The world of teaching is full of OMG moments. From those first days of stepping through the doors as a qualified, yet nervous novice. And then right through to the most experienced teacher in your school, everyone has had them.
Not the Good Kind of OMG Moment…
I’m not talking about those wonderful moments when things click for your students and you realize that all your hard work and dedication has paid off, not that OMG moment (although that is an amazing moment, to be discussed at a later date) for now I’m talking about the other one… The why has this happened to me and what on earth am I going to do kind of OMG moment!
Surviving the first five years as a teacher is tough. Not only are you overworked, exhausted, desperately trying to keep up with all the teaching, planning, marking, new processes, and paperwork, you’re also still finding your feet, and sometimes when we’re finding our feet – we slip!
- Perhaps your whiteboard keeps jumping the text around and unfortunately, the giggling class realizes before you do that your chest has been knocking the screen?
- Or you were the teacher who sent a student outside of the class for playing up? And forget he’s out there for the rest of the lesson – oops!
- Were you the teacher to take their whole class out on a field trip and bring them all back covered in anti-graffiti paint?
- Or maybe you were the teacher who told their class to research Brazil on the internet before looking over the shoulder of a few and realizing the top results seemed to be related to waxing trends!
A Guide to Surviving the First Five Years of OMG Moments
If you haven’t had one of these OMG moments yet, then think yourself lucky. Although, I must say, once the humiliation and horror have passed, they do tend to make exceedingly good stories, and there’s nothing better than a good laugh at the end of a stressful week.
Now, these inevitable OMG moments will happen. The trick is to do your best to roll with the punches. Take it in good humor and laugh at yourself where it’s appropriate. And when to just ignore it and carry on where it’s not.
So, these little OMG moments are inevitable, they are going to happen. Furthermore, actually dealing with these little things is what makes us better teachers. Surviving the first five years of these moments is what teaches us how to adapt. They teach us to be flexible and to think on our feet.
Being adaptable, flexible, and thinking on your feet takes time and experience, but there are some techniques you can adopt during those early years that will certainly help reduce the ‘oh no’ moments in your classroom. So here are a few ideas:
1. Get to know your subject
Teachers are trained and qualified to teach, but this doesn’t make them subject matter experts in everything they have to teach. Some topics and lessons leave people panicked. And we all know that some students LOVE to ask questions. And they LOVE tricky ones at that. So, if time is limited, don’t worry about putting together the all singing and dancing resources for this unit.
A knowledge-rich curriculum is what you are looking for. Instead, invest your time in building your subject knowledge. Read books. Watch documentaries. And do some research. It’s much more important that you feel knowledgeable rather than having invested hours. As long as you can discuss the subject in-depth and provide some simple assignments. This is far more realistic than always creating presentations with fabulous graphics and videos embedded throughout.
On that note, that brings me to my second point. You don’t have hours to spare, so…
2. Get clever with your marking
Teaching is exhausting. So the last thing you want to be doing is spending your evenings on the sofa with a pile of marking. I’m not saying it’s never going to happen. You’re a teacher, and it kind of comes with the territory. But, there are ways to make it a little less often. Look at the different marking strategies available to you. There are online tests and quizzes that mark themselves. Or using whole-class marking options? Even better, why not give the homework in a format that requires students to present it back in class?
Some teachers adopt the four quarters marking approach, which is worth looking at. Dylan Wiliam, an educational professor recommends the following four quarter approach, to prevent teachers from spending too much time on marking that doesn’t lead to effective feedback:
Dylan says, “I recommend what I call ‘four quarters marking’. I think that teachers should mark in detail 25% of what students do, should skim another 25%, students should then self-assess about 25% with teachers monitoring the quality of that, and, finally, peer assessment should be the other 25%. It’s a sort of balanced diet of different kinds of marking and assessment”. For more details on Wiliam’s approach, have a look here.
This approach is great guide to surviving the first five years of marking. And it is said to help students be self-reflective in their learning. And it gives the teacher a little more time to concentrate on other areas needing their attention.
Talking of attention, my next point is about when things are just not going well.
3. Learn to read the class
Not every lesson will go well, and learning to read the class takes time. But don’t be afraid to go off-topic or to change something that isn’t going well halfway through. In the early years, it’s common to power through with a failing lesson or activity. But actually, sometimes the answer is just to move on or roll with the new discussions, they might not be in your lesson plan or directly related to your curriculum, but sometimes gets them engaged, motivated, and invested in a topic and discussion is worth more.
And it’s always worth having a back-up activity ready to go, something tried and tested with your students that you know if all else fails, will get you through the lesson.
And now to my final point, invest in yourself:
4. Self-care
One of the other things that really need your attention in the early years of teaching (and in every year of teaching actually!) is yourself. It’s important to not get too overwhelmed by the pressures of the job. So you have a mounting to-do list, so what? So does everyone. Sometimes, you need to just switch off and find some time for yourself. It’s ok if you need to do a little marking on Saturday or watch a documentary to get to grips with a new subject. But then make sure the rest of the time is for you. A stressed, exhausted, and tired teacher is not going to be good for you or the students.
And while we’re on the self-care topic, self-reflection is a great way to improve your teaching – looking at what went well in your class and what didn’t. But don’t beat yourself up about the things that didn’t. It takes time to get teaching right and to know what kind of lessons work for you and your students and what ones don’t. So, self-reflect – yes. But, feel guilty – absolutely not…just learn for next time to have that back-up ‘go-to’ activity to pivot towards if things are taking a turn for the worst.
And remember, if it’s a real OMG moment – it won’t be long before you are laughing along at that story with your fellow teachers. You’ll all be bonding over who has the best (or worst) story to tell.
So there you have it. A few of my ideas on surviving the first five years of teaching and how to get through those OMG moments.
Oh, one last thing – never leave your copying until the day you need it, there will always be a queue of 462 documents waiting to print and a paper jam!
