Dale Dale - 180 Tips and Tricks for New Teachers

Summary

Kelly, M. 180 Tips and Tricks for New
             Teachers. Avon: Adams Media, 2008.

180 Tips and Tricks for New Teachers by Melissa Kelly is exactly what the title suggests. The tips are each one page long, and are organized into ten groups that each deal with a certain aspect of teaching. The first chapter, for example, Growing the Teacher Within, deals with key skills that are common among many different types of good teachers such as being consistent, learning to be fair and flexible, keeping expectations high, and developing a vision and teaching style. Kelly then moves from the philosophical to the more practical, providing tips on issues such as classroom management, organization, assessment, the use of technology, and making the most of classroom time. She goes on to deal comprehensively with stress, illness, substitute teachers, and staff relationships. She closes the book with a section called Recipes for Success: First Days and Beyond, in which she outlines some very specific tips for those first few days and weeks of teaching like learning students names as quickly as possible, getting settled in the classroom before students arrive, faking nervousness, and getting administration on your side. The final tip that Kelly includes is a set of Checklists to Live By, and the final three pages contain the list of tips for easy reference.

Tips

Because the book is split into these ten chapters, I have listed them and elaborated on a few tips from each section. I've also included pictures of the full list of 180 tips and tricks from the back of the book, below.

1. Growing the Teacher Within

Tip 5: Be Consistent

The rules should be understood and you should enforce them consistently. Your students will know where you stand and what is expected of them, and this creates a safe classroom environment and earns you their respect of your students.

Tip 9: Be Flexible

Even if you’ve made a very structured lesson plan, with specific times for each activity, you don’t have to adhere to it strictly. If the class is going in a different direction that is just as valid, go with it. Don’t disrupt learning just to make the class fit in the box you’ve created for it. Be open.

2. Classroom Management

Tip 20: Enforce Rules from Day One

Go through the rules on the first day, and have them posted somewhere in the room.

Tip 24: Institute a Late-Work Policy

Students often hand in work late or not at all; Kelly suggest developing a policy that “does not require a great deal of bookkeeping” (p. 27), such as docking a set number of marks per day late and writing that penalty at the top of the page as soon as it is handed in.

Tip 27: Be the Boss

Start off the year being friendly but firm about rules; as soon as you lose control it will be tremendously difficult to get it back. This is what usually happens to teachers in their first year:

“1. They start off with the desire to have kids like them.

2. They lose control of their classroom environment

3. They decide to tighten down on the rules.

4. They lose their sense of humour.

5. They lose their students’ attention and respect.

6. Misbehaviour increases.” (p. 30)

3. Organizational Know-How

Tip 42: Offer Other Reading Material

Have books in your room that deal with your subject area and that students may find interesting and borrow from you.

Tip 46: Establish an Objective

For each lesson the teacher should have a clear idea of what they want their students to learn. Keep this in the forefront of all of your lesson planning. Keeping the objective(s) in mind as you teach will also help you to get the most important information across clearly.

Tip 47: Mark Your Calendar!

Having a calendar is a good way to stay organized and to keep track of your larger overall plan for teaching the course content.

4. Making the Most of Your Teaching Time

Tip 56: Write in Journals Every Day

Writing in journals is a good way to transition into a focused class time and can help to get the students thinking and engaged. It also creates a predictable schedule that students can fall into and allows you to assess them or get to know them better. The journals can be about course content, or personal reflection; you can take them in and mark them, or have students write about whatever they want, depending on your purpose for them.

Tip 59: Repeat and Review Your Key Points

Going over your key points at the end of the lesson can help your students remember what is important and can allow you to assess their understanding of your objectives.

Tip 71: Using Unique Lessons

Having students participate in activities such as role-playing and debates can engage students and is fun! Why learn the boring way, if you can learn the fun way instead?

5. Dealing with the Unexpected

Tip 73: Combat Prejudice in the Classroom

Students may argue their right to voice prejudiced and possibly offensive opinions, appealing to the right to free speech. Remind them that other students have the right to respect as well.

Tip 79: Guard Against School Violence

Kelly provides a list of examples of warning signs that include:

“A sudden change in interest level at school

An obsession with violence

Sudden change in attitude or mood swings

Clues from writing, signs of isolation and despair

Sudden violent and angry outbursts

Talking about dying or death

Talking about bringing weapons to school

Indications of violence toward animals” (p. 88)

Some of these warning signs are more obvious than others, but the point is to keep your eyes and ears open and not to ignore what may be significant.

Tip 81: Expect (and Plan for) the Unexpected

It is important to realize that things might not go as planned and you might find yourself in less than ideal situations such as being in an overcrowded classroom, or without enough textbooks, etc. Make the best of it and realize that you can still find success despite setbacks.

Tip 80: In Case of Emergency

Be aware of possible emergencies and always be prepared by knowing the protocol for dealing with different emergencies.

6. Assessments, Grading, and Testing, Oh My!

Tip 92: Pretest to Know Where to Start

Assess where your students to determine their prior knowledge.

Tip 97: Peer Grade/Edit - Helps Everyone Learn

If you have students edit and grade each other’s work and they can learn from each other’s mistakes, and learn about how work is marked and teaches them how they can edit their own work with a rubric. Assigning numbers to the students work instead of putting their name on them can help to keep students objective about the work and provides anonymity to the students whose work is being marked.

7. Technology and Online Learning Today

Tip 111: Use Technology the Right Way

It is important to ask yourself what the purpose for your use of technology is. It shouldn’t be used for its own sake, but rather when helps to teach more effectively. It is difficult to hold students accountable when working in computer labs. Think about this stuff and always have a reason for why you are using technology.

Tip 116: Catch Cheaters Even If You’re Not There

Copy/Paste can allow your students to write a paper in four clicks of a button.  If you happen to find yourself teaching by correspondence, make sure that you phone your students to verify their knowledge of the course content. Search for sections of their work on www.google.com if you’re suspicious. Be sure that your students are actually learning.

8. Stress, Illness, and Substitutes

Tip 127: Avoid Getting Sick

Be aware of all of the ways you are exposed to germs. You will likely get sick in your first year or two, but it should become less common as your body builds resistance to germs.

Tip 129: Be Your Own Substitute

If you need to take a sick day leave your students with an educational video, or notes to copy, or something. Have these resources on hand, in a sort of “toolbox”, that you can go to on such occasions.

Tip 134: Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself

Protect yourself against teacher burnout by having reasonable expectations for yourself. Allow yourself to make mistakes and stay grounded.

Tip 136: Get Your Sleep

You’ve got enough to worry about without trying to do it all while you’re sleep deprived. Keep a constant bedtime, avoid caffeine and exercise right before bed, and take time to rest and reflect quietly.

9. Be a Team Player Without Being Exploited

Tip 146: Let Others Help You - You’re Not Alone

It is not a shameful sign of weakness to accept help from other teachers. Don’t be afraid to ask for it if you need it.

Tip 148: Get to Know the Right People

Build relationships with administration, office and support staff.

Tip 152: Stay Away from Staff Gossip

Don’t even get involved.

Tip 162: Say “No,” Sometimes

Pick and Choose wisely; don’t spread yourself too thin, especially in your first year. If you don’t feel comfortable saying “no,” offer to help in a more limited capacity.

10. Recipes for Success: First Days and Beyond

Tip 163: Foster an Effective Learning Environment

“Organization Breeds Confidence” - “Create an atmosphere where learning is expected and rewarded” (p. 182). If you stay organized and know what you’re doing you’ll create a stable environment where students can learn.

Tip 167: It’s Normal to Be Nervous

Everyone is nervous when they start teaching. Kelly gives two pieces of advice in this tip: “Look Beyond Yourself” and “Fake it”. Even if you are nervous, just exude calmness, control, and confidence.

Tip 176: Manage Your Own Expectations

Forget about other peoples expectations for you (not completely of course). Set daily goals and achieve them every day, and always strive to be a better, more effective teacher.

Critique

I found this book incredibly helpful and easy to read. There were certain themes throughout the book that resonated with me and characterized Kelly’s tips; consistency, respect, organization, preparedness, and mindfulness were common in most of the tips, which gave the book a strong core, uniting the sections into a cohesive work. A lot of the tips and tricks were universal, applying to any grade school classroom, but certain sections, such as Assessment, Grading, and Testing were more relevant to high school or middle school teaching, providing activities and ideas that would only work with students mature and intelligent enough to handle them. A teacher of any grade could however find most of this book quite useful.

Each tip was only one page, and this provided the reader with bite-sized chunks to read. One downside to limiting each tip to the length of one page is that it’s hard to go into great detail. I found that Kelly was, however, quite eloquent in her succinctness and used this to her advantage. The tips were not specific enough to alienate readers, but just long enough to provide some food for thought and steer readers in the right direction, or at least spur their imaginations.

When I came to the section on dealing with standardized testing, I rolled my eyes, expecting the worst from this American author. I was surprised to find a balanced view, that took no sides, and presented the good and the bad of the issue. I think that a lot of the time we look at practices such as this with a condemning eye, but, though I strongly disagree with American policies that base school funding on standardized testing, it was good for me to see some of the benefits that I hadn’t considered. That isn’t to say that I wasn’t very relieved when she justified my position on the matter one tip later.

In addition to the excellent content, the layout of the book was awesome. The book practiced what it preached: it was very organized and well thought-out. I found its short sections easier to read than than if it had been written in paragraphs without headings. At the beginning of each chapter there is a one page introduction that helpfully sets up the chapter’s tips and opposite that, a list of the contents of that chapter. There is a list of all of the tips provided as a kind of index at the back of the book, and the tip numbers were largely written at the top of each page, making it easy to find the tip number you are looking for. This makes the book very easy to use as a reference guide, and useful to have on hand when specific teaching problems arise, or just for daily encouragement. There are, of course, also page numbers to help readers navigate the book from the table of contents as well.  

I appreciated that Kelly gave the book a good arc, starting with more general tips for developing a philosophy of education, and things to be aware of in the classroom, and then moved into the more practical tips for specific instances. Although I expected the tips to create the feeling of reading a list, there was actually continuity from tip to tip so that it felt like they naturally flowed one to the next, creating a sense of momentum when reading it that way. I felt as though there was the tips also built upon each other in a macro sense, and that there was definitely benefit to reading it linearly. The strength of this book lies in the fact that it is relevant and that it can be read both as a proper book, and as a reference guide. I highly recommend it to all first-year teachers.

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