Cara Fehr - The First-Year Teacher's Survival Guide

Teacher’s Toolbox: “The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide” by Julia G. Thompson

“The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide” written by Julia G. Thompson is a wealth of information for newly certified teachers. The book is divided into seventeen different sections, each focusing on a different topic. The sections area as follows:

1. Know What It Means to Be a Twenty-First-Century Educator

This section covers the many different challenges that a teacher may encounter teaching in the twenty-first-century and how to overcome these issues. It outlines everything from professional responsibilities to mentors and managing your stress

2. Develop the Practical Skills You’ll Need to Manage a Classroom

In this section the practical skills that a teacher needs to develop are covered. There are tips for managing papers, e-mails, and a web page. The tips even included how to save paper and the best times to use the photocopier. This section will help to develop the skills needed to become a successful and efficient teacher. 

3. Collaborate with Others in Your School and Community

The importance of relationships and communication is emphasized in this section of the book. Communication with colleagues as well as parents and guardians are all topics that are addressed. Other forms of communication, like social media and class newsletters, are outlined.  

4. Begin a Successful School Term

This section focuses on the first few days of the school year and how to begin to set-up your class for a successful year. There are different activities outlined that can be used to better know your students. Mistakes that teachers should avoid at the beginning of the year are also outlined.

5. Develop Positive Classroom Relationships

Positive relationships with students are an important aspect of the classroom and this section can help to guide teachers to achieve these kinds of relationships. How to better relationships between the students and teacher as well as between the students are addressed.

6. Control Class Time

This section outlines how to better utilize class time as well as common ways that teachers waste time. Everything from how to handle interruptions, requests to leave the classroom, and the first and last ten minutes of the class time are covered. There is a teacher worksheet included with plans to start and end class effectively.

7. Manage Your Classroom

Classroom management is a skill where every teacher can improve. This section has many different ideas and suggestions to better classroom management.  There is help for different policies that teacher’s need to develop as well as how to enforce rules within the classroom.

8. Motivate Students to Succeed

This section helps teachers to help students succeed in the classroom. An emphasis is placed on positivity and intrinsic motivation.  Learning should be goal-oriented and success within the classroom should be attainable for the students.  

9. Choose Appropriate Instructional Strategies and Resources

In this section different web sites and apps are discussed that could be beneficial to educators. There are also different classroom technologies and ways that educators could find them beneficial to their classroom learning environment.

10. Design Effective Instruction

This section focuses on how to plan your lessons and units. There are teacher worksheets included for a course overview, unit plan, and for daily lesson plans. The importance of having backup plan and how to adjust a lesson are topics that are included in this section.

11. Deliver Engaging Instruction

As a new teacher tips to make lessons more engaging for students are ones that would be extremely informative. This section focuses on different ways to captivate student’s attention and to make points that the students will be more likely to remember in the future.

12. Meet the Needs of All of Your Students

This section helps with something that many teachers struggle with which is differentiated instruction for students. There are teacher worksheets for individualized instruction and a planning tool. Information on different students who may need special care and how best to help them to learn is also included.

13. Assess Your Students’ Progress

This section is all about assessment, the different kinds of assessment and how to use them. There are also tips for tracking grades and what to do when you suspect a student of cheating.    

14. Level the Playing Field by Covering Basic Skills

In this section the basic skills that need to be taught in schools are covered.  Each skill is mentioned as well as different activities that could be used to help teach this skill to the students.

15. Prevent Discipline Problems

Preventing discipline problems and early intervention are the focus in this section. The causes of the most discipline problems are mentioned as well as the mistakes that many teachers make that should be avoided. The importance of becoming a consistent and fair teacher is included.

16. Manage Discipline Problems

This section discusses behaviours you should not accept as well as how a teacher should respond to different situations. How to hold conferences with misbehaving students and making detentions useful are other topics that are explained.

17. Learn to Solve Classroom Problems

This section of the book deals with problems that arise in the classroom and how and when to address these issues when they arise. The problems that are discussed include individual students, enforcing school policies or rules, behaviour during instruction, and students’ relationships with their teachers. The book came with a DVD as well, although I have not yet had opportunity to view the contents of the disc. The book, however, mentions that it contains downloads of all the teacher’s worksheets and bonus articles.

The summary that I have provided is a very basic overview as the size of the book is rather large and impossible to go more in depth without writing an entire essay. As can be seen from this summary this book contains substantial amounts of information on topics that many beginning teachers will have many questions about. Many resources are also included in the book for teacher use. There are reflection questions and checklists to help guide teachers in their new careers. The checklist and reflective questions below deal with preventing discipline problems.

 Another type of resource is worksheets. The one included below is a way for teachers to track formative assessment data.

            I found this book to be extremely informative and full of information that I have already found myself wondering about. Certain parts of this book, the sections pertaining to discipline and classroom management, are already useful in my practicum. The way the book is written is easy to follow and read. Overall I would definitely recommend this book to any beginning teacher, as well as experienced teachers. Teacher is a profession where we are constantly learning and expanding the skills we have already acquired. This book will be one that I will continue to keep near me in the coming years.