New Teachers on the Block

By Ryan Crawley

Congratulations! You have just graduated college with a degree in teaching and you have landed your first actual teaching job. Your years of studying are finally going to pay off. Everything you learned in all your classes is going to be put to use. However, there are going to be things that you were not taught, but you must learn to deal with. Your first year of teaching is going to be one of the most challenging of your life!

I sometimes have mentored student-teachers in my classroom over the years. One of my first questions that I ask them is what made you want to become a teacher. Almost one hundred percent of the time I hear about how it has always been their dream to teach. That ever since they can remember, it was always what they strived to do. It’s a shame that statistics show that one out of every ten new teachers will quit by the end of their first school year. One-third of all new teachers will quit after less than five years!

Colleges need to offer a course for Education students that cuts through the romance of being a teacher. This course should offer real life situations encountered by teachers out in the field. This would show some of the most preposterous situations we are put in sometimes on a daily basis. They do not offer such a course right now in college, but you are in luck. I am here to educate you on what might happen during that first year, so the shock of it all won’t send you packing up your stapler and tape dispenser after a few months.

Even before you teach your first class, before you earn your first paycheck, teaching will be costing you money. Teachers are expected to decorate their own classroom and buy their own supplies that are needed. Sometimes the district will offer teachers a bit of money at the beginning of the year to help pay for these things. Do not be surprised if your district does not.

Being the new teacher at school is a lot like being the new kid at school. Choose your friends wisely! There will be teachers on the staff that you do not want to be associated with because of one reason or another. Fellow teachers may look a bit down on you because you are the bright eyed young teacher with new ideas. However, this won’t stop them from offering advice all throughout the school year. In fact, be ready for unsolicited advice for the first ten years of your teaching career. Always be polite and thank the veteran teachers when they decide to impart their wisdom on you. But in reality, you never have to use their advice if you don’t want to.


The teachers’ lounge always held a bit of mystery for students when I was a kid in school. What exactly happened in there? You will soon realize that the teachers’ lounge is a place to mainly avoid because it is mostly teachers complaining about students, spouses, or money. If this all sounds a bit pessimistic, I apologize. I don’t mean for it to be like a Scared Straight program. I am just being brutally honest.
College classes do not prepare you for the unruly kids you will be encountering at each grade level. There will be students that amaze you at how rude and evil they seem. If they were characters in a book, most people would consider them too unbelievable. No kid could be that bad they would think. Welcome to teaching! While some of the students might have a reason for their misbehavior because of their past, others will not have a reason at all.

Sometimes the parents are even worse than the kids. Email nowadays has made it easy for parents to contact you frequently. They can be much harsher in emails than they ever would be in person. Unfortunately, that is the way it is in all social media, too. People talk tougher through a keyboard than they actually would in real life. You will have some mind boggling communications with parents throughout however long your teaching career is. My advice is to save the emails in a folder just in case. They could come in handy!

When first hired, administration will tell you to come to them if you ever have any questions or concerns. What they should be telling you is what they actually mean. They mean that you should only contact them if it is some sort of emergency. Most administrators do not want to hear about a student that cannot behave or does not turn in homework. They will say take care of it yourself in a polite way. Always approach a friendly veteran teacher with your problems instead. They will have the knowledge of what to do next.

Lastly, this might come to your biggest disappointment. The day you see your first paycheck. You will quickly notice that you are now working a job that does not pay much. Happy teachers always say they did not get into education to become rich. Those teachers must also have a spouse that makes pretty good money, otherwise they would be complaining about the pay, too.

Be prepared to live a very humble lifestyle while teaching. You will not mind it as much if teaching is indeed your life’s calling. I hope you carefully have read this article and perhaps print it out and keep it on your wall. When that first year is getting a bit too tough, just know that we have all been there. You are not alone. And good luck!


Ryan Crawley is a writer/educator from Illinois. Born into a family of eleven, he spent most of his childhood watching old reruns of Three's Company and Happy Days. He has his Masters in Reading and Literacy, and is a certified Reading Specialist. He spends his free time writing, working out, and hanging with his two dogs Flair and Smoosh Face.