I had a student-teacher last term for the first time. It was a learning experience for both of us, made challenging by remote learning and the complexity of one of the courses I taught. I shared some advice with him at the start of his placement, and am now revising for his first year.
- It’s okay for lessons to flop and fail. It happens. Experimenting with new ideas is an important part of innovating in your classroom and keeping things interesting for students. Sometimes you’ll have a new hit on your hands that you can use for future years, and sometimes things won’t work out. Keep trying new things as you pull from what you know works. Mix things up. School and your class can start to feel repetitive if you stick to the same types of learning activities all the time. Do what you can to make it interesting. Put on a little bit of a show, be goofy, outlandish or a caricature – students will love it and appreciate your energy. As you know, not all classes are the same. Different ideas will work with different group dynamics, but you can create entry points for students that are relevant where they want to share ideas, and that translates into students more deeply engaging in the class.
- Prioritize getting to know students, because relationships are key. Utilize a student survey make a schedule to actively engage with those students on topics they are interested in or the day to day struggles they are having (wish them happy birthday!). At the start of class is a great time to do this. You will build rapport with the students who enter first, and then as others enter something interesting is being discussed. Some of the best discussions and segues to your lessons can be found in these conversations because they are organic, and that helps you to be responsive to who they are and what is happening in their lives. Sometimes that may involve talking about music, computer games, social media, or whatever else. As you learn more about them, you will be able to make better links between their lives and the content of the class, and even focus learning on areas of interest for students. This will help greatly with classroom management, which is sure to be a big challenge for people whose only experience teaching is online.
- Be open & vulnerable with students, and they will reciprocate. You have a unique opportunity as a teacher to be honest about the fact that you are learning along with them – students will relish the opportunity to teach how to teach as you teach them. Although keeping professional boundaries is important, it is helpful to be honest with students about your life, so that students see you as a real person. Some folks urge “not smiling until November,” but this is a sure way to set up an authoritarian classroom. You can be firm with some expectations, and still share authority to create an enviroment of mutual respect if you help students to understand why your expectations are important. If students have a chance to build a relationship with you and share power, you will have far more success than if you treat the class like your personal kingdom.
- Be prepared. Good responsive teaching involves a lot of improvisation and adaptation, but you also need to have a plan. Have a draft of lesson plans or slides ready for the coming week ready by the Friday prior. Identify what you plan on giving feedback on and grading before the week starts, and what you might look at but not respond to. Consider how what you are assigning gets students prepared for the summative task of the unit of study. Our goal as teachers is not only to teach content, but also to teach the skills students need to be successful on whatever students will be doing at the end of the unit of study.
I could probably write a book, but Harry and Rosemary Wong already did, The First Days of School. and it’s mostly very practical and useful. I strongly recommend it to any first or second-year teacher.