[Allusion to the musical intended]

I just closed the door on my fifth year of teaching, and at the start of the next school year, I’ll be moving to a different school in a different district. In a feeling of nostalgia, I’ve decided to make my first blog post about the last five years teaching. So here are five things I’ve learned in my five years!

• Coworkers can be your saving grace.

I think teachers get a bad rap on tv and in movies. They’re usually depicted as gossiping in the teacher lounge. Sometimes it’s gossip about students and sometimes it’s gossip about other professionals in the building. I have been very blessed to spend the last five years with teachers who are supportive and compassionate and frankly, nothing like the gossipy whiners shown on tv. I can’t tell you how many times I have been in a difficult situation with a student or just felt down-in-the-dumps, and my wonderful fellow English teachers came swooping in. Most of the people I know who were teachers but left the profession never really connected with their coworkers, and I wonder if they would have left the profession if they felt like they had people on “their side” so to speak.

• It’s important to ask for help, especially before you reach veteran status because you’re mostly making it all up as you go along.

This goes along with “connect with your coworkers.” If I had tried to go it alone in the beginning, I would have drowned. Sometimes, brand-new, fresh-from-college teachers feel like they have to “prove themselves” by making all of their lesson plans and coming up with all of their own ideas. “If I ask someone for help, I must be a failure,” they subconsciously think as they sit on their computer at 11:45pm. I’m not saying “plagiarize all of your lesson plans,” but it’s okay to ask fellow teachers what to do and it’s okay to ask fellow teachers to look over your ideas. The head of the English department always had an open door for me to go to her and say, “Here’s what I want to try in my English 2 class. Sound good?” And she would either say, “That’s great! Email it to me so I can use it!” or she would say, “Here are a couple of issues I see, and here are some suggestions on what to fix.” I think I’m much more confident as a teacher since I’ve asked for help and received great advice.

• You have to be a teachable teacher.

I think being teachable is an important characteristic to have in any phase of life. To quote a teacher friend, “Teaching isn’t a profession where you’re going to wake up one day and feel like ‘I have arrived!’” It’s important to constantly be growing and evolving. Which means… when you mess up, you have to be willing to have some self-reflection and you have to take constructive criticism. It’s not easy to be told something negative, especially when teachers tend to put so much of their heart and soul into their jobs. The most difficult teachers and administrators I have had to work with are the ones who aren’t teachable. There’s no self-reflection of “What am I doing wrong?” When they receive a negative comment, they automatically jump to the defensive: “Well you just don’t understand the content!” or “I’m great at classroom management; these kids are just bad!” Think of it this way — when you give a rubric back to the student, don’t you get annoyed when they argue over every single point that you took off, especially when you write detailed feedback on why you took off the point? Don’t you want the student to learn from his mistake so he doesn’t make it next time?

• “Anything you permit, you encourage.”

This was a quote that I came across during my first year. I think a teacher had it posted in her room, but I can’t quite remember. This is basically my classroom management motto. I am naturally a laid-back, type B person. Does it really bother me if a student takes out their phone to check the time? No. Is it going to bother me if every student takes out their phone to check the time several times during class? Definitely yes. I kind of have to force myself to address things that aren’t really a big deal in my head because I know that they will become a big deal if I allow it to continue. By permitting the one student who isn’t supposed to have their phone out check the time without addressing the issue, I’m encouraging all of the students to do the same. If I permit one student to talk while I am talking, I’m encouraging the students to talk while I am talking. When a student does something, I think to myself, “Is this a behavior I want everyone to be encouraged to do?” If the answer is no, I address it.

•  Make friends, teacher and non-teacher alike.

It’s good to have a social life, which is difficult when teaching. I have friends who are teachers and friends who are not teachers. I sometimes get annoyed with teacher friends because they only talk about teaching, and I sometimes get annoyed with non-teacher friends because they don’t really understand the things I complain about. That’s why it’s good to be well-rounded. Even though I joke in August, “Guess what guys, you won’t see me ‘til Christmas and then not again ‘til June,” it’s great to have people in my life who are rooting for me and who can let me vent and who can distract me so that my life isn’t all about my job.

These are the five “lessons” that stand out to me. What about you? What have you learned as a teacher?