I got a ding in my Facebook messages the other day from a TFA corps member at my old school. They said this…
“Hey Amanda! I hope you are doing well. I am currently in week 5 of the corps and I really feel like I am coming to a breaking point. I hear great things about what you did here and I just wanted to see if you have any advice/wisdom/thoughts/etc… Hope Boston is treating you well.”
Thinking back to my first 5 weeks of teaching and being thrown into a classroom, I have a few tips for any teacher who is about to “give up.” I wanted to share this to offer my struggles and true thoughts about who hard teaching is and what it takes.
“First off, I am ALWAYS here in the future if you need anything and am SO glad you reached out. To be honest, I literally felt the same way around this time of the year…teaching is the HARDEST job in the world and the amount of tasks you have to do NEVER end!!! I remember one weekend calling my Dad and crying because I felt like I didn’t have a life and no matter how hard I worked I couldn’t get ahead of my work load. Part of this is our charter school district’s high expectations…you won’t find a network that has so many tasks for teachers (which is good and bad…) That being said, IT GETS BETTER!!! These are some of the things I found helped me during that time…
1. Ask for support and/or prayers from people you are close with!! Prayers for perseverance, hard work ethic, focus, and energy. Even if you aren’t religious, support from family and little text messages can help to cheer you up during the low times. If people don’t know you are struggling, how can they help?
2. Look at this year as an investment in your development and goals. Once I started thinking about what I was going to learn and what skill sets I would come out with, it all helped! You have no clue how much you will grow if you don’t worry about the day to day tasks as much as how those day to day tasks affect your end goal
3. Prioritize tasks…if you can’t get them all done, don’t kill yourself…talk to your principal! Just make sure you have great lessons and materials that day and do your best!
4. Sleep. On weekends if you feel pressured to go out, don’t worry…just stay in…you have the rest of your life to go out and missing a couple weekend parties isn’t going to cut you out of your friend group…
5. Have fun with the work. Once I started doing lesson planning and teaching in ways I thought were fun (like finding fun videos/activities/topics/examples) it got a lot better and I wasn’t seeing it as work, but more as a way I can be creative and optimistic with all the work
6. Enjoy the kids—believe it or not they look up to you for SO much and you have such an impact on their lives. I found I enjoyed therapy sessions with them and loved to help them with their problems. They may be crazy during class, but they will make your life and work so much better if they know you care about them as people.
7. Once you get caught up with work, find something you enjoy and do it as much as possible! I love movies so I would always have a movie up when I was planning and I also love baking so I would put something in the oven, lesson plan, then take a break when it was done and enjoy it haha
I hope those few things will help…but I am ALWAYS here to talk/bounce ideas off of so PLEASE reach out if you need anything! If you have any questions, just let me know! I hope that didn’t overwhelm you but I’ll be praying for you also and have complete faith you will make it through with shining colors!!!”
I hope this message can help another first year corps member! Keep up the great work!! Stay strong and work for “one day” when all students have an equal educational opportunity.
maassiveamanda 