Chapter 14 Notes

What Can the New Teacher Expect?

Although prospective teachers may think that schools will hold few surprises, being on the other side of the desk is a very different experience and can produce a sense of culture shock. Administrators play an important but often confusing role in the life of the beginning teacher.

Although fellow teachers are an enormous source of learning and support, they can sometimes be a source of difficulty. New teachers learn much about the job in which they are supposed to be experts: instruction.

 Some of the most intense satisfaction and disappointment confronting new teachers come from those they came to help: students. Working with parents can be surprisingly complex and is rarely what the new teacher has anticipated.

Beginning teachers can follow specific strategies to mitigate problems and heighten their chances for a successful career start. Teaching invariably has hidden sweetness and secret joys.

First, the good news: forecasters predict that as a result of teacher retirement and population growth, U.S. schools will need 2 million new teachers in the next decade. Not since World War II has there been such a promising job market for teachers.

Now the bad news: the first year of teaching can be a rough one-too rough for many beginners. Each year, many new teachers walk into their classrooms with energy, high hopes, and rose-colored glasses, only to face unexpected problems that cause them to give up on teaching or radically lower their perceptions of their capabilities as teachers.

Rather than ignoring or-even worse-sugarcoating these problems, we focus on them, even at the risk of frightening some readers. Further, new teachers can actually find satisfaction in solving their problems and in succeeding as professionals.

Parents are not always a teacher's allies. In this class, a new teacher's creative lesson on DNA is paying off in student interest. The class clowns who were so amusing to you in high school are often a very different story when they reappear in your classroom. Being happy in your work will make you a more effective teacher.