Win Your First Year of Teaching Middle School

Strategies and Tools for Success

Stephen Katzel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000373356
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Berufliche Weiterbildung

Feel empowered during your first year of teaching middle school by applying the concise tips and tools in this book.

Author Stephen Katzel shows you how to create an effective system to structure your classroom, implement daily routines, plan for the short and long term, utilize technology, communicate well with parents, handle formal and informal observations, and move up the salary scale. He also shares advice on relating to the unique needs of middle schoolers, handling difficult supervisors or coworkers, and adapting to change.

Perfect for beginning middle school or junior high teachers, the book offers strategies and templates you can use immediately to kick start a successful teaching career.

1
Set Up a Winning System

Any classroom experience you’ve had before your first year of “official” teaching is only a small piece of the puzzle. Student teaching and volunteering in a classroom is useful experience since you get to watch an experienced educator in action. Ideally, you observed what systems the teacher had in place and the pros/cons of their system. Whether your mentor teacher knew it or not, they had their own system wherein they (hopefully) had a structure for management and student achievement. Hopefully, each first-year teacher has witnessed a “winning” system in action. Classroom rules for instruction and behavior (behavior management), expectations (behavioral solutions), and routines (structure) are the three pillars to a “winning system.” My definition of a “winning system” doesn’t come from a textbook or course. It comes from real-life experiences in the classroom and countless hours observing other teachers perform lessons. A winning system in one classroom can look entirely different than a winning system in another classroom. There is no “one size fits all” system. However, winning systems all have variations of the three pillars in common. Without behavior management, there is no mutual respect among students and teachers. Without expectations, students will not know how to behave in the classroom. Without routines, students will feel that their class is unpredictable day to day. Regardless of how a winning system is structured, the ultimate goal for each teacher is student achievement and learning. It does not matter what type of classroom I walk into; I know what good teaching looks like and what student learning looks like. I can walk into a French classroom and see within 5 minutes if a teacher has a winning system. I do not speak French, but I can observe student and teacher behaviors.

A closer look at the three pillars:

• Behavior management is how a teacher responds to the student’s behavior and misbehavior. If a student calls out or misbehaves, does the teacher yell? Do they pull the student aside to talk? Do they ignore the behavior completely? If a student does something positive, does the teacher praise them? Does the teacher recognize when a student does something positive? Behavior management is essentially how an educator responds to the actions of their students.
• Expectations are whether the teacher believes that their students can grow. Does the teacher set clear expectations for their class? Do students raise their hand or call out?
• Routines (structure) are extremely important to consider as well. Do students know what to do when they walk in, walk out, work independently, or work with others? These are important questions that must be clearly answered and established in a teacher’s first year.

A “winning system” is a classroom where students have high expectations of themselves, know what to expect each day, clearly know the rules of the classroom, respect their teacher, respect their peers, succeed academically, and are not scared to take risks. None of the previously mentioned things are possible without having a plan to get there! However, first-year teachers must set up their own “winning system” that is molded to their personality and teaching style. A new teacher’s style will be molded through the three pillars of the system. How a first-year teacher approaches behavior management, expectations, and routines is critical in the development of a winning system. The system focuses on the core beliefs, values, and goals that a teacher establishes for their students and for themselves. To circle back to my first point, typically your classroom experiences prior to your own class/classes are as a guest in the classroom. For better or for worse, the mentor teacher you are shadowing has already set the tone in their classroom, which will shape how the students in the room view the teacher and themselves as learners.

Whether the system is a “winning” one depends on the teacher. It is imperative for first-year teachers to reflect on the systems that they have seen in classrooms they have been a part of. First-year teachers should reflect on their experiences to see what parts of any system they want to use, and what they do not want to use, in their own classroom. Typically, a first-year teacher has had a student teaching experience with a “mentor teacher” who helped them learn how to teach. This experience can range from a period as short as eight weeks to as long as an entire school year. (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1Example of a mentor-teacher checklist. (A checklist that allows for first-year teachers to write down if the teacher they were paired with during student teaching had a winning system and what strengths/weaknesses their mentor teacher had.)

A winning system is a collection of actions that a teacher makes on a daily basis that must be maintained throughout the entire school year. Ideally, the teacher sets the foundation of the winning system on the first day of school and reinforces the system throughout the first week of school. This kind of system does not happen overnight and requires a well-thought-out plan that includes classroom rules for instruction, behavior (behavior management), expectations (behavioral solutions), and routines (structure). Having a well-thought-out plan encompassing those three ideas will ultimately lead to high student engagement, high student achievement, clear classroom rules, and well-established routines.

Creating Structure and Routines

Having a structured classroom is arguably the most important step in establishing a winning system. Regardless of whether a student is in first grade or twelfth grade, they crave structure and consistency in any classroom they are in. The following observations do not come from a particular study, college course, or textbook. My opinions on classroom structure are drawn solely from my experiences teaching middle school students. Students do not like to walk into a room and have different procedures and rules each and every day. They will not know what is expected in terms of their behavior. A first-year teacher should have a set of routines that are established the first week of school and, more importantly, maintained throughout the entire school year. Students should know the routine for when they enter the classroom, which requires multiple steps. The first step is that a teacher should have the date, objective, “do now” (for example, a set of directions on what papers to pick up, what papers to take out, or to grab a laptop from the cart), agenda, and homework on the board when students walk in. If you are not assigning homework for that night, put “No Homework” on the board so that students do not ask “Is there homework?” I cannot stress enough the importance of explaining the difference between a “due date” and a “deadline” for assignments. I label each homework assignment with a “DD” for due date and a “DL” for deadline. Be very clear with students and parents that the “due date” is the day that the assignment is due and will be graded for full credit. Then explain that the “deadline” for an assignment is the last day an assignment can be turned in for credit. Setting clear parameters for due dates and deadlines at the start of the year will help develop your winning system. I always recommend emphasizing the difference between a “due date” and a “deadline” as much as I can in the first month of school. Everything that I mentioned can be written on a chalkboard or typed in a document or presentation. I personally would recommend going digital so that you can email the information to any students that are absent. I would recommend making a template for a “one-pager” document so that you do not need to write it afresh each day (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2An example of a “one-pager” (A page that is displayed on the classroom board that contains the date, do now, homework, objective, and agenda for a class that students see when they walk into the classroom.)

I have found that having all of this information on the board each and every day leads to me being more organized, but also to students being more organized. Having all of this information visible each day also leads to consistency and structure. Having the objective posted and visible for students is important so that students know what skill or topic they will be able to complete by the end of the class. Having a “do now” on the board instructs students on what they should do as soon as they walk in. This can entail starting a warm-up, grabbing a computer, or any other pertinent information. In my classroom, students are expected to grab papers from the side table each day and then start their warm-up immediately. If you are a teacher who is mostly paper-based and not computer-based, having the routine of students picking up papers as soon as they walk in allows more time for instruction in class as you are not wasting time passing out papers. Disclosing your agenda to the class each day also keeps students informed on what they will be doing in class that period. Adding a section for homework is important for students to stay organized as well. At most schools, students have some sort of planner that they can write their homework assignments in. If you make writing down homework a routine from the first week of the year, you will have a higher percentage of students completing homework throughout the school year. Also, having a designated homework bin for students to turn in work adds another layer of structure for your class. When students are assigned homework, they should be expected to turn in their homework to the homework bin on the way into class. This allows for an easy way to collect homework assignments and again saves time collecting in papers.

Establishing Clear Rules and Expectations

The second step of creating a winning classroom system is establishing clear classroom rules and expectations while staying consistent in enforcing your rules and expectations throughout the entire school year. The first four days of the school year should focus on establishing classroom rules, routines, and culture. Learning the names of your students builds classroom culture and makes students feel valued. A strategy that I have always used is to have students put name tags on their desks during the first week of school. This assists me, and their peers, to learn everyone’s names quickly. There can be up to five or six elementary schools feeding into a given middle school, which means that students might only know a few others in their class. There may be new students to your school if you teach seventh or eighth grade as well. L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Set Up a Winning System
• Chapter 2: Long-Term and Short-Term Planning
• Chapter 3: Use Technology, It Is Your Friend
• Chapter 4: Communication Is Key
• Chapter 5: Contacting Parents/Guardians of Students
• Chapter 6: Graduate School/Professional Development/Salary Advice
• Chapter 7: Expect to be Observed Frequently: How to Handle Formal and Informal Observations
• Chapter 8: Dealing with Difficult Coworkers or Supervisors
• Chapter 9: Teaching Sixth Grade: Helping with Social Changes
• Chapter 10: Teaching Seventh Grade: Conscious Repetition
• Chapter 11: Teaching Eighth Grade: Solution-Based Learning
• Chapter 12: Adapting to the Ever-Changing World: Tips for Virtual Learning during Pandemics and Beyond
• Conclusion
• Appendices