On First-Year Teachers

Watching first-year teachers, for veteran teachers, can be quite fun.

They should be case studies, so fascinating this group can be, particularly the white ones in schools of color. I think about this now as Chicago Public Schools teachers, like the Meandering Maestro himself, welcome back students from summer break this week.

I’ve been teaching since 2007, so I’ve seen a lot. The first day of school does not faze me, and I treat it like any other school day. In fact, to the chagrin of admin, I normally do away with the introductory slide show they insist teachers produce that lay out who they are, their class norms, rules, classroom expectations, hallway expectations, etc … Blah, blah, blah.

No.

My job title specifically says reading and writing teacher. So we will read and write at length, even on the first day. Hey, where I’ve taught, trust me, the kids need it. Besides, being a veteran and looking like these kids’ father (or, as they like to tease, grandfather), I inherently tend to have the students respect even before I speak. So, there’s no real need for me to go over procedural stuff the first day; what I tell the kids to do, they’ll usually do it. Just because.

Not so for first year teachers, no matter what color they are. I speak from experience. I worked in a school that was 50/50 black and Latino my first year teaching in America. I struggled mightily with one class in particular, as I wrote about in an earlier blog. Still, I always kept the faith and truly believed that the kids would come around. Part of the reason why was because I was of color like them. And that I had grown up in the same type of environment. I figured at some point, they’d be able to relate to me.

So how does it work for novice white teachers in schools of color? According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 70 percent of America’s public school teachers are white, and more than 70 percent of all white teachers are female. I’ve mostly worked at schools in impoverished neighborhoods populated with students who are hard to teach for various reasons (broken home, behavioral issues, learning disabilities, well behind grade level, etc …). Veteran teachers tend to stay away from those schools because they don’t want the headache. They work at high-achieving schools, leaving the other ones for the recent college graduates. My types of schools are a magnet for them. And you’re bound to find, due to the law of averages, twentysomething white females where I work.

Twentysomething white females who have never taught in black or Latino neighborhoods.

Twentysomething white females who have never been in black or Latino neighborhoods.

Twentysomething white females who have never had friends from black or Latino neighborhoods.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

No matter how well-intended and earnest they are, these teachers eventually find the learning curve hard to navigate. They enter that first week with their heads in the cloud. The kids are listening to them and work is getting done. I can do this!

And their first day is glorious. They introduce themselves with a slide show of all the things that are important to them. They recite a long-winded biography, about how they grew up on a farm in Iowa; played lacrosse in high school; went to some small, private, liberal arts college, Grinnell perhaps; how they studied abroad; how they vacationed in Europe over the summer, snorkeling in Aruba; how one of their outside interests is volunteering at the food pantry; and one of the things on their bucket list is to sit in the bleachers in July to watch a game at Wrigley Field.

They think they have the kids hooked.

By October, this assuredness succumbs to reality. Your class is a hot mess and no one’s listening to you. They’re throwing your pencils and calculators out the window; they’re fighting while you’re standing right in front of them and watching porn on their computers when your not; they’re inappropriately touching classmates; they’re eating and sharing weed gummies and vaping behind the computer cart in your classroom.

All of these things have happened where I’ve taught.

No, things have changed for these first-year teachers by October. And it’s written all over your face.

I can’t do this.

I fancy myself an expert of the new-teacher specie, and I wrote about them in the second chapter of my book Where I Belong. Here’s a small portion beneath. It’s the week before the students arrive to school, and the teachers are in one of their many (pointless) staff meetings:

The teachers who’d been there awhile, or those like me who hadn’t but had taught at similarly crazy schools, would scan the room during our first staff meeting and take bets on which of the new white teachers would be gone by November.

“I got the redhead. Look how happy she is.”

“See the dude over there by himself with his hat pulled way down his head and we couldn’t hear a word he said when Mrs. Davidson went around the room and had us introduce ourselves. He’s gone first.”

“Maybe, but I got the girl with the Teachers Make a Difference shirt on. Very chatty. Extremely confident.”

“Ha, right. Confident. You know what that means?”

“Right. She’s scared witless.”

“I got her.”

“Me, too.”

“Y’all are right, she’s gone first.”

“Maybe even September.”

We’d all laugh and dap each other up.

Ok, ok. I apologize if I’ve been too hard on the newbies. We’re in this together. My advice to you is to find teachers at your school who know what they’re doing, pick their brains and follow their leads. Hang in there. Always hang in there. It slows down and gets easier and better if you just hang in there and work hard at your craft. Be strict, relentlessly demanding with your kids and show them moments of compassion. It’ll all work out.

Good luck.

Here’s hoping you don’t quit by Winter Break.