A Few Observations about Teaching, From a Third Year Teacher

1.  I will always have a slight anxiety attack when the bell rings at the start of the day.   

2.  Any lesson can be made better by involving a really great picture book that applies to the concept being taught.  This is something I'm rediscovering after being a bit lazy with literature the past couple of years.

3.  Painting is always stressful.  Period.  It helps to threaten students that they will lose future painting privileges if they act like idiots during painting projects.

4.  With every group of kids, there will always be at least one naughty kid that you completely love AND at least one good kid that will completely irritate you.  The converse is also true.

5.  Fridays are consistently the worst day of the week when it comes to management and behavior issues.

6.  Parents are the hardest part of the job.  (Although, there are many wonderful parents that will do anything to make your job easier.)

7.  The best way to make sure all kids are working on what they are supposed to be working on is to put them into strategically created groups or partners.  Strategy is key here, otherwise you'll end up with kids trying to grab and hang off the American flag hanging in your room.

8.  Teachers are surprisingly funny and inappropriate.  But it takes a little bit of time in the faculty room to figure that out.

9.  Every so often, you'll meet a kid that will completely change the way you think about things.  I got my first job working with kids when I was 21 and am now 26.  So far, I've already met two such kids.

10.  Teaching gets much easier with experience.  But it's still really, really hard.