A new teacher’s first year can be a roller coaster of emotions.
The first few weeks are filled with anticipation and excitement. That changes by late fall. Research shows the toughest part for teachers is usually right now. The newness has worn off, the realities sink in, and many new teachers feel overwhelmed.
As tough as it is for each teacher who experiences it, Robert Kunzman, professor of curriculum studies and philosophy of education at Indiana University, says it’s fairly normal to hit this point in October.
“One of the things they deal with as they move from an idealistic energy at the beginning of the year, and certainly mixed with some nerves and anticipation, is a recognition of the way that the first year of teaching in particular tends to take over their life,” he says.
These frustrations can be learning experiences for new teachers or lead to more serious thoughts of wanting to leave or get burned out on the job. We checked in with the first year teachers to see how this point in the semester is affecting their attitudes toward their careers.
‘Is it ever going to get better?’
That roller coaster is happening right now for Sara Draper in her second grade classroom.
“I feel like it’s just going up and down.”
Draper teaches at Helmsburg Elementary in Brown County. Along with the rest of her first year peers, she has been optimistic up to this point, but the stresses of the job are starting to take a toll.
“The first few weeks were really easy behavior-wise, no problems, then it got a little more difficult,” Draper says. “Saw some more challenges, and then it got better and now its gone back to having struggles.”
Draper is trying to create consistency in her classroom by establishing routines, but her kids are still struggling.
Her stress level is mounting along with her responsibilities. Draper spent the entire month of October scheduling, preparing for and actually hosting parent/teacher conferences. In the midst of that, she had to prepare for her principal to come evaluate her while she was teaching a lesson.
“That’s just stressful anyway because it’s ten minutes long,” she says. “You have to hit so many things in ten minutes it’s impossible to do. But I had it and it went fine.”
Although her evaluation went fine, Draper says the anticipation and stress leading into it took a toll on her positive attitude, because she says the prospect of being labeled ineffective would have been devastating.
“I think just to my confidence that would have been really, really hard,” she says. “I don’t think I would have been able to come back from that, I really don’t. You’re already questioning ‘Am I doing a good job, am I doing ok?’ And then to have that label of ineffective it would almost be an answer to that question, ‘no you’re not a good teacher right now.'”
Draper relies on other teachers for reassurance, to answer questions about classroom management and specific behavior problems.
“I’m so thankful that I have that support system at school because I literally don’t know what I would do without it,” Draper says. “Then I wonder, is that ever going to get better? Am I always going to have that? Ten years down the road, [if] I still don’t know what to do, I hope that I can figure it out.”
IU Professor Kunzman says if new teachers don’t find others to lean on during this first year, these tough times can be impossible to get through.
“They need support both at school and at home,” Kunzman says. “They need to find mentors whether they’re assigned to them or seek them out, like-minded mentors that they can be vulnerable with.”
‘I don’t have a lot of time for anything else’
On a recent weeknight at Nora Elementary in Indianapolis, Gabe Hoffman stays after school to hang out one-on-one with a student as part of a building-wide mentoring program. Hoffman and the student are painting pumpkins. He says it’s the school’s effort to give certain students individualized attention from a teacher other than their own.
Hoffman like participating in the program because he thinks it’s important for the kids to have mentors at school. He says his fellow third grade teachers serve as his mentors. They’re helping him through his turbulent first few months as he adjusts to the demanding workload.
“I try to get enough done in the morning that I’m usually out of here by 5:30, 6,” Hoffman says. “I’m usually here by 6 a.m., so it’s still usually about a 12 hour day.”
Working 12-hour days, five days a week, on top of grading and class prep – plus a second job at a golf course on Sundays – leaves him with little time for anything else.
“My girlfriend’s also a teacher, she’s a high school teacher and she coaches volleyball, so we don’t see each other very often and that’s been difficult,” Hoffman says. “We went to separate colleges and we thought ‘oh we’re back in the same city.’ And really we only see each other on Friday nights and sometimes Saturday.”
And Hoffman gets discouraged when he realizes there’s not much he can do to make the situation better…at least not his first year.
As a third grade teacher, his kids are taking the IREAD-3 and ISTEP+ for the first time which means a lot of practice tests. Also, more than half of his kids are on special plans that require extra data collection and stacks of paperwork. He says the amount of paperwork and administrative work has come as a shock to him.
“I knew it would be there and I knew that there would be some stuff,” he says. “But when you’re student teaching you don’t see that aspect of any of it. And you go and you make your lesson plans and you teach.”
But is all of this enough to make these two newcomers think about leaving teaching for good?
“No, I haven’t,” Draper says. “I’ve had thoughts of, ‘I can’t wait until next year,’ I just feel like I’ll be able to prepare so much better, from the first day of school it’s just going to be so much better.”
A sentiment Hoffman agrees with: next October will be better.
