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My top tips for beginning teachers

1. Say No! Say no to anything and everything extra.

My number 1 tip for first-year teachers is to say NO! Say no to anything and everything extra.

Other teachers and leaders will see your youth and excitement and think ‘Great! You would be great at…’ Whether it be the debating team, organising the sports carnival, running a STEM club or taking an extracurricular dance class, you can and must say no! 

While I am sure you would be AMAZING at doing any number of those things, in your first years of teaching your priority is to spend your time learning your content, getting your resources together and providing for the various needs of students in your own classroom. In your first years of teaching, these are going to take up ALL your time and you won’t have time for anything additional. 

This is probably a really hard thing for you to hear as I am sure you also want to make a good first impression. But, if you were to say yes to any of these additional things then it is very likely that you will burn out quickly and your classroom students will suffer. 

So then how do you say no? How do you do it graciously?

Say: “Thank you so much for thinking of me for that opportunity! I would definitely be interested in the future however this year I really need to focus all my energy on building my teaching skills and ensuring the needs of my class are met”.

Boom.

I am not sure how any administrator or executive could argue against that! That is exactly what you are employed to do!

Watch my 5 top tips for beginning teachers video below.

Top tips for beginning teachers:

lesson planning

3. Sometimes an old fashioned textbook lesson is ok.

Yes, it has been documented that textbook-based lessons are not the most effective way for students to learn. However, they can have their place in the classroom. 

Textbook based lessons are easy to plan. This makes them perfect for when you need to have a sick day. There is no point wasting your time creating an amazing lesson you don’t even get to be there to implement. Your students will survive on a textbook-based lesson while you are recovering. 

Sometimes it isn’t even that you need a sick day. Sometimes you just need some time to catch up with your forever growing ‘to-do’ list. Many generations of students were brought up with the old chalk and talk or textbook-based lesson. They survived. You don’t have to have a whizz-bang lesson every lesson.

4. Start your lesson planning with a learning intention and success criteria

Starting your lesson planning time with a learning intention will give you direction and purpose in your planning. It will help you to identify what types of activities are going to be useful and which aren’t. You might come across what looks like an incredible activity, but if it doesn’t help your students reach their learning intention then it is completely useless and is just ‘busy work’. Having a clear learning intention helps you to identify these sorts of issues quickly and design or implement the right sorts of activities for your specific lesson.

There is also ample research to support the fact that having a clear learning intention and success criteria for each lesson improves student learning when presented to the students.

5. Know when to stop when lesson planning

As a first-year teacher, it can be hard to know when to stop when lesson planning. When is good enough, good enough? There are always more resources to look at, more activities you could design, more colours or cute fonts you could add.

So when do you stop?

Answer: When you have planned a lesson in which students will be able to meet the learning intention. 

If you have planned a lesson in which students have multiple opportunities to work their way through the success criteria and meet the set learning intention then it’s time to stop. 

Could you make it better? Probably. 

But you also need to plan all your other lessons and there will be plenty of opportunities for you to make improvements down the track.

6. Batch your lesson prep 

This is one of my favourite top tips for beginning teachers. Not enough teachers talk about how much time this actually saves!

But let’s take a step back… what do I mean by batching your lesson planning?

Instead of planning all of ‘Monday’s’ lessons, you would plan all your related teaching content together. 

For example, as a science teacher, I sit and plan all of my year 8 lessons. Then I move on to year 9, then year 10.

As a primary teacher you might plan all your math lessons, then all your history, then spelling. 

This will save you time as you aren’t trying to switch your headspace between various topics. It will also help your lessons flow more fluently.

Yes this means you need to be more than a day ahead with your planning, and let’s be real – that isn’t always going to be the case. But if you can then this is definitely the way to go!

7. Don’t spend your money on decorating your classroom – spend it on resources

Having a pretty classroom is not what is going to make your students feel welcome. YOU ARE! 

Teachers can very easily spend hundreds of dollars on things to make their classrooms look pretty. But as a beginning teacher, it would be a much better use of your money to spend it on resources. 

Purchase worksheets with full answers, activities, experiment outlines etc to help you to feel confident in the classroom and to save you time. 

Most of them would cost you less than a Starbucks!

I also recommend you purchase fun things you don’t have time to make yourself such as digital escape rooms. 

8. Choose only 1 lesson a week to try something new / out of your comfort zone

Why just one? Everything you are doing in your first year is going to be new and potentially outside your comfort zone. 

Picking just 1 lesson to try new things is achievable without making you feel overwhelmed, and it allows you to reflect on what you tried meaningfully afterwards.

9. Don’t set homework.

There is mixed research out there on whether setting homework for students actually improves their learning. So much depends on context. If the research can be so variable then I would be hesitant to waste my time setting and marking it unless there was concrete evidence that it actually contributed to my students’ success.

So why set it when it just means you have to mark it? Not to mention that you also need to waste time chasing up the students who didn’t complete it. 

From my perspective, the benefits of not setting homework definitely outweigh the benefits of setting it for both teachers and students. Particularly in your beginning years when time is golden. 

10. Ask for help… as soon as you need it

Don’t waste time trying to figure everything out on your own when you can just ask someone next to you. 

As a beginning teacher, time is your most valuable commodity. While you are learning the ropes everything you do is going to take time. Don’t waste time by holding off asking questions that you need to ask. 

Also, please don’t stress that you’re being annoying! We’ve all been in your situation and we are happy to help. 

If you feel you have reached your question asking quota, then try and spread your questions around to different people who could help you.

Top tips for beginning teachers:

building relationships 

11. Find your Teacher BFF

Teaching is a tough gig and so if you can find a like-minded teacher whom you can share resources with, laugh with and blow off some steam with, then they are worth their weight in gold.

12. Find a mentor

I love the quote by Brian Aspinall who says ‘sometimes the greatest PD is the teacher down the hall’. This one I have experienced to be true. 

If you find an excellent mentor or teacher who challenges your thinking about education and you’re able to have great discussions about teaching and education – hold onto them! Go to any conference they do. Observe their lessons if you can. They are going to help you through the first years and help you grow as a teacher.

13. Build relationships with students

This might seem obvious but the more I teach, the more I realise this may not be the case. 

Make an effort early on to get to know your students – the extra stuff like sport, hobbies, are they creative, do they play an instrument etc.

Students want to know you are a person. Not a perfect teacher. A person who can care for them.

As a result, the stronger your relationship is with your students, the easier classroom management will become, and the more enjoyable your day will be.

14. Build relationships with teachers

Hopefully, you’ve figured out the importance of this from the previous few top tips for beginning teachers. But also, these are the people who you’re going to spend every day around. It is worth investing in relationships with them.

16. Build relationships with parents 

Sometimes it is easy to forget that parents are part of the school community as well. 

It can be worth spending time building relationships with parents early on so that your first connections with them are coming from a positive place, and not just to report bad student behaviour. 

This could be as simple as sending a ‘meet the teacher’ sheet home to them at the beginning of the year to introduce yourself.

17. Be a good colleague 

It is important as you start a new job that you be a good colleague. This links back to building positive relationships with your colleagues, but it also includes contributing staff room discussions, sharing your own resources, using others resources and providing feedback, and joining them for lunch and coffee breaks where you can. 

18. Join professional networks (including Facebook groups)

These are a great way to continue your own learning and make connections with other teachers outside of your workplace. 

19. Be patient – with students, parents, other teachers – and yourself

You will be dealing with so many people on a daily basis. Take a breath and try to be patient. Remember that you don’t necessarily know what is going on in the background for your students and colleagues.

Also, try and cut yourself a break. Be patient with yourself as you are learning a lot of new things all at once.

Top tips for beginning teachers:

classroom and behaviour management

24. Have student multiple student groups mapped out before class

While it can be hard to sort students into groups when you don’t know them, it is good to start out with a few options that you can determine based on their previous grades and performance. The two options I start with are:

• Groups based on ability (grouping my high achievers together and those who need more assistance together)
• Mixed ability groups 

You will quickly work out if these need tweaking due to behavioural issues, however, it at least gives you a starting point and doesn’t waste time at the start of the lesson trying to work out who should go with whom. 

25. Be consistent with behaviour management

It is important to follow your school’s protocol for behaviour management, but even more important, is being consistent with your management in your own classroom. While many schools have systems in place for when a student needs to be sent out of a classroom, there are many things you can do within your classroom to manage behaviour before it gets to that point. 

This is a much bigger topic than one bullet point on a list, but here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Tell students the plan up front. What do you expect of them? What can they expect of you? What will happen if you feel they are disrupting the learning in your classroom? 
2. At what point will they need to be sent to admin / head teacher / etc? Is it after 1 warning? 2 warnings? 2 warnings and a seat change?
3. Hold to what you have set out. 

26. Give students a clean slate

It can be easy to listen to the staffroom talk about how terrible certain students are and how you’re going to have to be really strict with them and so on. Try not to bring this into the class with you.

What those students probably need from you, more than anything else at the beginning of the year, is a clean slate. Let your class know that they can start fresh this year. That you don’t know them and they don’t know you and so they have the opportunity to be the best version of themselves as you haven’t already had your mind made up about them.

This leads to trust building between you and your students, and contributes positively to your relationship building with them too.

27. Laugh! Have a sense of humour – kids are funny and do funny things. 

Sometimes it’s important for you to join in with the fun and have a laugh. Obviously not if it’s inappropriate (like if an inappropriate joke was made or laughing at a student). But kids are funny and they will love to see you interacting with them. 

For a list of my favourite items to make my classroom management easier and to foster engagement, check out this list of ultimate teacher must haves!

Top tips for beginning teachers:

Looking after your mental health

29. Always pack a really good lunch

This seems trivial but hear me out. 

Teaching is exhausting. You need to keep yourself sustained through the day or if you are like me you will end up ‘hangry’ = angry because you are hungry. This will lead to you having less patience with your class which at the end of the day could be difficult for everyone. 

If you make yourself a delicious nutritious lunch you will be more likely to make time to eat it – yes you may be on playground duty at the same time, but at least you have something delicious to eat while you are! 

As much as I hate to admit it, coffee and lollies can only get you so far.

30. Wear really good comfy shoes

Don’t underestimate how long you will be on your feet each day. 

Short term if you are wearing uncomfortable shoes then it will be annoying and probably make you less patient as you try to ignore it. Long term you could end up with serious foot or back problems if your feet aren’t being held in the right position. 

31. Reflect on your reasons for becoming a teacher in the first place

When you start to question whether you want to change professions (trust me, the time will come), spend some time reflecting on the reasons why you wanted to become a teacher in the first place. 

32. Sleep

Try to be consistent with your bedtime and don’t get carried away working late at night. Sleep is so important for your health, both physical and mental. 

33. Exercise and eat well

This is so important for your mental health and longevity as a teacher.

Eating well will help you maintain your energy throughout the work day. 

Exercise produces endorphins which help your mood. This could also have the same impact as having a hobby as it will distract you from thinking about teaching and allow your brain a break from it.  

Conclusion

Being a beginning teacher can be overwhelming. There is so much learning and so many things going on at once. These top tips for beginning teachers are designed to help give you some guidance and clarity on how to maintain balance. Time manageament, building relationships, classroom management, and mental health are all important factors in your ongoing career as a teacher. 

You might also like my blog post on 13 things I wish I knew before my first year of teaching.

Did this help?

I wish I knew all of these top tips for beginning teachers when I started my teaching career. But I am thankful that I can share them with you now and I do hope they help you survive your beginning years. 

Have you tried any of these top tips for beginning teachers? Let me know in the comments below if they helped! And drop your own top tips in the comments too! We would love to learn from you!