5 Ways to Mess Up Your First Year of Teaching

Sure you could be productive, organized, and energetic and have a fantastic first year but where is the fun in that? I am here to share with you some sure fire ways to make your first year (& following years) more stressful, busy, and chaotic!

1. You're The Most Recent College Grad, 
You Know Best

First things first, you just graduated college. You're basically the coolest thing since sliced bread because everything you know about education is the newest and best. Anyone who graduated before you only knows old, outdated methods. It's your role to make sure you tell everyone about everything you know so they can start correcting their many errors they have been making over the course of their teaching careers. They might be offended at first but if they actually listen to you, they will be much better teachers.

2. Don't Ever Do Spirit Days

The kids might love dressing up for Hawaiian Day, Crazy Hair Day, or Pajama Day but you're a grown up. If you dress up, people might think you're silly or weird. And your students might even giggle or laugh at your crazy behavior. This rule goes for even the simplest of spirit days though. Is it Blue and White Day for school colors? Better make sure to wear red so you stand out as the separated leader of your classroom. Oh and those items the PTA sells with the school logo? Don't bother. 

3. Wait Until the Morning of Your Lessons to Print EVERYTHING

This has a few benefits. First, you will likely not get to print everything you need so you’ll be rushing around mid-lesson trying to make kids share or running to make more copies at recess. Secondly, when everyone else is annoyed that they can’t print because the printer is constantly busy, they will come to see what is going on. Even though they might be frustrated, at least you’ll meet other people!

(On a related note, only print enough for EXACTLY how many students you have. Don’t waste paper on extra copies or teacher copies.)

4. You Are Busy, Don’t Attend Additional Trainings

You already have so much going on between work and your social life, trainings would just get in the way. Don’t be tempted by trainings about meeting the Common Core State Standards or increasing student engagement. Sure they might sounds useful to help deepen your content knowledge or develop hands-on lesson in your classroom, or maybe even incorporate technology in your teaching but that also sounds like a lot of hard work. And hard work is hard. So skip all of that. You’ll do it eventually right?

5. Obsess Over Pinterest & Blogs

Every single thing in your classroom must be compared to what you see on Pinterest and other educator's blogs. Make sure to pin tons of DIY projects and decoration inspirations for your classroom so that you'll be overwhelmed with projects you never have time to do. This will also help make you feel inadequate when the school year starts and you're classroom doesn't look like a spread in a Carson-Dellosa catalog. 

That wraps it up for now! Enjoy the stress and frustration that comes with the use of these tips!

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PS. Hopefully you didn’t arrive at my blog thinking I truly messed up my first year of teaching! I just wanted to share a few of the lessons I learned this year in a more entertaining way. I promise none of these situations actually occurred for me (ok maybe the printing issue did once or twice but I learned, I swear!).

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