School district: Chisholm Trail Middle School
City/State: Olathe, KS
Class/content area taught: 6th grade ELA and Disciplinary Literacy
What you are most excited about with your new career: It’s been such a joy. I am so lucky to have such amazing co-workers who make the transition so much less intimidating.
Someone from KSU who was especially helpful preparing you for your new career: I definitely have to say Vicki Sherbert! If I could give her a portion of my salary, I would! She deserves all the praise in the world.
Her advice for new teachers:
- Bring snacks to school. It’s hard to get into a routine of bringing your lunch.
- Similar to that, keep cash on you. You never know when it’ll come in handy!
- Look over your class rosters as early as you can; it’ll make the name learning process much easier.
- Don’t be afraid to ask the veteran teachers for their materials/lesson plans, no one expects you to make up everything from scratch.
- Make things work for you! Don’t assume that just because you have less experience that everything that was done a certain way in the past must be the same forever, you’re a pair of fresh eyes.
- Never forget to use the advantage you have in terms of your age. You’re most likely the closest in age to the students than anyone in the building. This gives you a sense of empathy and makes you an awesome mentor to students.
- Go to bed early. Even on Thursdays. 🙂
- Pick out what you’re going to wear the night before.
- Coaching/Sponsoring is an awesome opportunity to both meet new kids and make a little bit of extra money!
- People WANT you to succeed. Your friends, co-workers, past teachers, administrators are all there to make your journey as pleasant as possible!