New Teacher Diaries

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New Teacher Diaries on Edwize

New York City teachers in their first and second years on the job chronicle their experiences on the UFT blog.

A partnership that works

After two years as a solo teacher, I was hired to be the general ed teacher in a CTT class. I was nervous about working with a partner. Would we share the same educational philosophy?

We're gonna make it after all

It wasn’t until the third week that I finally saw a glimmer of hope through all the frustration.

The importance of mentors

Something that got me through the first year was the ability to rely on veteran teachers to advise me on how to fix the problems I was experiencing.

Places to go, experiences to share

Seeing how interested and curious my students became after I shared photos and stories from my trip to Cuba a year ago, I'm really looking forward to sharing my experiences from this summer, which took me from New England to Israel, Egypt and Mexico.

The jitters

The past few mornings, I’ve been awake early, my mind buzzing with all the things I need to accomplish before school starts. Most of my tasks are mental — How many classroom jobs do I want to have? What will our morning routine look like?

Year-end reflections

At the end of each school year, I take time to reflect on the year and evaluate which components were successful, and which aspects may need to be tweaked.

The house that reading built

I’m pleased to report that I moved my Polish-speaking Lukas from level D to E. He happily rushed off to “move his person” from the D envelope to the E envelope, and then he went to the classroom library to do what we call “shopping for books.”

Second chances

Recently I started reading Jonathan Kozol’s “Letters to a Young Teacher.” I’d tried to read it last year, but found it hit a little too close to home, especially when he was fawning over the first-year teacher and I was presiding over total chaos.

Union support keeps me balanced

For the first nine years of my teaching career, I taught in the South in an area where there are no teachers’ unions. In fact, I was told upon being hired to not even mention the word.

Standing strong: A new teacher’s first rally

Being a part of a 70,000-person-strong rally gave a new teacher a sense of democratic participation that he had really never felt before.

Giant steps

They took the HealthCorps challenge and counted their steps.....until the competition got way out of hand.

Snow day!

One of those funny little role reversals about becoming a teacher is that you realize that teachers fantasize about snow days as much as students do, and we feel the bitter sting of disappointment when we face the truism that New York City public schools never close because of snow.

A time and a place

A new reading teacher wonders when she will learn not to get to school an hour early to plan lessons she doesn’t get to teach because her principal keeps making her cover other classes.

The kindness of strangers

A new teacher talks about her success using DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit organization that matches classroom project proposals from around the country with online donors.

Books for boys

A new teacher tells of her efforts to get one of her students to read any book he wants, not just those from his “just right” level.

The copy wars

Ask new teachers about the biggest challenges they face and they might say classroom management, lesson planning or even navigating the various assessments and accountability issues that grew out of No Child Left Behind. But for this new teacher, the biggest difficulty I have experienced is using the copy machine.

New Teacher Diaries Archives