Stevie A12 -“A New Teacher’s Guide: Surviving your First Year” by Harvey Singer.

Summary

            The book I chose to do for Teacher’s Toolbox was “A New Teacher’s Guide: Surviving your First Year” by Harvey Singer. This book is based on Singer’s personal experiences as a teacher, dean, councillor, and administrator. I found it somewhat difficult to when I searched the Internet for “First Year Teacher” books and I was not getting any promising results. I then tried the library so I could actually look at the books, and immediately I found this book. I liked how the book was easy to ready and had easy to find headings for different situations.

            The book starts off by telling us that you will learn more your first year then all your previous schooling and student teaching combined. Singer then tells us to collaborate with teachers because there is never “one” right person/answer. The book continues on by telling us to encourage students to explore outside of class because learning happens as much outdoors as it does indoors.

Here are some of the big ideas from each chapter:

Personal Side of Learning

            -learn the students names because it shows that you care (sounds obvious?)

            -do not embarrass a student in front of the class

            -you can’t make everyone happy

Communicate Effectively

            -getting parents on your side by getting to know them

            -let your students know what you expect from the beginning

            -let your students parents know what you expect, also from the beginning of the school year

            -use email to stay connected or make alternative ways if parents do not have email

            -how to deal with an angry parent

            -phone a parent 

Discipline

            -how to deal with serious situations

            -how to deal with less serious situations

            -irrational behaviour and how to deal with it

            -discipline and expectations connecting with communication

            -fights 

Drug Abuse

            -how to tell if a student is doing drugs

            -what to do if you think a student is using drugs

            -teaching about drug abuse

            -availability of drugs, sales on school property and “drug pushers”

Ms. Norbury (Mean Girls)

Working With Your Colleagues

            -how to use your faculty room to your advantage

            -faculty dress –professional or casual? Does it affect what your student’s learn?

            -learn to walk away from teachers who do not respect you  

            -dealing with angry teachers

Administrators

            -usually tell you the opposite of what they want you to do…

            -do not stress about observations and evaluations

Playing By The Rules

            -know the school district policy

            -know the school board members

It’s All About The Students

            -choose what you want to see do not discipline or “actually” see something that is not going to really harm a student. If you do not allow them to do it at school they will find other places more secretly to do it

            -Quid Pro Quo  

            -sexual harassment

            -accepting gifts

            -corporal punishment may be allowed in Canada, but not by the school governing body 

            -divorce- it’s a common thing, so be respectful

            -ADD/ADHD is it a problem?

            -enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic students and how to deal with both

Finding A Job

            -always have a current and up-to-date resume

            -interview your place to show the school who you are, so sell yourself

            -send a follow up letter post-interview

Surviving Your First Year

            -dealing with and learning the system will take time

            -thinking about retirement –start investing right away because it will pay out in the long run

            - conserve your energy you will need it not only for the entire year, but for the decades of teaching years ahead of you

            -covering a class (substituting)

            -field trips they can be the best idea ever and the worst idea ever

            -work with school staff  because they have experience

            -who is your boss?

            -how to deal with stress

            -know your injury aka workplace health and safety

Resources

(page 8-10)

Developing a Lesson

I feel this is helpful because it gives step-by-step instruction. sometimes we look at a unit as a whole, but if we break it down it might be easier for us to understand.

Introduction-interesting question, The Aim- objective of the lesson, Questioning- to help better understand The Aim, A Medial Summary- a review in the middle of the lesson, additional Questions-to help better understand The Aim, A Final Summary- final look at everything and if you have done a good job students will continue there learning outside of class discussion. 

(page 17)

Testing!

Don't just put questions down. Actually think and design questions in the way you have taught your students. 

-determine what kind of questions you want to be on a test

-what do you want to test?

-essay questions are good for being able to show organization. This may be more time consuming and difficult to mark because answers are subjective

-always include “easier” answers because the weaker students need to be able to see progress too

-have difficult questions to distinguish students who know their stuff and students who really know their stuff

-did lots of students get a question wrong? Maybe you need to revisit that topic or maybe it was a poor question

-think of yourself, make it easy to grade

(page 57)

Dealing With Fights

This may suer relevant, but I thought there were some interesting points to take from this. Whether it is physically or not there should be punishment and a resolution to all fights. 

-pull apart students who are fighting, they cannot hurt each other if they are not together

-ask for a written statement from both parties

-suspending students (dependent on school?)

-solve the problem and make sure it does not happen again

-take legal action if necessary

Critique

            This book was very organized and easy to read, but I did not feel it was very helpful in learning new information. This text I felt was also more suited toward senior years teachers because of some of the topics that were presented such as, drugs and fights. I guess these things can occur anywhere, but in an early years class may not be so probable.

            Another thing that that made the book irrelevant was the author being from the United States, because of this it made sections of the book irrelevant for Canadian teachers. An example of this is The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which is an USA federal act that basically gives parents access to their child’s education records, have them amended and also have the say what items can be disclosed and what can not. The law is a lot more complicated then this, but once again it is pretty irrelevant to a Canadian teacher.

            In the class reading “Five Reasons to Stop to Saying ‘Good Job’” by Alfie Kohn he said not to praise children by saying good job. He said that students lose motivation if praise is given all the time. I do agree that there is a time and place for praise, but definitely not as much as Singers book suggests. He says,  “the second secret of working with a difficult class is to give the students many, many opportunities to be successful, and to praise them whenever they are successful. Make them feel good about themselves and their progress, and they will not only work hard, they will love you.” (page 14) They will love you? This only makes me laugh because I believe that students know the difference between genuine and fake praise. Just because a student does something that is expected of them does not mean they deserve praise.

            Lastly I thought I would discuss the topic of phoning parents. From personal experience I feel that phoning home is not necessary unless something bad has happened. My reasoning for this is because when my younger sisters teacher started phoning home to tell my mom about tests and updates about how she was doing my mom was more annoyed then anything. If she saw a missed call from the school she was worried that something was wrong. My mom said that it was a waste of the teacher’s time because my moms mantra is no news is good news. Also, in my practicum this year my CT phoned home to several students who needed their parents to come in to sign IEP’s and talk about behaviour; and on several occasions my CT was yelled at on the phone. I do think keeping connected with parents is a good idea, but maybe by email or a letter being sent home.  The example below is an example phone conversation to have with a parent:

I do think this is rather silly and sounds like a fake phone conversation that would never happen in real life, but once again I think there are different ways about going about this.

             One thing that the book did talk about was about having students explore outside the classroom. If you have taught them well they will be motivated to play, explore and learn on their own. In the article “Five-not-so-Obvious Propositions about Play by Deborah Meier Wryly that we read during class talks about changing the word “play” and calling it, “self-initiated cognitive activity.” I think this connects to the book because “play” is more important then people think and it is actually of time for learning and growth. 

            Overall I did not feel this book covered many of the topics or big ideas that we discussed in class. I would not recommended this book to anyone in Canada, mainly because there are probably better books that would be more relevant. I do think there are some good ideas in this book, but they are very basic and to me they seem like common sense. I really do wish I chose a different book to do this on, but I guess I can read everyone’s book critics to see what would best suit an early years teacher in Canada best!

All the best in your practicums this term fellow mates!