I remember my first year teaching and feeling so excited, but also full of anxiety. Working in the field of special education, I found that this is a shared emotion among other teachers in their first year. I wish I would have had a teacher that handed me a list of Do’s and Don’ts so that I knew what I needed to focus my energy on because there was so much to do. I didn’t know where to begin.
I’m going to share with you some tips that may reduce your anxiety and hopefully save you some time. I will share tips from the obvious areas of classroom routines, to areas you may not think of like how to structure your time so that you don’t lose control of the class.
Just a little background, I did work as a general education teacher as a fourth grade and second grade teacher for about 4 years. I took 8 years off of teaching to have my five girls. Four months after my last daughter was born, I went back to teaching, but this time, I wanted to try teaching resource within special education. I had no previous experience in the field besides showing up to IEPs for students in my classroom and not even sure what was going on.
Getting ready for my first year teaching second grade was a lot of work! I spent hours organizing the classroom, figuring out the layout of the room, getting names on everything and correcting papers. I remember going into school before 7am and leaving the school around 5 or 6pm and still working all night long.
When I went back into teaching and decided that I would teach special education, I knew that I would have to put in more time than I would be paid for, but I wasn’t expecting the amount of time that I needed to spend. Again, I was completely new to this area of education, but hey, until you really get into the teaching, you really don’t know what you’re getting into.
So, here are a list of do’s and don’ts that I learned that may help you in your first year teaching resource within special education:
Do’s and Don’ts in Your First Year
DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS
I remember my first week teaching and I had a team meeting with all the other members of the special education team at my school. They were throwing out all sorts of acronyms. I finally just started asking what they meant – no one can assume that you know everything. After asking questions, I discovered that many people didn’t know the answer either, so it was a good learning curve for everyone.
Another thing to consider in this situation is who would you ask questions to. You definitely should ask questions to your special education team at your school: speech therapist, school psychologist, occupational therapist, LEA and another resource teacher if there is another one there at your school. I also found it helpful to ask questions to any other teachers in the building. There were times when I needed some help with teaching a strategy and I was able to collaborate with the first grade team at my school and it was so helpful!
The point I am making, is to utilize the genius around you.
DON’T COME IN ON WEEKENDS AND HOLIDAYS
Some teachers may think this is crazy, but how can you really be an effective teacher if you never get a break? With that in mind, the burn out rate for a resource teacher is about 5 years – only 5 years! If you are in constant teacher mode, you have no time to regenerate and have a fresh mind when you go in after the weekend. If you think that you’re going to get “caught up” during the weekend, you’re not. A teacher is NEVER caught up! It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. That is a completely normal thing to feel at some point in your school year as a teacher. For your mental health, find ways that you can deal with the stress because coming into the school for more hours is not good for your mental health. Maybe you need to talk with someone at the school, maybe it’s a sign that you need to ask for help or maybe making a list of priorities for the week will help your mind sift through the things that are not needed right away.
DO SPEND A LOT OF TIME EXPLAINING CLASSROOM ROUTINES
Make sure that you spend a lot of time in the first week of school explaining your classroom routines, rules and expectations. When I say “a lot of time” I really mean it! The first day is dedicated to these routines and the rest of the week is constant reinforcement of those routines. Some teachers have argued that it takes too much time, but in the long run, I save so much time because I don’t have to really discuss all the tiny details during instruction. It’s important that the students know and understand the class rules by giving examples and non-examples. I referred to my rules so often that when I had a new student, my class could go through all the rules for me – I hardly had to explain anything.
DO BE CONSISTENT WITH CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
When I set up the expectations for the rewards and consequences in my classroom, I made sure I always followed through. I remember when I was in my first year of teaching a fourth grade class. I was hired for the last 3 months of the school year and didn’t really bother to establish my own rules or routines of any sort. There was a time within the first couple of months that I found myself threatening to take recess away or other random things and not following through. My classroom became so crazy with all the call outs and frustrations. I found that there was so much instruction time wasted and I was putting out small fires throughout my day. My reflections at the end of the school year was that I was never going to find myself in that situation again and follow through with my word. This consistency is important so that the students are aware of what will happen depending on their choices and which allows your classroom to be a safe place for them. They know that everyone will have the same consequences. Things to ask yourself is, do you have a system in place for when rules are or are not followed? Are your students aware of that system? Are your rules posted clearly? Do you refer to them often?
DO BE CONSISTENT WITH SCHEDULES AND ROUTINES
Another way consistency can be your friend is keeping a consistent schedule for students with disabilities. This reduces the amount of time they take to figure out what they are supposed to be doing. If you already have your routines in place and the students are used to a certain way the class time is set up, anxiety from the student is reduced and you can maximize your instructional time. Also, who loves getting ready for a sub? Not so fun, but when your class knows what to do, then things run much smoother.
Some examples of routines that I found were most helpful within the first few weeks of school were, how to walk into the classroom with the needed materials, what to do if your pencil needs to be sharpened, what to do if you have a comment or question and how to leave the classroom appropriately. Those things may seem trivial, but some students are masters at making themselves look busy and sharpening a pencil is just the ticket to wasting time. My students knew exactly what to do when they walked in, where to grab another pencil and how to leave my classroom without much discussion. When you have students coming into your room all day, cleaning up after one group could lead to about 25 minutes of lost instruction time per student.
DO MAKE YOUR PARA FEEL LIKE PART OF YOUR CLASSROOM
I like to refer to this as how to create “Para”dise! (the importance of your para and building a relationship)
Here’s what you can do:
- Give them a space in your classroom so that they can put their stuff
- Give them a tour of the classroom so they know where everything is in case you need to leave suddenly or you have a sub
- Thank them – this could include a simple “thank you” or a small treat once in a while. After all, they do have to deal with a lot of stuff for a small amount of pay
- Utilize their strengths. Some people love to help with organization while others may be really good with behaviors or instruction
- Tell them what they’re doing well – who doesn’t like this?
- Listen to what they have to say. I have had many opportunities to listen when they have suggestions for helping with students or when they have had concerns or needing help. This really helps them understand that they’re part of the classroom team
- Teach them the routines and classroom rules. If they know the structure of the classroom and the system for rewards and consequences, then you can show the students that the para is a teacher in the classroom
- Create a schedule and/or list of things they can get done. This will prevent any wasted time and the para doesn’t feel like they need to interrupt you
DO HAVE SOMETHING FOR THE STUDENTS TO DO AT ALL TIMES
Avoid any sort of down time in the classroom. When you’re working with students with disabilities, your time with them is intense and crucial and there’s no time to be wasted. As soon as my students walked into my room, they immediately had some sort of independent review of a skill. This could look like a sticky note with a math problem on it, or a workbook with various reviews of skills. Another advantage of having something for them to do is that it prevents many problem behaviors from happening. If they don’t have time to get in trouble, many students won’t. This also helps with transition times. In my classroom, there were students coming and going and when a student came one minute early, they would work on their independent practice while the rest of the group filtered in.
DO BUILD IN TIME IN YOUR WEEK TO WRITE IEPS
Writing IEPs can take a lot of time and many teachers that I’ve worked with admit that they write the majority of them at home. I have done it before and I knew that I needed to make a change in my day to make this time available for me. I know that the schedule for any resource teacher can seem like a nightmare to set up, but time to work on paperwork is so crucial. I found time for this naturally in my day because it was hard to pull students during the afternoon while they were at lunch. I was able to find 10 minutes each day to dedicate to paperwork. Another way that I found time was to take advantage of any unexpected times. For example, if a grade level has a field trip or assembly, work on your paperwork! If there are a few students absent, combine a couple of groups and have your para take the group so you can work on paperwork.
DO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH GEN ED TEACHERS
It’s so important to build a relationship with the gen ed teachers. Why? Because you share students with them! You don’t want the student’s instruction from your class or the gen ed class to be in isolation from one another. You and the Gen Ed teacher are a team and when you work together as a team the students are much more likely to succeed. For example, you may find using the same vocabulary with the student increases generalization with a skill.
Another reason to build relationships is because you have so much to learn from each other. You can ask them what strategies have worked for different skills and vice versa. I remember when I was meeting with the 4th grade team at my school. They were discussing all the different strategies they were teaching how to solve 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication. I learned so many strategies that day and started using one with my students with disabilities and it worked so well! With that said, I was able to share with those teachers that the students that were receiving resource services are only learning one strategy and the teachers agreed that they would implement that within their classroom and not have the student show more than one way. Had I not collaborated with them and had a positive rapport, I could not have been involved with this important discussion and discovery.
DO MAKE THE SECRETARIES AND THE JANITOR YOUR BEST FRIENDS
Why wouldn’t you want the brains of the school on your side? The secretary runs the school and can help you with anything. I always made it a point to say “hi” or “thank you” and ask her how things are going. There have been a few times that I was so sick and couldn’t go into the school to get things ready for the sub. I emailed the secretary my sub plans and she quickly let everyone know (that needed to) I was gone for the day, printed my sub plans and had things ready to go for me. It was such a relief!
The janitor can fix anything or clean anything in your classroom. Again, a “thank you” and a “how are you” goes a long way. There have been times when I have had an issue with the clock in my room or running out of cleaning supplies and the janitor got it taken care of quickly. All of those small things make such a big difference in your classroom.
DO COMMUNICATE WITH PARENTS FOR POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
What is the best way to build rapport with parents – communication! It’s important that you share positives and negatives. I had a student that I could tell was going to struggle with problem behaviors in my classroom. I immediately started communicating with the parents about the things that were going well in my classroom. I think that the parents were shocked that I was referring to their child, but were really excited to hear good things. When it came to the time when we had to discuss some problem behaviors, the parents and I were already in open communication with other things and they trusted what I was telling them. They felt comfortable sharing things that they felt were working or concerns they had in general. I don’t have a way to prove this, but I feel like it was a motivation for them to support things that were happening at school in the home.
DON’T BE TOO HARD ON YOURSELF
This is your first year teaching. You’re not expected to know everything and do everything with perfection. Have the courage to try things. Making mistakes only helps you know what to do differently moving forward. If you haven’t already noticed, many of the things that I listed were because of mistakes that I made during my first years of teaching. You’ve got this, those students are lucky to have you as a teacher!