Mistake #1: Forming Unrealistic Routines/Expectations

The overarching mistake that I made as a first year teacher was setting high expectations for myself and my teaching. I wanted to be the best teacher ever, immediately. I wanted to use every tip I heard from college courses, social media, and other teachers. While it is great to set goals for yourself, it is essential that these goals are attainable. Mine…were not.

Here are some of the unrealistic expectations I had for myself:

• Reaching out to all families within the first week of school: This is a tip I saw all over social media and I was determined to do it. The goal was to contact every family with a positive message about their student during that first week of school to start off on the right foot. While I think this is a great idea, it was not realistic for me as a first year teacher. I was already juggling back to school events, icebreakers, setting routines, and lesson planning, so reaching out to 75 families was not a realistic expectation for me! I reached out to less than 10 families and felt so disappointed.

• Sending out weekly newsletters: My school uses Class Dojo to contact families. ClassDojo has a “story” feature, which many of my colleagues used to send out pictures and updates on a weekly basis. I decided to create my own newsletter template on Canva and start writing weekly newsletters with our agendas, due dates, and pictures. While these newsletters were informative and cute, they were very challenging to maintain. I often found myself writing newsletters on my couch on Friday evenings, just doing “one last thing” before I went to sleep. I love the newsletter idea, but it wasn’t sustainable for me!

Mistake #2: Not Creating a Specific Classroom Management Plan

When I walked into my first classroom, I knew that I would need strong classroom management. I watched dozens of classroom management videos to prepare, but two weeks in, I was struggling.

So many classroom management tips simplify their advice into two things: structure and routines. While structure and routines are essential, they are not the only part of classroom management. I thought that if I created routines and taught them well, my students would follow them! It was nowhere near that simple.

That’s why halfway through the year, I found myself scrambling to create a classroom management system, which in my case was reward-based (I know, controversial take). The truth is, your first year teaching is very experimental. You probably haven’t found your teacher personality or discipline style. This can cause inconsistency and chaos. In my opinion, you just need to survive. If survival looks like Dojo points or ticket systems, that is completely valid! Either way, it is better to start with this specific plan in place before everything gets crazy! For my advice on classroom management, check out my articles: 6 Classroom Systems You NEED This Year and I Started Jobs in My Secondary Classroom

Mistake #3: Planning Ahead

Before you call me crazy - hear me out. Planning ahead is the ideal planning style. How great would it be to know exactly what you’re doing for the next week, weeks, or even month? I thought the same thing, so I decided to plan ahead as much as possible.

This worked great at the beginning of the year! I spent my summer planning out my first unit, so I was set for a couple of weeks. I figured I could spend my plan times continuing to plan ahead.

What I didn’t realize - there is so much more happening in planning periods than just planning! Discipline issues, parent meetings, printing, cutting, grading, and more! I quickly fell behind on planning and found myself stressing out! I felt like an awful teacher for being so “behind,” so I started spending hours after school trying to catch up. I was burning out FAST until my colleague asked me one question:

“Are you planned for the next hour? Then you’re good!”

This completely shifted my mindset. She reminded me that as long as my students are learning everyday, they’re not going to notice whether the lesson was planned last month or last hour! I had to lower my expectations. Planning one day in advance is still planning! It is not worth your sanity to spend hours at home on a lesson plan for next week, especially since you’re probably going to fall behind again (sorry not sorry)! Focus on tomorrow and then cut yourself some slack!

Mistake #4: Lesson Planning from Scratch

I should call Mistakes 3-5 “Lesson Planning Failures.” Lesson planning is one of the most time-consuming parts of teaching, so of course many of my mistakes are related to it! This one: My goal was to plan all my lessons from scratch.

I know, it sounds crazy as I’m typing it. Who in their right mind would want to reinvent the wheel daily? Me.

During my student teaching, I had all the resources at my fingertips. My colleagues provided lessons, activities, and notes. All I had to do was teach. In this case, I found creating my own lessons to be fun and rewarding! I made creative simulations and stations that engaged students and promoted knowledge retention. I felt so confident in my lesson planning ability that I wanted to keep it up in my own classroom!

What I didn’t realize, however, is that lesson planning from scratch is not as fun when you’re doing it every day. The reality is, you might not be able to come up with a unique, fun activity for every lesson. AND if you try to, you’re going to spend hours on it, only for the lesson to end and planning starts all over again!

I found myself spending hours on a single lesson, and finally had to give myself a serious reality check. I started using my resources and supplementing original lessons when I could, which was much more sustainable for me!

Mistake #5: Focusing on Aesthetics

Teacher TikTok should come with a warning: MAY DRAIN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT AND YOUR SANITY.

Just kidding! But seriously, I was completely fooled into believing that my classroom decor and resources were going to be just as aesthetically pleasing as my favorite teacher influencers. I spent my summer on Canva designing cute decor and “meet the teacher” handouts, feeling certain that all of my classroom would coordinate. Until I got in the classroom. Then, all the questions started coming:

How do none of the teachers online have ugly checkered tiles or old-school desks? How did they afford the aesthetically pleasing decor? Where did they find the time for creating ANY worksheets, much less cute ones?

I felt incredibly insecure about my mismatched classroom, plain worksheets, and empty walls. I worried that my lack of cohesion and aesthetics would make my class boring.

However, I realized throughout the year that while decor and designs are the first thing people see, it is not what they focus on. My positive student feedback focused on my teaching style, the content we learned, and the activities we did, not on the aesthetics of my room or my worksheets!

Keep in mind that many of the beautiful classrooms and resources we see online have been crafted through years of work and are not realistic for most teachers, especially those in their first year! Quality is so much more important than appearance! If you want a guide to the basics of classroom preparation, check out my article First Year Classroom Must Haves

Mistake #6: Bringing Work Home

I already mentioned this a bit, but it deserves its own section: working at home too much will ruin your passion for teaching.

I love teaching. I love building relationships with students and teaching fun lessons. But once working after hours became a regular part of my life, I started to fall out of love with it!

To keep up with all of my unrealistic expectations, I had to spend many hours outside of school working. My evenings looked like this: eat, plan, sleep. My weekends were the same. I barely had time to take care of myself, much less my home, family, or friends. My life was consumed by the thing I loved, teaching, which made me resent it!

While it is nearly impossible to bring zero work home your first year, I highly recommend setting limits to the work you do outside of contract hours. This may come with some sacrifices, like using pre-made resources, foregoing aesthetics, and only planning for the next day, but I promise you, it is worth your sanity.

Mistake #7: Only Sharing Struggles

I might be guilty of continuing this mistake with this article, but one of the biggest mistakes I made in my first year teaching was my attitude. I found myself focusing solely on my struggles and frustrations, but forgetting my successes.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you and say that there are always more positives than negatives. But when I look back at my first year teaching, I remember so many moments of joy, pride, and gratitude. The same students who necessitated a classroom management system were also the students that expressed their love for my class. Those lessons that took me hours were the highlights of some of my students' school years. That “dead time” I didn’t plan for at the end of class led to moments of laughter and bonding with my students. Those breakdowns in the teachers' lounge led to strong relationships with my coworkers. At the end of the year, I had so much to feel happy about.

With that being said, I wish I would have not only focused on these things mentally, I wish I also would have shared these positives with others. I often came home and vented to my husband (shout out to him for listening to my rants). This was needed sometimes, but it also gave him the impression that teaching was all-around awful. At the end of the year, he could not fathom why I would ever want to return!

You deserve a space to release your frustrations towards your job, just like everyone else! My only recommendation is when doing so, to try and think of any bright moments that keep you going and share them. If there are no bright moments AT ALL, it might be time to move schools, grade levels, or subjects!

Those are the 7 mistakes I made as a first-year teacher. I hope you learned some valuable lessons and can avoid making the same mistakes I did! To read my advice for first year teachers, check out my article 5 Things I Wish I Would Have Known as a First Year Teacher