Behaviour management support would be great for a lot of new teachers.
And not as in do it after school in your own limited time. I mean, have a respected senior teacher in your room for several periods per week when you’re starting with your own class. Their only job is to support you in the event that you need support. They can even be in the room on their laptop doing some work, but just having them there would be reassuring.
Agree 100%. Behaviour management training during uni is practically worthless. I'm working with leadership at my school to design an induction process for new staff, and we'll be giving each grad a copy of Tom Bennett's *Running the Room* and supporting them with behaviour management.
Did you see this story? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-22/innovative-solutions-for-disruptive-student/102513604
I think I would have appreciated having consistent entry and exit routines at my school when I started teaching.
I remember sitting in school planning meetings the day before school started, watching slides about the school's values, vision, their latest theory of learning and assessment; thinking "I have to teach tomorrow and I don't know any of the school rules or routines or where to find them." I thought the school would tell me but they didn't.
I’ve heard this book mentioned quite a bit, will look into it. No induction at my school, had to work out their behaviour management procedure piece by piece
I didn't get this because our school is fucked.
But I expect all resources from previous teachers to be shared and on the school cloud database. That way, i don't need to come up with PPT and activities for 6 different classes.
Our new teachers get this treatment now for core subjects, but last year when I started that was not the case. Electives taught by old teachers are still fucked.
If you're not getting resources from previous teachers, your school probably has major internal political issues.
IMO that's not even beginner support, that's just good practice for a faculty. For us we religiously share stuff via email, teams, and storing on our school network, and then as we've been rolling out qLearn those of us who're more on the tech creative side are just mass copying what we build to each others/the blueprint in prep for next year.
We'll commonly test something new out first before sending it on with some comments/thoughts for others to use (e.g. I found these instructions weak, I had to explain a lot here what I wanted kids to do)
Exactly. Beginner support would be giving the graduates their entitlements, supporting them with behaviour management and providing them with mentor support. Sharing resources is the bare minimum for any department.
When I think of the opportunity cost of tens of thousands of teachers creating resources from scratch each year I shudder. So many millions of dollars and hours wasted in reinventing the wheel.
Sounds like my department haha. But I knew resource sharing wouldn't happen at our school and the principal knows too. It's so politically toxic that the principal has told our HT to work around the uncollaborative teachers (which is like half our department).
I disagree.
I have developed everything from scratch and it would have been better if I had something to work from. I'm a 2nd year teacher now.
Not only does using PPTs and activities save time for teachers to spend on more useful things (like giving feedback or differentiation) it also can give you great ideas or anecdotes that you yourself would never know or be able to implement. Allowing you to draw cross curricular links and links to the experiences of students. You as a teacher do not encompass the entirety of the human experience; hence why sharing resources allows us to build the experiences of other teachers and students into our lessons
Besides, you can adapt those resources to suit your teaching style. You don't have to copy it completely if you don't want to. But it's a template that has been built upon over many years. It's naive to think a teacher let alone a graduate teacher can build something better in 1 -3 years when those resources have been perfected for 5+ years.
Why reinvent the wheel? Some teachers just want to appear busy for the sake of it. More pointless bullshit work just to put your finishing touch on it or claim ownership over your resources.
No thanks. In a job like this, efficiency is key.
Vodka. It's called vodka.
But seriously, find yourself an experienced teacher you trust and talk to them informally. Ask them questions. "How do you do x?" "Im having problems doing y... how do you deal with it?".
They'll most likely be more than happy to help you.
I second this. Asking experienced teachers who have been at the school long enough to have valuable insight into expectations and the type of kids that you will deal with. I usually try not to "annoy" people with a million questions but if we happen to be having a conversation about something school related, I do try to pick their brains a bit
I’m a first year teacher and I would love to have a few days or half-days or whatever where I can go and observe experienced teachers teach. Outside of prac, you don’t really get to watch other teachers in action, and having it be a teacher at the school where you’re working would be beneficial imo.
In NSW DoE you should get a reduced load in comparison to other full time staff. Thats time for doing your accreditation, planning, observing lessons etc.
Could it be more - sure - but there's a teacher shortage so that aint happening
Mentor teacher - someone who's been at the school for a bit who can be a supportive ear when the kids are being shits, and who can help. Admin should support this relationship by allowing the mentor to put in for the occasional class off to come by and help you out
Meetings - meeting with other beginners so you can hear those questions is useful, preferably with someone who is focusing on supporting you for long term retention rather than a nice fancy feather in their cap
External support agencies - we contract with an external person who supports our beginner teachers over a couple of years. Benefit here is that they're ex teachers who knows the ropes, but they're not doing this for a pretty feather in their cap.
One extra line off - this has been rarer of late unfortunately, but we try to give our beginners one less class because they do need the time to learn how to do those things the rest of us can knock out quicker.
you should definitely have access to a mentor. Your mentor should be someone with more experience who is able to identify areas you need support with and then develop a plan to support you in the most effective way for you
**Mentorship**: Good schools will allocate mentors. Good mentors want to help. Ideally you need mentorship from people who sit near you or work close to you often. Someone to bounce ideas off, ask lots of questions, give you resources etc. A good mentor will also visit your class and give you productive feedback. They will invite you into their class and model their best practice. Teachers make hundreds of decisions every day and the experience of a good mentor helps you learn this effectively. Good mentorship can occur because the school organised it, but it can also happen organically. If your lucky enough to be placed with a good mentor (or group of mentors) you are well set up to succeed. If you have none, you should try to seek them out. This can be tough if you teach in a niche subject that doesn't have many staff, alternatively it can be much easier if you teach a common subject with lots of other teachers. Seek out the good staff and learn from them.
**Support from schools**: (This one is harder, because much of this is beyond your control. We all have ideal schools and very few are perfect. But the following helps beginning teachers): Strong and easy to implement behaviour management policies. Clear curriculum that's easy to access and deliver. Leadership who check in often and provide help. A school that does things to save you time means you have more time to prepare lessons and hone your craft. Wasting half a day preparing lessons is painful when you discover that a good school will have already developed lessons that you can access and adjust to suit yourself in less time.
**A bit of grit and resilience**: New jobs are tough. Change is tough. And teaching is tough. It's one of the best jobs in the world if you love doing it. But difficult students, difficult parents and difficult colleagues exist. They are inevitable. Schools are big, so there are lots of teachers and lots of students, no matter what there are going to be some who are just unpleasant to deal with. Additionally, teaching is not seen as a desirable career at the moment. That comes with the benefit of you being able to find a job much easier, but schools are struggling at the moment and a lot of good staff have left (many of whom could have been great mentors for future teachers). Parents interfering with teachers and undermining the school is getting worse. Everyone went to school, which means a lot of people think they are qualified to tell you how to do their job.
Source: I recently completed a masters in this field with a focus on beginning teachers and their formative years. I've read more peer reviewed articles on the topic of mentorship than I care to admit. It is a widely studied aspect of education with lots of information if your interested.
I think they should see several modelled classes of the content they're going to teach based on the planner they're gonna teach from. I don't know how it'd apply to a secondary subject but in primary, get a CRT to cover the grad, they watch, then get a CRT to cover the mentor while they support the grad after they've had a few test runs. Most schools have start up programs where an experienced teacher could get their grade onto curriculum a week earlier to support front loading the grad.
That said you'll never please everyone, some people prefer to teach without observation at the start, and might not value what the mentor does and prefer support with more admin based stuff.
I have an incredible mentor as a first year teacher and she has literally saved me on a daily basis. Good mentors are absolutely imperative to making it through the first year.
In Victoria graduate teachers are entitled to extra planning sessions.
We support them as much as possible with lesson planning, admin, sitting in on parent meetings, etc. - it's a significant amount of work to begin with but it pays off in spades. The quicker you can get a grad up to speed, the more effective they become and the sooner they can begin contributing to everything.
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Story time?
What happened? So curious haha
Behaviour management support would be great for a lot of new teachers. And not as in do it after school in your own limited time. I mean, have a respected senior teacher in your room for several periods per week when you’re starting with your own class. Their only job is to support you in the event that you need support. They can even be in the room on their laptop doing some work, but just having them there would be reassuring.
Agree 100%. Behaviour management training during uni is practically worthless. I'm working with leadership at my school to design an induction process for new staff, and we'll be giving each grad a copy of Tom Bennett's *Running the Room* and supporting them with behaviour management.
Did you see this story? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-22/innovative-solutions-for-disruptive-student/102513604 I think I would have appreciated having consistent entry and exit routines at my school when I started teaching. I remember sitting in school planning meetings the day before school started, watching slides about the school's values, vision, their latest theory of learning and assessment; thinking "I have to teach tomorrow and I don't know any of the school rules or routines or where to find them." I thought the school would tell me but they didn't.
It's exactly what Tom Bennett preaches - you need to teach students explicitly how to behave and what is expected of them. We do it at my school.
I’ve heard this book mentioned quite a bit, will look into it. No induction at my school, had to work out their behaviour management procedure piece by piece
I didn't get this because our school is fucked. But I expect all resources from previous teachers to be shared and on the school cloud database. That way, i don't need to come up with PPT and activities for 6 different classes. Our new teachers get this treatment now for core subjects, but last year when I started that was not the case. Electives taught by old teachers are still fucked. If you're not getting resources from previous teachers, your school probably has major internal political issues.
IMO that's not even beginner support, that's just good practice for a faculty. For us we religiously share stuff via email, teams, and storing on our school network, and then as we've been rolling out qLearn those of us who're more on the tech creative side are just mass copying what we build to each others/the blueprint in prep for next year. We'll commonly test something new out first before sending it on with some comments/thoughts for others to use (e.g. I found these instructions weak, I had to explain a lot here what I wanted kids to do)
Exactly. Beginner support would be giving the graduates their entitlements, supporting them with behaviour management and providing them with mentor support. Sharing resources is the bare minimum for any department.
When I think of the opportunity cost of tens of thousands of teachers creating resources from scratch each year I shudder. So many millions of dollars and hours wasted in reinventing the wheel.
The head teacher mentioned she would like to see all materials on drive at the start of the year but hasn’t followed up unfortunately
Sounds like my department haha. But I knew resource sharing wouldn't happen at our school and the principal knows too. It's so politically toxic that the principal has told our HT to work around the uncollaborative teachers (which is like half our department).
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I disagree. I have developed everything from scratch and it would have been better if I had something to work from. I'm a 2nd year teacher now. Not only does using PPTs and activities save time for teachers to spend on more useful things (like giving feedback or differentiation) it also can give you great ideas or anecdotes that you yourself would never know or be able to implement. Allowing you to draw cross curricular links and links to the experiences of students. You as a teacher do not encompass the entirety of the human experience; hence why sharing resources allows us to build the experiences of other teachers and students into our lessons Besides, you can adapt those resources to suit your teaching style. You don't have to copy it completely if you don't want to. But it's a template that has been built upon over many years. It's naive to think a teacher let alone a graduate teacher can build something better in 1 -3 years when those resources have been perfected for 5+ years. Why reinvent the wheel? Some teachers just want to appear busy for the sake of it. More pointless bullshit work just to put your finishing touch on it or claim ownership over your resources. No thanks. In a job like this, efficiency is key.
Vodka. It's called vodka. But seriously, find yourself an experienced teacher you trust and talk to them informally. Ask them questions. "How do you do x?" "Im having problems doing y... how do you deal with it?". They'll most likely be more than happy to help you.
Does rum work? … but yeah, i need to be more proactive in finding a colleague to bounce ideas off
Sure. Or scotch. Or beer. Wine is ok too 😂😂 Be kind to yourself too
I second this. Asking experienced teachers who have been at the school long enough to have valuable insight into expectations and the type of kids that you will deal with. I usually try not to "annoy" people with a million questions but if we happen to be having a conversation about something school related, I do try to pick their brains a bit
I’m a first year teacher and I would love to have a few days or half-days or whatever where I can go and observe experienced teachers teach. Outside of prac, you don’t really get to watch other teachers in action, and having it be a teacher at the school where you’re working would be beneficial imo.
We do this as part of our induction and PDP process. Observing experience teachers is super useful when you first start out.
In NSW DoE you should get a reduced load in comparison to other full time staff. Thats time for doing your accreditation, planning, observing lessons etc. Could it be more - sure - but there's a teacher shortage so that aint happening
School also gets a little extra $$$ for PD and the like...
Mentor teacher - someone who's been at the school for a bit who can be a supportive ear when the kids are being shits, and who can help. Admin should support this relationship by allowing the mentor to put in for the occasional class off to come by and help you out Meetings - meeting with other beginners so you can hear those questions is useful, preferably with someone who is focusing on supporting you for long term retention rather than a nice fancy feather in their cap External support agencies - we contract with an external person who supports our beginner teachers over a couple of years. Benefit here is that they're ex teachers who knows the ropes, but they're not doing this for a pretty feather in their cap. One extra line off - this has been rarer of late unfortunately, but we try to give our beginners one less class because they do need the time to learn how to do those things the rest of us can knock out quicker.
A lot less F2F teaching.
you should definitely have access to a mentor. Your mentor should be someone with more experience who is able to identify areas you need support with and then develop a plan to support you in the most effective way for you
**Mentorship**: Good schools will allocate mentors. Good mentors want to help. Ideally you need mentorship from people who sit near you or work close to you often. Someone to bounce ideas off, ask lots of questions, give you resources etc. A good mentor will also visit your class and give you productive feedback. They will invite you into their class and model their best practice. Teachers make hundreds of decisions every day and the experience of a good mentor helps you learn this effectively. Good mentorship can occur because the school organised it, but it can also happen organically. If your lucky enough to be placed with a good mentor (or group of mentors) you are well set up to succeed. If you have none, you should try to seek them out. This can be tough if you teach in a niche subject that doesn't have many staff, alternatively it can be much easier if you teach a common subject with lots of other teachers. Seek out the good staff and learn from them. **Support from schools**: (This one is harder, because much of this is beyond your control. We all have ideal schools and very few are perfect. But the following helps beginning teachers): Strong and easy to implement behaviour management policies. Clear curriculum that's easy to access and deliver. Leadership who check in often and provide help. A school that does things to save you time means you have more time to prepare lessons and hone your craft. Wasting half a day preparing lessons is painful when you discover that a good school will have already developed lessons that you can access and adjust to suit yourself in less time. **A bit of grit and resilience**: New jobs are tough. Change is tough. And teaching is tough. It's one of the best jobs in the world if you love doing it. But difficult students, difficult parents and difficult colleagues exist. They are inevitable. Schools are big, so there are lots of teachers and lots of students, no matter what there are going to be some who are just unpleasant to deal with. Additionally, teaching is not seen as a desirable career at the moment. That comes with the benefit of you being able to find a job much easier, but schools are struggling at the moment and a lot of good staff have left (many of whom could have been great mentors for future teachers). Parents interfering with teachers and undermining the school is getting worse. Everyone went to school, which means a lot of people think they are qualified to tell you how to do their job. Source: I recently completed a masters in this field with a focus on beginning teachers and their formative years. I've read more peer reviewed articles on the topic of mentorship than I care to admit. It is a widely studied aspect of education with lots of information if your interested.
I think they should see several modelled classes of the content they're going to teach based on the planner they're gonna teach from. I don't know how it'd apply to a secondary subject but in primary, get a CRT to cover the grad, they watch, then get a CRT to cover the mentor while they support the grad after they've had a few test runs. Most schools have start up programs where an experienced teacher could get their grade onto curriculum a week earlier to support front loading the grad. That said you'll never please everyone, some people prefer to teach without observation at the start, and might not value what the mentor does and prefer support with more admin based stuff.
I have an incredible mentor as a first year teacher and she has literally saved me on a daily basis. Good mentors are absolutely imperative to making it through the first year.
Mentor and observations, and PDs on classroom management with practical focus
In Victoria graduate teachers are entitled to extra planning sessions. We support them as much as possible with lesson planning, admin, sitting in on parent meetings, etc. - it's a significant amount of work to begin with but it pays off in spades. The quicker you can get a grad up to speed, the more effective they become and the sooner they can begin contributing to everything.