S2-Ep4 - Navigating Education As A New Teacher

Angela:

Hello. Welcome back to I've Tried Everything, a podcast focusing on behavior supports in schools. I'm your host, Angela Eisenberg, project coordinator at Region 13. Every week I talk with educators just like you. We cover some tough topics, share stories and explore what works and what doesn't. Let's go.

I'm with Brittney. She works with high school students in Taylor ISD. So Brittney, tell me a little bit about the start of your school year. If you had to pick a song that sums up your first launch into education, what would that song be?

Brittney:

Oh, very good question. I think that the best song that would kind of summarize my very first month of teaching would be Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce for a couple reasons. First off, it's super fast paced and I feel like I have been running at that fast pace nonstop since day one. So it's also pretty intricate and there is a lot of detailing in it.

Again, as you're going into your first year, there has to be a lot of details in your day-to-day activities and your day-to-day scheduling and your plans. It's also super long. So I feel like this first six weeks has been about a year. Then lastly, of course through the fire and the flames we carry on and so that is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Angela:

So what hats do you wear at Taylor High School? What are the different things that you're involved in right now?

Brittney:

I am one of the biology teachers. There is two of us at Taylor High School. It's a pretty small school. We're only 4A. I also coach, so I am an assistant volleyball coach and an assistant softball coach. So I am pretty involved in all kind of aspects of the school.

Angela:

So let's put on our volleyball coach hat for just a second. So tell me about the relationships that you have built with your volleyball girls at this point in time.

Brittney:

Oh, it is just fantastic. I honestly look at them almost as my own kiddos. They are so much fun. They definitely all are very different. They're all very unique and I've had the privilege of getting to work with them for even longer than just the school year because we actually started volleyball about a month before school started. So it was nice because I was able to kind of build that relationship with them specifically earlier. A lot of those girls, I actually coached the freshman team to the JVB team, which most of them are freshmen and biology is a freshman course.

So a lot of those girls are actually in my classes as well, which makes it even better because I can kind of count on them and look to them as the leaders in the class.

Angela:

That's great.

Brittney:

So it has really, really helped and they can kind of help spread my expectations from the court to the classroom and keep everybody else on track. It's been wonderful. Yeah, I'm obsessed with my girls.

Angela:

So thinking about your class, let's put on your biology teacher hat. What is something that you've done in the classroom at this point to build relationships or build a class community?

Brittney:

For me especially, I think that it has been really helpful being really relatable. I am quite a bit older than most of my students, but at the same time I try to in a way be the cool teacher, I guess. So for example, we just actually had homecoming week last week and I made an effort to dress up every single day for homecoming. I took a lot of time out of class to go around, compliment everybody on their outfits, on their clothes and their mums that they had. Just kind of be a little bit more relatable to them in that way. Something that they could look to and feel like they're kind of a part of. Like we are one and the same.

Angela:

That's awesome.

Brittney:

That equality aspect. So I do that quite a lot. Then I just try really hard to do a lot of check-ins with all of my students and get to know a little bit about them on a personal level. I always start with the student survey at the beginning of the year. At least I did this year and that really worked out and I took quite a lot of time out of that first week to read them, and dissect them and kind of get a better understanding of some of the interests that my students have so that I can utilize that throughout the year in my class.

Angela:

Oh, I love that. So you're a part of our education certification program here at Region 13. Talk to me about the program. Has it been beneficial for you to be in Pam's group and Pamela Pate is one of our specialists that is in charge of helping interns. How has that program helped you?

Brittney:

Oh, Pam is just an absolute godsend honestly. She is incredible. She is so supportive. She is full of knowledge and one of my favorite things about being in this program specifically is that a lot of what we do is in person versus being virtual. Which I understand that that can be kind of difficult to manage when you have a full class day as well at your school. But having the ability and the chance to actually be one on one connected with other teachers that are in the exact same shoes as you, going through the exact same issues and not being forced to talk to them through a screen or over phone, but actually being in a room physically present with them kind of takes that to a different level and a deeper understanding. You have a deeper connection with them.

Honestly you can kind of vent it out knowing that whoever you're talking to is going through the exact same thing and maybe they have some insights. So Region 13, for me, that has been probably my favorite part about it. Not only that, but just the in depth detail that this program goes into to really help us strategize and make sure that we have everything we need to be successful as our first year.

A lot of other programs don't go into the depth and detail that Region 13 does. I know for me especially having that extra little bit of support and that extra depth has really made a difference for me in my classroom.

Angela:

If you had to think of one strategy tip that maybe you took away from one of the classes that Pam has done in the ECP program or something that you learned in a professional development at Taylor ISD, what is one tip that you feel like has been hands down one of the most beneficial things to put in place in your classroom?

Brittney:

Going into this year I didn't realize the extent of policies and procedures and how important it is to have extremely structured policies and procedures in place in your class. Because again, going into your first year of teaching, you don't have any experience with any of this. You have no idea what's going on, it's just chaos. So it's just things that you don't think about that this program has touched on.

For me, that was the level of structure and the level of planning it takes not only for your curriculum but also on classroom management and the strategies and policies that you'll have in place every day that is going to cause your class to run smoothly.

Angela:

Setting that foundation around classroom with policies and procedures is huge because that gives you something to move from. So I love that that's been something that's been a big takeaway for you. I always think about that as setting the structure of success in your class because the other things that you build on top of it, you have to have that so kids know how to enter your room, how to exit, what the process is whenever they're doing certain activities and things in your classroom. So that's big.

If you had to think about something that you wish you would have known before you walked in the classroom, what is something that you wish you would have known before you started teaching?

Brittney:

The biggest thing that I can think of is I didn't realize I would have to teach such the basics of the basics. Such as like you just mentioned entering or exiting a room. You would never guess that a student would not understand how to properly walk into a room. I legitimately have had kids running into my room and knocking the desks over, sliding into the roo like they were sliding into a baseball base. I wish I would've known that the expectation was not only to teach these kids curriculum, but also to teach these kids just how to act.

As a biology teacher, I teach freshmen, so these kids are 13 or 14 years old and my goodness do they act it. I definitely had a much higher expectation for their general behavior as humans. Not aliens or something crazy like they act like they are. But that would've been a little bit more helpful to know going into it. But again, Region 13 did a great job of preparing us for that, so.

Angela:

That's awesome. So thinking about that behavior, what has been maybe the most challenging for you behavior wise in the class?

Brittney:

For me, my classes are all very different. For example, my first period I teach an eight period day. My last period is athletics, so it doesn't really count. But my very first period, that class is so dramatically different than my seventh period that I could not even sit here and compare the two almost.

Whereas my middle periods four through sixth are very, very well behaved where they're zoned in best during the day. So trying to be super flexible and change my teaching strategy as well as change my behavior practices and method of implementing those throughout the day based on what class period I'm in, is really, really difficult. Especially somebody like me who I tend to be very structured. I don't adjust well to change. It's difficult for me to be that flexible and try to find ways to make that work best.

Angela:

I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm thinking about a year that I taught that I had a really challenging class period that it stood out different than my other classes. I really ended up having to completely rethink not only behavior management in that class, but curriculum in that class because they weren't able to do some of the cooperative learning things that the other classes could do because they just didn't have the behavior piece in place. So I'm just thinking of something simple like that if my classes were arranged in groups, the class before them would have to put the desks in rows and the class after them would have to put it back into groups because they just couldn't start or end the class period in groups. It just didn't work well.

So I think you're right. It's being able to have that flexibility to say, man this class is different and I have to do something different with them. But then how do you do that and how do you make sure that that still flows with all the other things that you're expected to do makes it so very challenging.

Brittney:

Yeah, it's impossible honestly. Relating to you, I have the exact same situation. My seventh period class is... I call it my controlled chaos. I have gone through every single teacher type, I guess you could say. The strict teacher, the fun teacher, the mean teacher, the all of it and I have yet to find one that works.

Angela:

I would say hang in there. One of the things that I think we're so quick to think is that okay, if I just do this for a couple of days, it's going to make a huge difference. Behavior change, if you think about it, takes time and we don't have that time. In education, it's like how fast can you get things done? So I would say stick with something, give yourself a little bit more time to be able to see whether or not that's going to pay off. Whether it is an approach that you do or something specific that you put into place. Research says three weeks and I know you're thinking, oh my god, three weeks. How would I do that? That's the thing with behavior. Am I making progress? It's not about complete elimination behavior, but is it getting better and how would I judge whether or not it's getting better?

What would that look like? Would it look like output of student performance? Would it look like I got through all the content that day, or I got through most of the content where before I was only getting through the very beginning of what I was doing? Now I'm almost to the point where I'm getting through everything that the other classes are doing. So however you judge progress, kind of think about that and then look at that from a holistic way instead of that behavior's still happening. I'm super frustrated. It might still be happening, but is it getting a little bit better?

Brittney:

Like I said earlier, I went through all the teacher types and I have kind of found one that seems to be resonating a little bit better with that class. I'm kind of going into week two of that teacher style to see if it continues. We are, at least with that class in particular, it takes double the amount of time to get through anything.

As you mentioned earlier with being flexible, a lot of the privileges that other classes have, they simply don't get because they can't. I tell them, I said, "Y'all can't handle it. So if we can't handle it, then we can't do it." So that class has to be a lot more structured and right now it's coming down to letting them be a little bit rowdier and allowing that to happen as long as the rowdiness is staying on topic. That seems to be right now what is resonating best and at least keeping them engaged on discussions. So that's kind of what I'm sticking to. We'll see what week two holds.

Angela:

Awesome. Well Brittney, I really appreciate you being with me and I wish the best of luck for you throughout this first year of education and good luck to your girls in volleyball. Hopefully you'll have a great season. So thank you so much. I appreciate everybody tuning in for I've Tried Everything and we'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to I've Tried Everything. Join me next week as we continue on our journey for behavior supports in schools. Remember to subscribe and you can always find great resources at Region 13's website. Just search behavior. Talk to you next time.