Stop Judging Your Classroom Against Everyone Else's Classroom

Your classroom should be a place where students can learn, and you can teach.  That’s it.  End of sentence.

The Myth of the Perfect Classroom

When I was a beginning teacher, my impression was that the perfect classroom should include:

The quiet room.

The benevolent dictator. (me, of course)

The perfect decor.

The perfect students.

This was reinforced by what I learned in college, what I saw in the rooms where I was sent to observe, and in training videos I watched.

Why New Teachers Feel Like Failures

It's not your imagination. These are some of the worst parts of being new:

• Being judged

• Veteran teachers withholding support

• Getting the hardest classes

• Being compared to people with 10-20 years of experience

Unfortunately, my personality doesn’t really match this silent kingdom form of classroom.  I want kids to be excited and fully engaged.  I want to reward creativity, not just compliance.  I want kids to catch my love of learning like it’s a contagion.  I want kids to be happy and productive.

Veteran teachers often looked down on me and seemed to shake their heads if my room wasn’t silent.  I felt very judged and very inadequate.  This is the tragedy of beginning teachers.  Veteran teachers often feel that they should not issue support because “we all had to go through it.”  Being new to the profession shouldn’t read like a hazing ritual.  However, it is.  Long time teachers want the best classes and the best-behaved students.  New teachers get whatever is left over.

I’ll give you an example of my very first year of teaching.  I was hired to be a special education day class teacher.  I had no special education experience or training.  The class they were opening was new and a few weeks into the school year.  It was made because day classes (SDCs) throughout the district were over formula.  The way the district handled this was they asked each teacher to recommend a student to send to the newly forming class.  I had the students that every teacher in the district wanted to get rid of.  

I was unfamiliar with everything, and the school was a loft school, so you had three classrooms that could hear every word.  It was a nearly impossible year. 

I made a lot of mistakes that year:

When kids didn't behave, I took it personally

I was trying to teach day-to-day with no overall plan

I was intimidated by other teachers

I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what I was supposed to be doing

I learned (eventually):

1. Don’t feel judged even when they are judging you.   Some people get their esteem from feeling superior to others.  They look at you as a struggling first year teacher and give unhelpful advice or tell you that your kids are too ___________.  Even if your students are too loud, or they walk heavily in the second story classroom so the classroom underneath can hear them, you are still okay.  This person is expecting you to have the same skills they have at 10 years in, but right now.

2. A noisy classroom is not the same as an out-of-control classroom.  Students need to be able to speak to learn.  Many teachers are so upset by the idea of losing control of their classroom, that they demand silence and no movement.  If they achieve this, students who arrive in a class the next year often report that they behaved because of fear and they don’t remember much because they were so scared of breaking a rule, it was all they could think of.   Talking to your elbow partner is normal.  Many students need to verbalize what they are thinking before they can write it down.  In my class, we do drama and debate, these require talking, often loudly.  Just because someone else wants a silent environment at all times, does not mean that by having a classroom where students talk is a sign that you are a bad teacher with no classroom control 

   1. Example: I ended up in another loft situation later in my career.  The teacher next door wanted absolute silence not only in her classroom, but in mine as well.  I tried explaining that silence isn’t everything, but she couldn’t understand my point of view.  I was allowed to move back to a single bungalow after that, but her dislike of my teaching style did not make me a bad teacher.  

3. A single bad day, or even a bad week does not make you a bad teacher.  How would you feel if a student gave up and refused to try simply because they were still learning the structures of how to work in a classroom setting?  I recently had a student who had not been in school since before the pandemic and therefore had missed all education from approximately 1st grade until he was enrolled at a different school at the end of 6th grade.  You are that kid.  You are walking into a situation where all these other teachers have had years to perfect their technique and know what to do in a variety of situations.  The teachers expect you to not make mistakes and not require help.  Those people are a*******.  If there isn’t anyone on campus to help you, come here to this website.  Paula (when she’s not running a trip full of 8th graders to the East Coast) and I will offer the support you need until you can be that support system on campus for new arrivals.