First year of teaching

I finished my first year of teaching Math at Columbia High School. It wasn’t really a full year really only 5 months since getting the license ate up the first half of the school year. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience. I taught Algebra 2 to Honors and regular classes to about 120 students. Each day I had 5 teaching periods, one study hall period, a conference period (basically office hours), a planning period, and a lunch period (about 45 minutes each).  I must admit that the first few weeks were really hard:

• I had to learn the various systems the school uses. For example: (1) PowerSchool for attendance, grading, and other student data. (2) Canvas which is an online teaching tool where instruction material can be posted, assignments can be given and graded, important dates can be shared (such as test dates), and information can be communicated to students and parents. (3) Atlas which is a tool for planning curriculum and lessons. (3) Frontline for doing HR forms, requesting absences, and for teacher evaluation. (4) IXL for assessing student skills in different areas and assigning online material for students to improve in certain areas. (5) A variety of Google tools.
• I had to get to know the 120 students that were in my classes. I tried to get to know their names as quickly as possible (it took me about two weeks) as a first step but also understand them and their interests so that I can assess their gaps, try to motivate them, and in general try to connect with them.
• Develop lesson plans for each day that were engaging but also covered all the important topics that are part of the state standards.
• Create homework assignments, give them out and grade them.
• Create tests, give them out and grade them.
• Connect with parents to assure them that I knew what I was doing (since I took over as a new teacher in the middle of the year) but also work with parents to address any issues with struggling or demotivated students.
• Work with other teachers and school administrators to make sure what I taught was consistent with what other teachers were teaching and up to the standards expected by the school.
• Attend Rutgers classes 2-3 times a week in the evenings and weekends. Attending these classes is required by the state for new teachers without a degree in education.

The first few weeks were completely overwhelming. I was working long hours (not what I had planned in retirement if you can call it that), I always felt I was behind and struggling to keep pace, and I was always in fear that I missed something important that will negatively impact the students. Somehow, I survived and surprisingly after a couple of months I reached a level of normalcy where I was actually ready for each lesson a few days early and I started feeling that I was doing a decent job of teaching with students engaging and actually retaining some of the things I taught. The evaluations from the supervisor came also positive and pretty consistent with my own views of how I was doing which boosted my confidence

Some interesting observations from the experience:

• I could never have imagined how much I learned in the first few months of teaching. I could see my teaching improving almost on a daily basis. There were a lot of factors that contributed to my progress. My Rutgers classes helped a lot mostly by giving me pointers about all the things I didn’t know and how to learn about them (I still needed to read a lot of books and articles but I knew where to start). My mentor helped was critical also. Each new teacher is required to have one and my mentor was a very experienced teacher with lots of useful advice. One interesting fact is that new teachers are required to pay for the time of their mentor from their own paycheck. It’s a worthwhile investment but this was very surprising coming from the industry where these types of investments are covered by the business. The previous teacher (retiring) also helped a lot. I got the chance to overlap with her for a couple of weeks and that helped tremendously with the transition. Also, the supervisor gave me good tips and feedback.
• I found teaching very rewarding at times but also extremely frustrating at other times. There were very high points and very low points and everything in between. The highest point was when one of the top students wrote me a note that said that I made him love Math again (he had some challenges with the previous teachers). The lowest point was when one of the students called me a racist because I caught him cheating and gave him a 0 on the test. I know that he wasn’t really serious because he had only attended a couple of my classes due to a variety of attendance issues but it definitely wasn’t a fun experience.
• I was able to connect with many students and form some close relationships. I was worried whether I was going to be able to do that given the age difference but as I expected Math does bring people together when presented and motivated the right way. I did get the opportunity to teach my favorite topic, compound interest (the eighth wonder of the world according to Albert Einstein). How can you not connect with students given my background and the topic regardless of age?
• I was afraid of unruly classes and hyperactive students when getting into teaching. The opposite was true. I found that most students were too reserved, too shy, too polite, and not full of energy as I was expecting. From what I hear this is a result of COVID where students were used to sitting at home online quietly (making sure not to disturb parents working next door) and not being able to engage with others. I am thinking of ways to get students to be more willing to push back and challenge the teacher which I feel is a critical part of learning. That’s a year 2 activity,
• Cell phones in my opinion are the biggest hindrance to student learning. I can’t tell you how many times I had to tell students to put phones away, how many times students missed important part of lessons because they got distracted by their phones, and how difficult it was to keep students focused for sustained periods of time. I am considering banning cellphones from my classroom for next year (which I hear some schools are also considering) but I need to navigate this given the valid reasons for students needing their phones and school policies.
• There are some aspects of teaching that in my opinion are a bit bureaucratic (I’m quite allergic to bureaucracy as I’m sure many of you are). One example is the evaluation process. In general, the process is well meaning and focused in the right areas. However, based on my 25 years of experience evaluating employees in a business setting, I found that being evaluated on over 200 criteria as a teacher with a few months of experience was a bit excessive. 

All in all, a pretty interesting experience. I did feel like I contributed to the school and many of the students which was my goal. Students also seem to have enjoyed the class reasonably well. I did do an anonymous survey after grades were finalized and got the scores from the students that you can see in the picture. They gave me 8.13 out of 10 which I’m pretty pleased with.

I’ve decided to give it another try next year and I’ll be teaching Algebra 2 and Calculus. I do hope for another year of leaning and improving.