I will begin this newsletter the same way I ended my June Newsletter…by urging you to make sure you are taking at least a week to NOT think about teaching and learning during the summer. Taking time away from this important issue gives your brain a chance to rest, recharge, and be ready to tackle the issue from an entirely different angle in the fall. I spent my week in Branson, Missouri with my wife of 15 years…celebrating our anniversary. When you are visiting Branson, make sure to see the Eagles tribute band – they sound exactly like the real thing!
With that said, the time is coming soon where we will be preparing to teach another crop of young children! If you are going to be a new teacher, what are you doing to prepare for your new career? Are you going to be coaching a sport or sponsoring a club as well? I suggest you download the New Teacher Survival Kit or my newest ebook “Coaching To Survive”. I assure you that the information that you get from these ebooks is nothing like what you learned in college…it is knowledge gained from all of the painful mistakes I made as a new teacher and coach. How great would it be for you to NOT make the same mistakes? Download a sample chapter of the NTSK and my newest free ebook “Why Do We Have To Go To School?” to whet your appetite.
If you are a mentor teacher, what are you doing to make sure your protégé has a successful first year of teaching? Are you going to give them the lowdown on where to park, how to operate the photocopier, where to find curriculum guides, how to write lesson plans, and other important information? Are you going to let your protégé come into your room to observe you teaching a lesson? Are you going to brainstorm with your protégé the effective classroom rules he/she should use? Remember when you were a new teacher, and how helpful (or not) YOUR mentor was? Make a resolution right now to be a valuable resource for your protégé. You know that they are going to be afraid to ask questions (for fear of looking dumb), so anticipate what questions they may have, and give them the answers to questions they haven’t even asked!
If you are an administrator responsible for hiring new members of your school’s staff, what are you doing to make them feel like welcomed, valued contributors to your campus’ learning environment? Are you assigning them a mentor teacher that actually CARES about them? Are you setting up a study group so that they can get together periodically and ask questions of you, or read an awesome book like Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne…or Professional Learning Communities That Work by Richard DuFour? Are you going to meet with them as a group (and individually) before the school year starts to familiarize them with all of your building (and district’s) policies and procedures? Don’t wait until August to start thinking about these things…put the mechanism in place in June and July!
Let the new teachers have a substitute for a day about a month into the school year, and let them observe several of your best veteran teachers in action. A lot of the things that we should be doing for new teachers is expensive…but what is even more expensive is having ineffective rookie teachers in your building. It is even more expensive to react to problems that arise, rather than take steps proactively to reduce the mistakes that new teachers make. It is more expensive to keep spending time and money every year hiring new teachers to replace the ones who quit (or are fired) because they didn’t receive the support they needed. Research has shown that the most important factor in the success of new teachers is the administration in their building. You have the power to be the one who brings about a happy ending to this story – a successful, enthusiastic, happy teacher who enjoys a long, successful career in education…and molds the next generation of teachers!
What is Shannon Holden doing to help new teachers succeed? Yes, I just went “third person” on you…I’m glad you asked! I am giving you access to everything in my arsenal:
*Access all of my YouTube videos by typing my channel name “texholden” in the YouTube search bar. I will be posting tons of educational videos on my channel, so you should subscribe for free today!
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*Access hundreds of pages of free content on my main website!
*Check out my blog for administrators!
http://administratoralley.blogspot.com
*You can ask questions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at this email address: