Survive and Thrive in Your First Five

The Insider’s Guide for Beginning Teachers

EBSOwen ChanJaime Beck

Teacher stress in the news:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/05/27/mb-teacher-burnout-winnipeg.html

http://www.straight.com/article/teachers-flee-broken-system

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/04/f-vp-smol.html

EBSANDERS ALMJAIME BECKOWEN CHANNAN NASSEF

EBSANDERS ALMJAIME BECKOWEN CHANNAN NASSEF

EBSANDERS ALMJAIME BECKOWEN CHANNAN NASSEF

schedule

9:00 – 9:10 > Introduction 9:10 – 9:30 > Simulation 9:30 – 9:45 > Simulation debrief 9:45 – 10:25 > The Teaching Life™ board game10:25 – 10:35 > Game debrief10:35 – 10:45 > Break10:34 – 11:10 > Mapping your path11:10 – 11:45 > Time-saving compromises &

Discussion

Simulation Rules

You are a new teacher at EBS High.

Meet as many people as you can.

Get your paperwork filled out.

Solve any problems that come your way.

Your ultimate goal is to make it to our staff social.

Simulation Debrief

Any negative experiences? What got in the way of achieving the objective quickly?

Ways that you could have proactively improved upon your experience?

What in the simulation was hyperbolized and why.

Stuff We Wished We Knew

It’s okay to:

Be overwhelmed.

Ask what an acronym means.

Not know… you just got there!

Ask for help.

The low-down on evaluations.

Questions you’ll want answers to as soon as possible.

Seeking Balance

Divide into groups of four.

Open up The Teaching Life and begin balancing the life you’ve signed up for.

One person will want to be reading parts of the Guidebook out loud to the rest of the group.

Step One:The Green Pieces

(Personal Responsibilities)

Step Two:The Blue Pieces

(Professional Responsibilities)

The Teaching Life

Step Three:The Red Pieces

(Crises!)

Step Four:The Yellow Pieces(Consequences)

The Teaching Life

Board Game Debrief

Share an experience you had or an insight you gained during gameplay

Any questions about the game?

Adding it up...check out the bottom of the box.

Mapping Your Path

Looking at all the green pieces on the board, make a personal list of your top 4 priorities.

May we suggest that your top 4 include some variation of:

Preparing and eating meals

Sleeping

Personal care, hobbies, and downtime

Nurturing relationships important to you

Good teachers...

Together, let’s generate a list of the skills and attributes of a good teacher.

Individually, prioritize the items we generated in your own personal list.

For Every IdealThere is a Time

Connect the top 3 items on YOUR good teacher list to a game piece they correspond with.

Make a Plan

Let’s create a year plan for your first year of teaching... for you and for your e-portfolio, this is your first TPGP!

Assuming you can learn three new things in a year, take a look at your prioritized list of good teacher skills and determine which skills you will focus on in your first year.

http://dnowlan.ca/TPGP/index.htm

Take a look at your board. Each of you remove one piece that for your group members, is of low priority during year 1.

Some Time-SavingIdeas…

140 character reflections.Share your planning load.Keep in mind that kids need practice doing more than you need practice marking; learn to tell what does and doesn’t need to be marked.Assistant positions are great for your beginning extra curricular activities. As much as you want to, avoid taking a lead role in at least your first two years.Get parents’ email addresses and create distribution lists rather than phoning home all the time.

CoF and FLU Season

In your first years of teaching, invariably you will come down with some sort of CoF or FLU.

C.o.F.Crisis of Faith

You feel: As though you have no idea what you are doing, like you haven’t taught anyone anything all year - who let you into a classroom anyways?

Prognosis: Moments of self-doubt are a temporary and normal part of teacher growth. You are becoming the teacher your students deserve.

Remedy: Take a moment to express your self-doubt to a colleague, remind yourself of a great lesson you had, and of one positive interaction with a student. Shake it off and keep at it!

Remember...Do the best you can given your current resources:

beginning teacher skill set

an introduction to teaching concepts/strategies

time

available supports/resources

Your ultimate goal is to make it to our staff social.

F.L.U. Feeling of Lowered Understanding

You feel: As though you are working against the system. You don’t understand decisions that are being made for you. Won’t somebody please think of the children?!

Prognosis: School systems can be complex mazes of paperwork and policy. You’ll wade through it!

Remedy: Ask a veteran teacher you trust for help. If it’s paperwork, chip away at it a little at a time. If it’s policy, ask who you should approach for clarification and how. Protect yourself but advocate for students if you think it’s right to do so.

CoF and FLU Season

It is important to recognize that CoFs and FLUs are opportunities for personal and professional growth.

They are totally normal. In fact, it would be abnormal to not get the occasional CoF or FLU.

Welcome CoFs and FLUs as signs that you are becoming the teacher your students deserve, the teacher you imagine yourself being - just don’t let them hang around for too long.

Burnout

Something that happens to people who don’t like kids.

Something that happens to people who shouldn’t be in the classroom to begin with.

Something that happens to teachers who have been “in the trenches” for a bajillion years.

Something that won’t happen to you.

is Not…

Burnout is…

What happens when the symptoms of prolonged stress become a disease.

Something that happens most often to people in caring professions such as: nursing, ministry, psychology, and education.

According to research, the best and most enthusiastic of us are the most susceptible to burnout.

Stress vs. Burnout:What to Look For

Self-isolation.Getting less than six hours of sleep a night.Going an entire week without actually preparing a meal, (Considering the chocolate bar you got from the school’s vending machine at 2:00 p.m. “lunch.”)Wake up dreading the day more than once or twice in a semester.Emotional outpouring that doesn’t match the trigger.Feeling unable to “shut-off,” yet being generally ineffective in accomplishing tasks.Experiencing a physical symptom that will not go away after four weeks yet has no explainable cause other than being run-down.

Life-SavingStrategies

Tape your priority list to your bathroom mirror. Set it as the background on your desktop. Collage it onto a place mat on your dinner table. Tattoo it on your forehead.Return to your personal priorities often, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed at work.

Organize a “salad club” with other staff members.Remember, sometimes a completion mark is enough.Cook in large quantities and freeze.Don’t over-complicate what you don’t have to.Be reasonable about the number of stellar units/lessons you can create each semester - borrow the rest.Sleep.Get together with other new teachers regularly (library field trip!).Eat well.Learn to laugh at the moments that make you want to cry.Don’t beat yourself up over minor-that-feel-like-major lapses in judgement. We’ve all done something truly dumb in the classroom.Exercise.Did we mention sleep?Make time for your friends and family. You won’t regret not getting those projects back a day earlier.

Life-SavingStrategies

Say ‘no’ (diplomatically)

You know, I would really love to do that, but I have this pile of essays I need to get back to the kids.It’s so great that the (school/department/you) are taking that on, if I have some time after I finish (marking/planning/supervising/connecting with parents/meeting with student services/updating my course website/my committee meeting/football practice/this field trip paperwork) I would love to help out. Wow! That’s a really great idea, I’ll help you celebrate when it’s done.Neat! I’m focusing on my in-class teaching (today/this semester/this year), but I’d love to help out in the future.

Suggested ReadingBreaking the Silence: Beginning teachers share pathways out of the profession, by Jaime Beckhttps://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/27689

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This–A story of teacher burnout and attrition, by Nan Nassefhttp://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/v13n04/articles/nassef/index.html

Understanding Teacher Burnout, by Teri Wood & Chris McCarthyhttp://www.ericdigests.org/2004-1/burnout.htm

Coping with Teacher Stress, by Hector M. Earlehttp://www.canadianteachermagazine.com/ctm_healthy_living/winter06_coping_with_teacher_stress.shtml

Understanding Job Burnout, by Christina Maslach (Chapter 4)http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iy4XheuW9fEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA37&dq=Maslach,+C.+%281982%29.+Burnout:+The+cost+of+caring+.+Englewood+Cliffs,+NJ:+Prentice+Hall.&ots=TmWxACfyu0&sig=k8o9DzDfxu8B9BWipiyxx1r48RI#v=onepage&q=Maslach%2C%20C.%20%281982%29.%20Burnout%3A%20The%20cost%20of%20caring%20.%20Englewood%20Cliffs%2C%20NJ%3A%20Prentice%20Hall.&f=false

Teacher Resilience: A Necessary Condition for Effectiveness, by Qing Gu & Christopher Dayhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VD8-4KNKBTF-1&_user=1067472&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1658065633&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000051251&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1067472&md5=501a77045d9ef4ac2e57d7b90d6c295c&searchtype=a

Signs of burnout questionnairehttp://www.headington-institute.org/Portals/32/Resources/Test_Are_you_burnout.pdf

Bear in mind that teaching is part art, part science, and part

accident. Learn your craft over time. Don’t try to control

things you cannot.Enjoy it.

Questions and Feedback