8 Tips All New Teachers Need to Know to Crush Your First School Year

If you’re starting your teaching journey, these new teacher tips will guide you!

8 new teacher tips to guide you in creating great lessons, building strong relationships, and trusting your instincts every step of the way.

Being a new teacher can feel suffocating, to say the least. With the amount of hats we are expected to wear, it sometimes feels impossible to navigate all of the obstacles that are laid out in front of us. If you are a new teacher in the throes of another breakdown, fret not, as we have all been there! Take a look at these new teacher tips to help set out the school year on a great note!

Also, if you are looking for some help early on in the year, using other teachers’ tried and true lessons is not cheating! Take a look at some of the resources in my store here.

1- Building Relationships: The Foundation for Success in Teaching

The most important tip any new teacher should know is get to know your students! If you don’t spend time creating a rapport with your kids and the other teachers, you’ll be like that kid on a seesaw with nobody on the other end to lift you up. More about relationship building HERE.

2- Be Prepared and Flexible: Embrace the Chaos

Be prepared, but stay flexible. Because a bee will come flying into the classroom during your formal observation. And there will be kids screaming and jumping on desks. And after a kid traps it in his water bottle, you will announce that the room was “abuzz” with excitement, and you will proceed to turn the whole debacle into a teachable moment about puns and onomatopoeia.

Yep. True story.

3- Not Everyone Will Like You: How to Embrace Criticism and Move On

Not every student, parent, and administrator will like you. And some will be vocal about it. Get over it.

Imagine this. You and Tom Hanks walking a red carpet at a premier. Tom Hanks turns to you and whines that if all 500 people there don’t profess to loving him more than they love their dog, he will quit acting forever.

What would you tell him?

It’s likely you’d say, “Hey, Tom, you’re awesome, but that’s an unrealistic expectation.”

Or, “Tom, I don’t speak Whinese. You’re one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Get over it.”

4- Dealing with Crappy Lesson Days: Tips and Strategies to Overcome Challenges

You will have crappy lesson days. Days when you’re in a neck-in-neck competition with the best sleep aides CVS has to offer.

Power through it. Make a note in your planner about maybe finding a TedTalk about the topic next year.

You’re not going to always put on a Tony award-worthy performance, and that’s okay. We’re all learning.

5- Don’t Be Afraid To Throw Out Lessons That Don’t Work!

When I was a new teacher, I pushed through the Avi novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, even though the kids hated it. I should have walked around the room with the metal trashcan and taken it outside for a bonfire.

I should have told them that we should always give a book a chance by reading a few chapters, but after that– well, life is too short to waste time on a terrible book. That would have been a teachable moment.

No one knows your students better than you. If you do not like a lesson or do not think it will work, throw it out and work toward what is best for you and your students.

6-Leveraging Existing Resources: Save Time and Effort with Pre-Designed Lessons

Don’t create everything from scratch. There’s no need to recreate the wheel because countless others have already created awesome wheels that are ready to be… wheeled.

Find what you need online, even if it means spending a few dollars on it. After all, that $6 caramel macchiato is going to be flushed in a few hours, but a lesson that you’ve purchased is ready to go and will be for years to come. For ELA teachers, TPT can be a lifesaver early on  with the amount of resources they have

7-Respect Is Key: Building Positive Relationships with All School Staff Members

I probably don’t have to say this; unfortunately, teaching can be so stressful that sometimes we forget. Be respectful toward everyone. Be just as nice to the custodians, lunch aides, and secretaries as you are to the other teachers and administrators. Everybody has a part in making the school run smoothly. Nobody is more important than anybody else.

8-Maintain Professionalism: How to Separate Your Personal Life from Your Work Life

Set your social media profiles to private. Your students WILL look for you on social media. With any kind of patience, they WILL find you. No matter how much you may want to be the cool or fun teacher, set your accounts to private and leave it up to their imaginations what filters you set on your Instagram posts.

Don’t share too much of your personal life with your students. At least until you know them very well, and even then, use good judgment. It’s okay for them to know your rescue dog, Barky VonDoodle, snores in his sleep. It’s not okay to tell them you used to be a groupie for a semi-famous musician and you “dated” him and several of his friends. (yup, that was the story a substitute teacher told about her life when I was out sick one day.)

Finally, remember that teaching is a wild, wonderful rollercoaster, and you’re going to figure it out one loop at a time. Trust yourself—you’re smarter and more capable than you probably realize. Lean on your instincts, build lessons that bring a little joy into the room, and don’t forget to invest in those relationships (both with the kids who’ll tell you way more than you asked and the coworkers who’ve got the good snacks). You don’t have to get it all perfect—just be present, keep learning, and remember that you’re making a difference, even on the days it doesn’t feel like it.

You’ve got this. Truly.

These new teacher tips will guide you in creating great lessons, building strong relationships, and trusting your instincts every step of the way.