Introduction

You have been tasked with teaching one or several classes to middle/high school students (11-18 years old). How you should approach this will vary considerably depending on the school, district rules, policies, precedents, demographic of students, characteristics of parents, and your own strengths and weaknesses. Here are some tips that I have compiled based on my experience teaching various classes in the past. These won't tell you how to teach the class; they will tell you what you need to do to get ready.

As an undergraduate I double majored in physics and secondary education. I have a Masters Degree in science education and am certified to teach physical science to students in fifth through twelfth grade. I have been a science teacher for over five years.

Find out as much as you can about your assignment

Talk to your direct supervisor, talk to your indirect supervisors, talk to your colleagues, and talk to people outside the system who you think have knowledge of the school or the curriculum. If it is your first time teaching in this setting (and especially if it's your first time teaching courses) you will need to know the answer to thousands of questions. Many of these questions are similar for any job, and many are specific to your job. Unfortunately, it takes years of experience to become capable of even knowing what questions need asking before the school year starts. As such, you will need to set up your list of people who you will ask for help as the need arises (informally). The more helpful your colleagues, the easier this is. Here are some things you want to try and find out ahead of time:

A) What are your contractual obligations? When are you required to be there? When can you leave (these are often not told to teachers explicitly by their bosses for whatever reason)? What are you contractually required to do regarding signing in and signing out (and what is the common practice for this)? What meetings must you attend, and what is their schedule?
In the schools I am familiar with, teachers have a specific time they must be there by (regardless of when their first class starts), but most teachers come in earlier. Similarly, many teachers stay even after they are permitted to "clock out." Typically, department meetings are held once a month, as are faculty (building level) meetings. You want to find out this schedule as soon as possible to avoid scheduling other things (such as graduate school classes) that will conflict with your meetings. Teachers often have a professional period where they are expected to attend professional development or offer other services. It is also common practice for teachers to be assigned a duty such as monitoring a specific hall or overseeing the cafeteria. It is a good idea to find out before you start exactly what your responsibilities are for that duty. School rules for students are often contradictory in when/how they are enforced, so you might need to ask other teachers how best to approach this if the administrators are not being helpful.


B) How is parking assigned, and who do you need to talk to to get your parking pass? How is the morning congestion? Which entrance(s) avoid the buses or parents? What time is the latest you can get there without getting stuck in 15 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic in front of the school (very bad if you teach the first class of the day!)?
This is something that you are going to pick up either way, but you can avoid some beginning-of-the-year frustration if you plan to avoid the crazy morning/afternoon congestion.



C) How many copy machines are there, which ones can you use, and where are they? Who do you contact when the machines are breaking (which is often)? Does the school typically run out of paper/staples/supplies at a given point throughout the year?
Some schools have you do all of your photocopying yourself, whereas others have designated employees to make copies. Some copy machines require the user to enter a digital code, and others do not. Find out this process as soon as possible, and try never to leave photocopying to the last minute if you can at all avoid it. If you make a desperate run to a photocopy machine ten minutes before you need to teach a class, expect the machine to be repeatedly jamming with five people in line in front of you. If the machine jams be very delicate as you follow the instructions (on screen or on a label) for how to unjam it. I think the majority of school copy machine wear and tear is due to impatient teachers trying to tug out jammed pieces of paper and slamming different doors closed as though it will somehow help.


D) How do you log in to the computer network? Where are good places for you to print? What software is available for test generation (if necessary)? What other software are you expected to use (online classroom for homework assignments is common)? Are you expected to maintain a class website, and if so, what must you know about that?
My experience working with multiple schools is that the network is unreliable. Often you can't log in or the web is down. The printer is broken or the software for generating tests is hanging up. Sometimes an upgrade is done overnight and it takes you 11 minutes to log in the next morning. Personally, I find taking as much stuff home to do as possible avoids many of these problems, but you are somewhat limited here. I asked a supervisor for a copy of a CD with the software for generating tests, and they complied. Later that semester when the software suddenly stopped working in the school and other teachers were flipping out I just walked through the halls whistling.


E) Where are you required to record grades? How often must they be updated? What are the written (and unwritten) policies about grading?
In the old days teachers would maintain a paper gradebook and tabulate/calculate final grades at the end of each quarter. Digital gradebooks have permeated every school that I have encountered. It is common for teachers to be required to put all grades (from individual homeworks through final exams) on the digital gradebook. As a result, very few teachers maintain a paper gradebook anymore (except when they print the digital one sometimes). Some schools allow parents to login and see up to date grades, and others don't (find out if yours does!). If your grades are being shared with parents you can't afford to play any games... everything needs to be clear and direct. Assignment names and dates need to be accurate, points need to be consistent with what was written on the assignment, and exceptions to policies (such as adding bonus points on to a test or dropping an assignment) need to be applied in a way that is consistent with the workings of the software (some grading software sucks by the way). Be very careful with keeping a gradebook accurate and up-to-date as your supervisors can easily drag you over the coals with an improper gradebook if they are looking for a reason to. In fact, even if you are very careful you will still violate some unwritten, unspoken grading policy. When it is discovered, make sure you immediately convince your supervisor that you will make the necessary changes and that this policy they failed to inform you about is actually the greatest thing since sliced bread (I jest, but not without cause).



F) What information is available regarding the curriculum of the class(es) you are teaching? If it is a state curriculum, where is the documentation describing the requirements for the course? What district/building level curriculum packets or resources have been produced for the course? What format will your lesson plans require, and are you going to be submitting them on a given schedule?
Some schools will require you to maintain a binder/folder with all of your lesson plans. Others will want you to submit packets of them a week ahead of time (you should still maintain your own collection even if you are handing them in). Find out what needs to be attached (does it need every worksheet/reading/etc. or only a brief description of what will be or was used?). Ask for sample lesson plans; they are very helpful! I find curriculums I am expected to follow are not always helpful, but make sure you reference them in your lesson plans if you are expected to. I will not go into detail about lesson plans as this is outside of the scope of this article.


G) Where are the laboratory/art/food supplies stored, and what is the procedure for borrowing them for your class? How do you reserve computer lab or library time for your class?
This obviously varies a huge amount depending on what type of class you are teaching, but make sure you plan ahead as much as possible. Don't be afraid to spend some of your own money if you feel it is necessary, or just plain easier than jumping through hoops. A word of warning: if you bring a class to a computer lab it may be very difficult to keep them on task!


H) What is the school's discipline/attendance/lateness policy (in writing)? What is the school's common practice regarding discipline (only colleagues can tell you things like what is actually not allowed versus what is supposedly not allowed, and how much support you will get from administration if you try to punish a student for X, Y, or Z)? On what dates are parents invited in to school, and what are you expected to provide for them? How are you expected to log your parent communications?
Make sure you get a copy of any handbooks intended for students, parents, or teachers. Get at least one paper copy of the school calendar (I get one to hang at each of my desks at home/school, personally). Having a copy of the school's written code of conduct may be helpful if a student disagrees with you regarding their behavior, or the appropriate response.


I) Are you expected to have emergency lesson plans on file in the case of your unexpected absence? If so, what would be acceptable and where do you keep them? What is the procedure if you need to take a day off for sickness/etc.? Who do you call if you are running late in the morning?
Human resources usually will tell you how many sick/vacation days you get. Most likely you won't be taking vacation days since many are built into a typical school schedule (varies by location). If you are a public employee, make sure you are careful about not abusing your sick time. Where I live, if a public school teacher is spotted doing something recreational on a day they called in sick, they can get charged with a crime known as "theft of public funds." If for some reason you know you are going to call in sick anyway, plan ahead and have the work you "would have" done sitting on your desk. Then in the morning inform your supervisor (or the appropriate person) that you called in sick but the work you were planning on having your students do is already sitting on your desk, ready to go. Don't have the school use your emergency lesson plans unless it is actually unavoidable. And most of all, do not skip school without at least calling in. It is an absolute taboo to miss work as a teacher without calling in (more so than most jobs unless you work in a life or death field).


J) What are the students on your roster for next semester/year like (ask the dean for the history of the students, and colleagues as well... they usually love telling you about how each kid was last year)?
I am actually a bit split on this; on the one hand I don't want to pre-judge my students unfairly, on the other hand I don't want to be unprepared. In my experience, most teachers share information about students with each other prior to the start of school. It can be very helpful to learn, for example, that student X was absent a lot last year, but it was because he lost his father two years ago and is having trouble coping. Believe me! Usually there are at least 1-2 conference days prior to the start of school which is a good time to research your students, if you haven't already.



K) What field trips are in the works for your class(es) for this upcoming school year? Who is going to organize it, and what will you need to do to prepare your classes for it (permission slips, collect money, find out from nurse which students have allergies, make arrangements for children who aren't going on the trip).
I strongly suggest if you are new to a school to allow another teacher to organize as much as possible. The bureaucracy surrounding field trips (at least in public schools) is staggering, and you probably already have enough to worry about (imagine if you organize a club or coach a team!).


L) What paperwork must be distributed to students on the first day of school? Do they need to bring it home, get it signed, and bring it back in? What is common practice regarding how students are motivated to complete this (counted as homework for getting parent signature, counted as test, no reward whatsoever)? What textbooks/reviewbooks need to be distributed, where do you get them, what type of book card/contract needs to be filled out, and where do you get the books from? Where do you get a wheeled cart to bring the books from the storage location to the classroom? If there is an elevator, does it require a key, and if necessary how do you get one?
If you are a new teacher you should try to get samples from other teachers as much as possible. I suggest you look through all of the paperwork you collect on the first day; it can actually tell you a lot about your students. Feel free to work in questions about why they are taking your course or what they might find interesting about the topic, but don't grade them. On the other hand, if students blow them off that gives you some fair warning about what to expect from them.


M) How do you get keys to your classroom, office, bathroom, etc.? Where are all the bathrooms you are permitted to use? Where is the teacher's lounge if there is one, and typically what is the environment like in there (I suggest not hanging out in the lounge if colleagues who hang out there are very negative)?
Seriously, don't spend a lot of time in the teacher's lounge. There is usually such negativity in there: complaining about students, complaining about parents, complaining about administrators, or complaining about just about anything else. This isn't true in every school so you can be the judge. Knowing where all the bathrooms are is very important. You will need to plan your routine around your teaching periods and bathroom location. Avoid going in the same bathrooms as the students except in an emergency (the legality of this probably varies by location).



N) What syllabus/policies are course-alike teachers planning on using (other teachers teaching the same course)? Do you need to weigh each category (tests, quizzes, homework, projects, etc.) the same? Must you have the same anti-cheating, missing work, or lateness policies?
Even if the answer is no, you should still feel free to emulate the other teachers as much as possible if you are new to teaching or new to this school/course. Teachers do not get offended when other teachers copy them. It is common practice.


O) How much pre-scheduled extra help must you offer? How do you reserve the time/location?
The three options for extra help are before school, during a free period, or after school. If you don't mind getting up very early, I suggest offering one extra help session in the morning, and another in the afternoon. This way you should have the least trouble with students claiming they are unavailable to attend extra help. If you want to offer extra help every day, that's perfectly fine, but still have your "official" days.


P) What is the school policy regarding food/drinks in the classroom? Can students without a lunch period bring food to their classroom? Can you bring snacks in for you students if you wish? Can you have the whole class bring in food for a party?
Kids are really bad about leaving food/garbage wherever they go. If you can, try to limit/block food consumption in your classroom. Most schools have mice, and similar pests. The only thing you can do to protect yourself is prevent food from laying around in your classroom. Don't count on the custodians to clean up a mess; they may not do a very good job. Do not bring in your own cleaning materials or mousetraps; they are probably banned in your school to make way for green supplies and humane materials (don't get me started on this).


Q) What technology is available in your classroom(s)? Can you test it all out now, ahead of time? What is mounted in the classroom, and what needs to be borrowed? What can you bring in from home? What is scheduled to be installed later on in the school year?
Educational technology is both a blessing and a curse. The more you depend on it, the more you will find yourself getting screwed over when something doesn't work. Never assume anything will work if you haven't tried it out yourself. Last school year, I brought my projector cart into each of my classrooms to test the setup. I learned that one of the projector screens was too small, and avoided a frustrating situation on the first day of classes when I planned to project something that wouldn't have fit well. If you want to be cool like me and buy lots of this equipment, feel free (and consult your tax professional) but make sure to check what equipment is on order for your classroom before you spend money. On the other hand, if you are told a projector will be mounted on your classroom ceiling in two months, don't expect them to actually meet the deadline. Last time I was told that, it ended up taking five months.


R) What school supplies are provided for you, and where can you get them? Do you get a desk? Do you get a filing cabinet (important!)? Do they care what color pen you grade in?
Once you see what supplies are available in your school, go buy whatever else you need. If you don't have a desk you will need to be highly organized and buy a good bag for fitting lots of papers and other supplies. If you don't have a filing cabinet you will need to maintain as many of your materials digitally as possible. Even so, you need some place to store some important papers. If it isn't in the school, then it will have to be your car or home.


S) Are fire drills announced ahead of time? If so, how do you find out the schedule (nothing sucks more than a test being invalidated because of a surprise fire drill)? What are you expected to do during a fire drill?
Some schools don't release an official schedule, but spread the word verbally the morning of. If so, try to form an agreement with teachers you see regularly to speak up to the whole group whenever someone hears of an upcoming fire drill. One thing you should check is whether or not to lock the classroom door as you guide students out of the classes. Have a folder in each of your classrooms with your rosters, and keep it up to date even as your roster changes due to transfers/drops. You will be expected to take attendance when you get outside.



T) Who else teaches in your classroom(s)? Do you have to leave the desks/seats the way they are currently arranged, or can you move them to a better formation? Do teachers typically use seating charts or let students sit as they please?
Whether you want to assign the seats yourself or not, make (using a ruler/pen is fine) a blank chart that matches the layout of the room. Students' names can be written in pencil in the spot corresponding to their seat, and erased when kids drop or are moved. Refer to the chart during class, and you can even study it outside of class.


U) Do any of your students have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or 504 Accommodation Plan? How do you get copies of them (USA only)?
This information is confidential so you won't be allowed to leave it sitting around. However, I would suggest making a list of students with special needs, their special education teacher, and any accommodations that they receive such as a copy of class notes or an alternate testing location. Failing to follow a student's IEP to the letter is basically a one-way ticket to the dog house in your school.


V) Is your appointment as a teacher being voted on?
If you are going to be working in a public school, your appointment is probably going to be voted on by a board shortly before you start. Find out when that meeting is and if it is open to the public. If it is, go to that meeting... it will make a good impression.

Prepare for the first day of class.

The first day will be very daunting if it is your first time teaching. Borrow any materials you can from other teachers (such as a sample syllabus) to model yours after. With each progressive year it becomes much easier to prepare for the first day of classes since you have saved all of your digital materials from the year before (use a flash drive, and back it up every few months somewhere else). I strongly suggest a lot of time and effort be put in to preparation of materials prior to the first day of class. There should be enough materials/plans prepared to get through the first several days of class. Allot time for silly things like distributing textbooks or filling out paperwork, but over-plan. It is way better to have too many things to do than not enough. Also, try to incorporate content-specific activities as soon as possible. If you only see your students for 30 minutes on day one, then it might be difficult, but try to spend at least a couple of minutes introducing what students are going to be learning rather than talking entirely about when homework is due or how to fill out a book card.

Plan to spend a lot of time the first few days in the school

Get to school early. Stay late. It takes a while to get adjusted to the schedule (this is true for veteran teachers also) and when/where/how you will generate teaching-related materials. I remember the day before classes started in my first year of teaching, I got to the school at 7am, and was in the school until after 10pm. I was running back and forth between my desk, a computer, a printer, the copy machine, and the science office supplies room preparing materials. Everything was taking multiple times longer than it should have, and you should expect the same if you are new to this. Also, consider the difficulty of your schedule. If you are teaching one daily 30 minute class, preparing materials shouldn't be too bad. If you are teaching four different daily classes of 40-80 minutes, each requiring different materials, then you need to put a LOT of time into preparing for the first day. In my second, third, and fourth year of teaching I found the days leading up to the first day of school relatively stress free. My schedule in my fifth year of teaching was terrible. I was teaching four different classes, and each one had a different curriculum. In fact, two of them were in subject matters I didn't even know myself. One of the classes was in a different building on the other side of town! I spent a lot of time (and was very stressed) in the days leading up to the start of school despite having four years of teaching experience under my belt. If your schedule has multiple "preps" (instead of multiple sections of the same type of course) then expect multiple times as much preparation work.

Gather your materials

I already addressed that you might want to bring educational technology into the classroom on your own dime (as a teacher I have bought two computer projectors, a projector screen, a laptop, a netbook, a media cart, a whiteboard, and even a photocopy machine, because I felt they were all necessary and weren't adequately provided to me). In addition you will need to buy more typical school supplies (hopefully most of them are provided to you or available in an office somewhere in the school). Some things I have found useful as a teacher: millions of sharpened pencils, blue/black pens, red pens, 3 hole punch, single-hole punch, good scissors, stapler/staples, sticky notes of various sizes, black sharpies, ruler, file-folders, paperclips, binder clips, whiteout, Scotch® Brand (or comparable generic or other brand) transparent adhesive tape, masking tape, label maker, lined paper, graph paper, computer paper. This will vary of course from person to person.

Get mental help

Most new teachers need someone to talk to. If things are going well at work, then a parent or friend might be perfect. Tell them about the good and bad things going on. If the job is overwhelming or the environment is negative, seriously consider seeing a counselor or social worker. If you are just starting as a teacher, there is a 50% chance you won't stay in teaching. It's a stressful job and not everyone is cut out for it, so defend yourself a bit.

More ways to prepare yourself

I hope this brief guide will prove to be very helpful for you. If you aren't a teacher you still may have found it interesting. However, for those readers who actually are preparing to teach I have only scratched the surface of things you should know. I focused on aspects of the day to day professional grind rather than pedagogy or educational theory. Unfortunately, all of this knowledge I picked up myself over the past several years; none of it came from a book or alternate reading source. I would like to leave you with additional reading that will be helpful for those who are preparing to teach.

Here are some important things you should familiarize yourself with:

1. If you are in the USA you probably won't be able to avoid the Common Core which is a bunch of general curricular guidelines being pushed in schools to try and improve teaching and learning.
   
   
2. For the past decade or so, literacy is being pushed as one of the most important skills for a learner. As such, teachers in every discipline (not just language) are expected to help their students to develop their literacy skills. If you are a science teacher like me, or a physical education or home economics teacher, you might wonder how you are going to develop literacy. In order to get certified as a teacher you would probably need to address this question in a college course, but it probably isn't very helpful! I suggest you read Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Strategies for Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening.
   
   
   
   Even if you don't plan in implementing most of its suggestions in your classroom, it will come in handy as a resource for professional development surrounding literacy, or just impressing your bosses that you are "referring" to it.
   
   
3. The best educational leaders are ones who allow the results of modern educational research to have an impact on their policies and decisions. Unfortunately, many administrators create mandates that are specifically counterproductive based on virtually all educational research. I don't suggest arguing with the principal of a school, but you can generally defend yourself by having the literature surrounding research-based strategies at your disposal. To this end, I suggest two books:
   
   1. Classroom Instruction That Works (Marzano). There is a more recent second edition that you may want to consider instead, but I am not familiar with it personally. It does not reference the work of Marzano, who is a very well known educational researcher.
      
      
   2. Classroom Management That Works (Marzano). This is the 2008 edition. I learned based off of the previous edition (2003), but it is directly credited to Marzano in both cases.
   
   
4. What Works? A Practical Guide for Teacher Research.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   If you are planning to be a life-long educator then it is not sufficient to simply teach according to the advice you are given. You need to constantly re-evaluate your practice and use each of your classes as a case study. In fact, all teachers are educational researchers; most just don't publish their findings. Do you know how to ethically and fairly use your classes to conduct research that will enhance your instruction in future years? I didn't until I took a graduate course on teacher research. I used What Works as my primary reference, but it is a bit more pricy than the other books I have suggested.
   
   
5. Another huge topic in teaching now is differentiation which means teaching in such a way so as to meet the varying needs of each of your students within a class. Some are stronger than others at learning your topic, some only learn well when presented with things visually, or in writing, and some have longer attention spans than others. How can a single person meet the needs of 30 students simultaneously? There are tons of books out there that try to explain how you can do this, and I find none of them are sufficient. On the other hand, you need to study differentiation if you are going to be a successful teacher. I'll suggest prior to teaching you go through at least one research on differentiation. I will recommend three that I have used and suggest that you pick one of them based on which description matches your needs the most. I have actually met the author of the first one (Dodge) and was very impressed with her, so I'm partial towards suggestion (a) personally.
   
   
   1. Differentiation in Action
      
   2. Differentiated Instructional Strategies: One Size Doesn't Fit All
      
   3. Differentiated Learning
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. My last suggestion will involve educational technology. Edtech is huge in schools now. Teachers are expected to use whatever types of technologies the schools can get their hands on, whether it be Smart Boards or Learning Software. Unfortunately, being tech savvy doesn't necessarily help you use educational technology to enhance student learning; it merely helps you to set up and operate the equipment. My concentration as a graduate student was educational technology, and I learned how much work it is to actually incorporate edtech into your classes appropriately. Most of my classes were with a professor who is a renowned expert on the topic, and he suggested I read this textbook: Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching. It won't teach you how to set up a Mimeo but it will teach you how to approach using educational technology in the classroom.

Conclusion

It isn't necessary for you to purchase all of these books. However, each of their topics are very important to teachers. You should be making an effort to learn more about literacy, educational research, teacher research, differentiation, and educational technology. Just having books like these sitting on your bookshelf at work could be a good thing, to be honest. When meeting with a supervisor to discuss an observed lesson, feel free to refer to each of these references. You might be asked about differentiation, so be prepared to say how you plan to use Bloom's Taxonomy to differentiate instruction based on suggestions by Judy Dodge. You might be asked how you plan to incorporate educational technology. Don't just say you are going to use a cool java app on a computer projector; explain, in the context Roblyer and Doering, how the edtech will enhance learning, and why. Even if you don't plan on becoming an educational scholar with an Ed.D. you should be familiar with the most popular texts in the trade.

Please contact me if you have questions regarding the content of this guide.

Brought to you by the TL Knowhow Team
Written by: micronesia
Edited by: tofucake