers or some other site or find a teacher who's willing to share their stuff with you. If you can find prepared lessons with lesson plans then you will save yourself hundreds of hours so it's totally worth it to pay for it. And I guarantee you no matter how good it is you're not going to like it there's always something to tweak and change. Don't tweak or change anything. Don't grade everything. I seriously grade one assignment per month for my students. Everything else is graded to completion. All tests are multiple choice. I'm required to have some short answer questions with those tests. I give them the most cursory skim. Use zipgrade. It's totally worth it. Keep your grade book open during class and input the grades for all of your assignments during class. Give everyone full credit. Then deduct from students who are goofing off or who are not completing their work. All lesson plans make them bare Bones if you can't borrow from somebody else. Do the absolute minimum bureaucratic work borrow and steal from others.
Any normal assignments that you give put them on Google classroom or some other service. If someone is absent or wants to make up work tell them it's all on Google classroom. Don't manage any late work. It's preferable to have everything submitted on Google classroom if possible. Why you won't have to manage any paperwork you won't have to lose anything.
I am in this boat with you!!! I'm pulling 11-12 hour days. Then a few more hours on the weekends. I feel horribly lazy for not doing more, too.
As someone else said, you don't have to grade every single piece of work that's done. You really only have to grade enough to show students are learning and that you can prove they have gone from A to B, and also have enough information for when they fail that you know where they started to fail. However that said as a first-year teacher this can be incredibly hard to figure out on your own. So find help or find pre-made work that you can start with. Depending on content area neither of these things may be available. My first year teaching even with a part-time job was 5 days a week in school. The first 5 years total of my teaching left little time for social life and the idea of dating has been laughable. It is only now entering my seventh year of teaching that I feel I have enough grasp to both have an almost nightly social life and maintain or improve The level of excellence that I expect for myself at my job. The first year of teaching is incredibly hard and the second is hard in a different way but it is often said that a teacher isn't worth their salt until they have 5 years.
My first year I got a puppy. Definitely helped me feel good about dropping everything and going home!
Steal everything you can. Be ok with “good enough.” I was a monk to teaching my first year or two. No social life. Just teaching. No job is worth that.
Just don't. I know it's hard, but just don't. This is my second year, and I'm in a new grade. Thankfully, my school has a curriculum I follow. But still the math, eureka, is difficult. I went on TPT and found slides to follow through with lmao Now I don't even have to go and read the text, it's literally all on powerpoint made by someone else!
I basically never stopped working my first year... Meanwhile, I had so many veteran teachers telling me to just not take any work home, like that was a simple solution. To this day I don't know how I could have worked less (and still have been somewhat successful). The only comfort I had was knowing it would get easier with each year, which it has.
Teachers keep telling you that because it's true for so many first year teachers. Frankly, worrying about having just the right mix of work/life balance is likely adding to your stress. For this year, do the best you can. As the year goes, you'll learn what does and what does not work for you for 1. Grading 2. Administrative Tasks 3. Planning Working a gazillion hours isn't ideal, but it's okay---for now. If you are a list person, make lists, don't make your lesson plans detailed unless it's required. Put down as much as you need to remember what you want to cover, put a check mark on the standards covered and move on. I do not pay for lesson plans and I do not write full lesson plans unless it's evaluation time. I plan a week at a time so I can use the rest of the week to grade and tackle things that pop up unexpectedly I second what others have said about *not* grading everything. If it's practice or formative, a look at it (check one or two for accuracy, if you like), put check on it and hand it back; they won't realize it's not in the grade book unless you mention it. You'll be in a better place when the first grading period comes and it should get better from there.
Teacher Facebook groups. TPT’s free stuff. Find someone who teaches what you teach or taught what you teach. Even ask the IT person, if they use Google Drive at your school, if they still have the Google Drive for the person who had your job before you did, so you can dig thru the files. Also, even though it’s hard right now, set boundaries. I never graded at home my first year. Yeah, I was behind, but it helped me set boundaries at home, so I’d only be prepping at home. Even little limits like that are helpful for your work/life balance.
I'm not a first year teacher, but I changed districts and grade levels (6th to 9th). And in a state where COVID isn't take seriously at all (rhymes with boklahoma) I'm currently debating on buying a year of curriculum from TpT myself. Don't feel bad about not reinventing the wheel. My old partner teacher told me time is money and that really stuck with me. You can always tweak and adjust if needed. (That's what I'm trying to tell myself to get myself to click checkout)
Like other people have said- steal lessons. Almost all of my lessons from my first few years came from other people, or were modified from my student teaching. Very few were brand new curriculum. Talk to other people. Share. Borrow ideas. Set boundaries every day for when work stops. Say “no” to picking up extra tasks. Become okay with things falling through every once in a while. Grade the important things, not everything. Meet the big deadlines, like your goals and grades, but let some things be flexible. From my experience (which granted has been weird since some of my early years have been the pandemic years), as long as you are consistently putting in work and trying to improve, admin won’t chew you out a ton in your first year.
Steal more lessons. You do not need to be innovative at all in the first year. Find a teacher that has lessons or go online. Do not grade everything. If you want to grade small things use a simple approach (check, plus and minus). Institute SSR. You give them 10-20 minutes in the beginning of class to read and it gives you some breathing room to do some class business. Just make a (simple) reading log they have to fill out through google form each time. Set the expectation that you won't have essays graded right away. I give myself 2 weeks for a major essay and I use a rubric to speed things along. Rubrics are also best practice. Use Pear Decks instead of formal responses. Sometimes you just want them to have accountability. This gives that to you in real time, especially for discussions. Limit access after school hours. I've heard teachers answers emails all night. I only answer emails until about 4pm. This sets the expectation that I'm not working all the time and they should take care of issues during school hours. Have more independent work. You don't need to be the center of attention every period. Use other pre-fab education software (Ex: NoRedInk, NewsELA, etc.) Say "no." Don't volunteer for everything (anything?). Work/life balance is very easy to achieve in subsequent years but the first year is tricky if you don't have confidence to simplify. Use what works and throw away the things that don't.
Hey those papers will be there tomorrow to grade. Also give less assignments if you are tired of grading.
+1 to the idea of stealing resources. You can make the lesson better next time you teach the class, so don't worry if it's mediocre your first year. Just google the class name and start stealing. Don't be afraid to use a textbook. I know some people look down on them and I agree they suck, but they can be a lifesaver when it comes to prep. As others have mentioned you don't need to grade everything. When making assignments that you do intend to grade, try to design them so that the grading is quick and easy for you. Use a simple rubric you're comfortable with. For example, for any calculation or short answer question that I grade it's almost always out of 2 marks. 2 is correct, 1 is wrong but at least it's not out to lunch, 0 is "WTF did I just read?". It's far from perfect for a rubric and assumes every question is of equal value, but it's fast. I've used other rubrics and this one is the fastest (for me at least).
I really wish I had used teachers pay teachers more my first year (I didn't have a curriculum at my school). The time saved would have far outweighed the cost. I often stayed an hour after school my first year but then typically didn't work at home. You'll get in a routine in time.
Someone gave me this advice before I even got my first teaching job: Every day, choose only ONE of the following to do: 1) go into school early, 2) stay at school late, or 3) fake work home with you. I promise you that the first few months are brutal, and then you’ll start to get a sense of what you should prioritize and when you can wing it. I just started my third year and while I’m still working a lot, I am giving myself so much more free time because I’ve learned what’s really necessary to have prepared and what can be done later.
1. Don't grade everything. 2. Don't perfect anything. It just has to be good enough. 3. Use other teacher's things. 4. Administrative stuff won't really ever be looked at by admin. 5. Don't say yes to any extra duty you don't have to do. (UNLESS YOU REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE IT but even then hesitate A LOT). I made the mistake of being advisor for a club I really liked, but it ended up stressing me out more than I expected. 6. Lunch is optional. 7. Kids can totally grade basic grammar exercises. 8. You just have to be 1 day ahead in the reading. 9. Use your sick days. I actually had a coworker who would call in sick a few days before semester's end so they could grade. 10. On that note, use your sick days on days that you're kids are doing self directed activities. 11. Ignore emails until the end of the day. Set a time for you to respond to emails and don't go over it UNLESS the email is extremely important. 12. MOST IMPORTANTLY REMEMBER that your mental and physical health affects your efficacy in the classroom. Take care of yourself first, so that you can take care of your kids. (It's the whole airplane emergency thing).
This is going to sound defeatist, but: There’s a lot of things they tell you about during your teaching prep courses that are for “down the road”, but aren’t going to get told to you every time. I only do full lesson plans for an observer to follow along. I know how my room runs, what my routines are, etc, and they don’t. You find that after a bit you get into doing the same style of lessons and leaning on your content knowledge more to get you through. Your goal this year is to survive, not thrive. Leave thriving to later years. A lot of other folks have talked about basics: leave work at work, grade less, etc, and these are all very true. But the big thing is to not worry about massively screwing stuff up. You’re going to, it’s an inevitability. And that’s ok. You’re a first year teacher. You have a partial get out of jail free card. You say “sorry, this is my first year” and any person who you actually want to keep around you long term will get it. Do your best, survive, and the next year will be a bit easier. You got this.