Set reasonable goals as a new teacher

In my first year as a new teacher, I thought I would end up crushed under the mountain of homework, class work, quizzes, exams, essays, lesson plans and books. And there were plenty of times that I wished I could crawl under that pile of paper to catch up on sleep. No one had shared with me just how much work I would face outside of the classroom in preparation to return to teach each class each day.

As a high school English teacher, I teach five classes with 34 students in each class. So that’s 170 vocabulary quizzes to grade, 170 tests to grade, 170 sets of homework to grade, 170 essays to read, edit and grade, and so on. It can really add up. At any one point, you could be exploring Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” with your freshmen, Shakespeare’s “Othello” with your sophomores and Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” with your seniors.

Now couple this with being a new pedagogue. You may not have yet developed your curriculum craft or accumulated any lesson plans. You may not have even read the book since high school yourself! Therefore, writing three knock-it-out-of-the-park (which is what is expected of you and what the kids deserve) lesson plans times five days per week is no simple task. Add this, too, to your mountain of paperwork.

I had very high hopes in my first year of teaching, and five years later, I still do — I’ve just gotten a lot smarter. My first year, I assigned and collected everything and, worse than this, I carried everything home with me each night in my almost delusional hope that I would somehow be able to complete everything that evening. It’s an utter impossibility and a sure-fire way for newbie teachers to burn themselves out fast.

So what is one to do? Consider the following:

1. Realize that you are not going to grade everything in one night, and that’s okay. Ask yourself, after you’ve written your lesson plans, how many essays would you like to grade? What number will give you a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction? It might be 10. It might be four. Whatever that number is, bring only that number of essays home with you. It might be only one class set of vocabulary quizzes or items of homework and not all five class sets. And that is just fine. As a teacher, it is so easy to have a workday that never actually ends. There is always something else you can do, such as plan a lesson, grade a paper, call a struggling student’s parents at home, tutor a student — it’s easy to feel that you can never stop working when you begin your teaching career, but you can if you manage your expectations.
2. Use your prep periods to prep and grade. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make friends or that you don’t deserve a few minutes of downtime after class; just don’t waste time during your day. I often take the first few minutes of a prep to catch up with colleagues, unwind, share stories, etc., but then I get to work.
3. If you think that you can’t work in the teachers’ lounge or teachers’ cafeteria because it’s “too loud,” then get over it. If we can ask our students to stay focused when a car alarm is going off in the neighborhood or a fight breaks out in the hallway, you should be able to ignore the din around you and get plenty of grading done. And if it’s really loud or you’re too nice to ignore the people around you, then pull out your iPod and put in your earbuds. You don’t even have to press play; just get to work. Or get yourself to the library.
4. You can chip away at that mountain, even if it’s one essay at a time. I’m a slow starter in the morning, and I often come in a half hour before my day starts to think about my lessons for the day or grade one or two essays over coffee. I start my day this way because I’ve learned that every minute counts and all mountains are scaled one step — or essay — at a time.

That’s two essays down, only 168 to go.