What New Teachers Are Told vs. What a New Teacher Learned

What new teachers are told:

Don’t let your students know your age.  If they know you are in your twenties, they won’t respect you.

What I have learned:

Teenagers have plenty of middle-aged Christians to admire and emulate, but many twenty-something siblings and friends have shown them bad examples of a moral life.  New teachers should emphasize their young age and prove to teenagers that young people can be responsible, intelligent Christians.

What new teachers are told:

Be strict. Don’t compromise.  Don’t ever bend your rules.  Students will think you are inconsistent and will refuse to listen to you.

What I have learned:

New teachers, especially, need to be understanding.  Teenagers have incredibly hard lives, and many of their circumstances are still out of their control.  Yes, we should try to act consistently.  Yes, students will have to deal with the uncompromising world outside of high school.  But right now your students need someone to listen to them and take them seriously.  Your classroom may be the only haven they have in this messed-up, chaotic world.

What new teachers are told:

The first year will be the hardest.

What I have learned:

Every year will be harder than the first.  Each year you will have to set aside your perceptions from the year before to rebuild a new curriculum for new students.  Much of what you learned your first year will be turned upside-down in the second, and so on.  The students you learned to love will leave you, and you will be tempted to compare each year to the year before.  The longer you teach, the more you will feel that you have not improved, prepared, or learned as much as you could have—and it will always be true.

What new teachers are told:

Find a respected veteran teacher, and model your teaching style and curriculum after that person.

What I learned:

Sure, you can (and should) take advice from older teachers.  You might even adopt some of their strategies.  But of the many teachers your students have had, you are the only you to have ever taught them.  Don’t compare yourself to another teacher.  Unique teaching styles make content more memorable than seven teachers teaching the same thing in the same way.  Your students need you to be the best you you can be.