New High School Teacher

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>One of my teacher says “grow up” when people make inappropriate comments, but misbehavior/inappropriate comments should not happen often in honors classes.</p>

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<p>My AP history teacher always explains, but he gets off topic on the second he starts to explain. Usually he takes 10 minutes to answer one question, but his answer is too off topic and doesn’t really relate to the question. This is why most students quit asking him questions after the first month of school. So, yeah, stay on topic when explaining.</p>

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<p>My history teachers have been my favorites no question. Interesting topics and lectures really helped, but (from personal experience) don’t really go off on a tangent about a specific opinion.
Agree about checking the facts- if you’re wrong, don’t sweat it because no one really cares unless you made a huge point about being right. =) Good luck, but it doesn’t sound like you’ll have a problem!</p>

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<p>Since you’re teaching honors classes, you shouldn’t have many behavioral problems. If a student really crosses the line, my teachers just tell them to get out. There’s no point in letting them disrupt students who really want to learn. Your short stature shouldn’t be an issue - I once had a teacher who could literally pass for a fourteen-year-old, but everyone respected her and liked the class, so no one misbehaved. </p>

<p>Build a good relationship with your students. Don’t assign pointless busywork; students will resent you for it. Just make sure the class is interesting. On the other hand, make it clear that YOU are in charge. I once had a teacher who phrased all her plans as questions. (I’m thinking of having a little quiz on Tuesday. Is that okay with everybody? I could move it to Wednesday.) Needless to say, we learned nothing. Students should feel comfortable asking about the material, but the rules are not open to debate.</p>

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<p>Here’s some things based on previous teacher mistakes:</p>

<p>1.) Good time scheduling = key - one AP teacher repeatedly moved test dates at the beginning of the year because they thought we weren’t ready for the test - we liked it at the beginning of the year, but when AP test crunch time came, we ended up cramming about 1/3 of the info that we missed because of bad scheduling</p>

<p>2.) Always be consistent with rules - don’t be lax one day and strict the next with rules. I had one teacher that would allow us to do whatever a week after exam time, then two days later, would scream at us about not working. Needless to say, few people had respect for that teacher.</p>

<p>3.) Strict rules are not always a bad thing - I remember one fifth grade teacher who said at the beginning of the year, “I want you to leave my classroom thinking I’m the biggest witch, and I know you’ve learned something.” Every student complains about strict teachers, but, often enough, they learn the most from them. </p>

<p>One example I could give is my Spanish teachers. I had three different ones in high school, and two gave us little work, easy tests, and the feeling that they could care less about teaching, the other gave us hard tests, but worked with us consistently, and consequently, I learned most of my Spanish from her. </p>

<p>4.) Go over tests, and don’t be afraid of having the answers challenged - Perhaps the greatest history teacher I had almost always did this, and would always be willing to have his test answers challenged. It generally went into a good debate that led to a further understanding of the material. </p>

<p>5.) As a history teacher, don’t outline the book chapters and make people take a half-hour worth of notes from them- one history teacher did this- it always bored us. The whole point of reading the book is for the students to get notes, the teacher should be there to give a greater understanding of the material, not regurgitate things we could read from the textbook.</p>

<p>6.) Good stories about weird history always interest the students- This isn’t necessary for a teacher, but it always gets the students’ attention. One history teacher spent half a lesson talking about the death of Rasputin during our Russia unit, and I know that almost everyone was listening in. </p>

<p>7.) Never tell bad jokes - several teachers insisted upon doing this almost every day- just please don’t do it.</p>

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<p>if a girl does ask you to prom, you can just decline by saying, “Haha no…why don’t you ask ______ over there?” (of course in a joking manner)
my teacher did that once and it was funny because the girl was intent on making the teacher blush/embarrassed but she was so taken aback she was speechless
another teacher said that and the girl cried cuz the guy he picked just broke up with her…</p>

<p>i definitely agree with essays (at least 1 -2 paragraphs or something) for critical thinking. i had a teacher who was so lazy and never assigned homework which is bad</p>

<p>don’t try to impress kids (please no blonde jokes/puns/anything); students ultimately respect teachers who are fair and consistent teachers while amiable people</p>

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<p>Don’t concern yourself with being a “cool” teacher. Respect your students but keep a comfortable distance from them. It’ll make discipline a lot easier. Contrary to what some teens try to pretend, we want intelligent, difficult teachers. Don’t be unfair, but be consistent and tough. If your rules are strictly followed, students will be pushed to succeed and will feel comfortable going above and beyond their usual accomplishment level. Rules, rules, rules–set them and hold your students to them!</p>

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<p>As far as behavior, don’t get mad, get disappointed. If you make someone feel like they let you down, you will get the discipline across much better than if you yell at them, or threaten them with blue slips, etc.</p>

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<p>Whenever somebody’s getting out of line at my school [in most classes] the teacher will regularly ask the student to just leave the class. This stops the disruption immediately, and with an honors class, most kids aren’t going to want to miss out on the lesson for the whole class period. Sometimes, when 2+ people are carrying on a conversation during the lesson, the teacher will just say, “If you have something that important to talk about, why don’t all of you go outside as do it?” They say it in a manner that seems like they really could care less, and more often than not, the students are too embarrassed to take the teacher up on the offer. They pretty much shut up and pay attention.</p>

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<p>Someone sure likes to brag. Cough Cough</p>

<p>My advice is to be very friendly but yet and quick to the point. You have to develop a sort of errr bittersweet image.
Like you can be a huge jerk if they pull your chain and also a wonderful friend and advisor if you obey. lol
I really like this about some of my teachers.</p>

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<p>definitely act like a teacher. this seems like weird advice, but trust me, teenagers will take advantage of you at all costs. in fact, they won’t respect a “best friend” type of teacher</p>

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<p>^ I could not agree anymore.</p>

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<p>Thanks all!</p>

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<p>Do a little research on a subject before you lecture about it. Throw in some fun facts that the kids may not know. Try to focus on facts not covered in the textbook and look for connections etc. If you repeat the textbook, you might as well give up</p>

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<p>I personally would love an extremely quirky teacher. One that’s really outwardly passionate about what they’re teaching, and don’t teach strictly by the book. I’ve learned so much more from those teachers who don’t go strictly by how the discrict tells them to teach. And someone who tries to connect with students, and goes out of their way to say “Hey I really think you’d enjoy this book, it’s about this.” and things like that.</p>

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<p>The best advice I’ve seen in this thread is definitely to act like the teacher. Yes, it seems obvious but some teachers do struggle with it and therefore lose authority. The best teacher I ever had was great because she related to us, had fun in class, etc. but also didn’t take any crap and made it very clear that she had the authority. We all respected her enough that we didn’t cross her and everyone turned stuff in on time…</p>

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<p>i agree with what most people are saying. we teenagers are complete hypocrites. we love teachers that are fun and nice and go off on random tangents like what we did this past weekend. until we need to take a midterm and realize we haven’t learned anything–then we get ****ed off and really annoyed by our teachers who aren’t teaching us. </p>

<p>for AP econ I had a new teacher (2nd year teaching) and she’s really nice, would be a great friend, we even go to dinner with her sometimes. but she is a horrible teacher because she doesn’t really teach us and doesn’t admit to her mistakes, and she does not have any authority. she acts like a student and flirts with all the other teachers, and lots of the guys think she’s “hot” so she gets a lot of inappropriate comments–AND DOESNT DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM. its ridiculous. some of my guy friends made the most crazy comments directly to her face, including suggesting that she worked nights at a strip club, and she doesn’t even acknowledge theres anything wrong with it. she doesn’t know how to deal with it. she has very little respect among students. </p>

<p>on the other hand, for honors english I had a teacher who was new to our high school (not new to teaching) and she was a fantastic english teacher. most students hated her, especially in the beginning. she has authority in the classroom, very few people would ever goof off in her class, and is a very hard teacher. I still say she gives WAY too much homework. as the year went on though, we realized she’s actually very nice, is very helpful when asked, and is flexible with due dates when needed. </p>

<p>I would say to try to make sure that you are clear and authoritative when you begin the school year. you need to start off being respected. having a planned syllabus is a good idea, to show the students that you will be getting work out of them. establish rules concerning homework, grades, lateness, and tell them about your grading policy. please don’t do those “lets get to know each other” games. thats just annoying and makes you feel like youre in kindergarten.
as the year goes on you should continue focusing on teaching well, but it doesnt hurt to do something fun once in a while–relate to students, share stories, discuss points of view/debate, etc. before winter breaks and such everyone is jumpy and just wants to get out of school, so you aren’t going to get much teaching done then—nobody will be paying attention.
one thing i’d say is if a student comes to you asking for an extension, don’t be one of those people that just brushes it off. certain times of the year can be very stressful and if a student has a legitimate reason for wanting an extension, you should be open to it. </p>

<p>anyway for history I think the main thing is that, everyone hates outlines (when teachers tell you to read at home and take notes) but I find them helpful. even when teachers don’t tell me to do it i find this is the best way for me to study. but that’s not true of all kids. I think its stupid to go over facts and dates during a history class–thats information you can get from reading the textbook. I found that I liked it best when our homework assignments were to read the textbook (outlines reccomended but not mandatory) and then during class went over the topics we read about in a discussion format. this lends itself to debates, intersting conversations, etc. a good idea might be to give students a week to read and outline a section of the textbook and spend the next week discussing that section in detail during class.
one of my teachers would make us outline and then would put up different topics on the chalkboards around the room (society, economy, politics, etc.) and give the whole class two minutes at the beginning of the period to run around the room and write whatever imporant information we had in our outlines on the board. then we’d sit down and discuss each section. </p>

<p>also, another idea might be with the upcoming election. I remember when I was in 8th grade with the 2004 election, we spent a lot of time in class just discussing and debating politics (we had some die hard republicans stuck in with the generally liberal class so that made for some lively conversations). it was really interesting and fun, so maybe you could plan for devoting some class time to that as the elections near.</p>

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<p>Alamode- Thank you for your extensive answer. I am sitting here planning my syllabus and incorporating some of your ideas!</p>

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<p>The first week of school it is VERY important for teachers to establish themselves as authority figures. Many teachers mistake this to mean that they should be pushy, harsh, rude, or ruthless. This is not the case. Be informative and fun, but take control. A teacher without respect and control of the classroom in the first week is in for a very long year. Likewise, a teacher who gives the impression of being mean will lose the respect of the students, though they will generally be quiet. You need to engage your students immediately and you’ll find yourself in an energetic, fun, and insightful class. Have a great year and good luck!</p>

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<p>jump right in, dont spend all this time blathering about proper class conduct and what you expect… just say heres whats going to happen, heres what your going to learn, your old enough to be mature and studious or face the consequences. Cater to those who are genuinely interested in learning the material for knowledge’s sake, and dont let students drill into you. I mean like constantly arguing and giving them their way and letting them get away with stuff… you can put your foot down. Give them the image that you love your job and want to be there, and they will want to be there as well.</p>

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<p>My favorite teacher had a great sense of humor and always jokingly picked on people in class.</p>

<p>Just be outgoing, it’ll make the class so much more fun for the students who dont enjoy the subject.</p>