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TEACHING:
THE FIRST YEAR
Introduction...
TO BEGINNING
TEACHERS...
The first year of teaching is very much like falling in love for
the first time: intense, absorbing, exhilarating, painful and joyous,
in ways that will stay with you for the rest of your days. With
time comes experience and wisdom.
With time, I learned how to be a better teacher, but I never again
embraced my classes, my kids, my teaching so completely and so passionately
as I had during that first year. As I say, it's like first love.
Of course, we love again, in fact more deeply and more maturely,
but who ever forgets? |
When Wordsworth wrote, "Though nothing can bring back the hour/Of
splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower," he meant that we cannot
go back to our youth. In fact, making this documentary transported
me back to my first classroom, 30 years ago, and released a flood
of (mostly wonderful) memories. |
 Chris,
Paul and Leo kept journals during their first year, and perhaps many
of you will do the same. My wish for you is that their stories will
help make your own, yet to be written, richer and more satisfying.
It gives me immense pleasure to think of you "living through" the
first-year experiences of Leo, Chris and Paul, and I am grateful to
Toyota Motor Sales USA for making this possible. Congratulations on
choosing teaching and good luck. |
|
 As
reporter John Pleuka writes, "Each year, thousands of young persons
flood out of the nation's colleges and universities with teaching
degrees in hand. Hungry to hit the romantic trail of educating the
country's young people, the fresh grads descend upon public and parochial
schools with electric enthusiasm . . . or, hit the ground running,
to quote a contemporary cliche. |
"In
many cases, however, the vision of the romantic trail soon spins out
of control into a dizzying nightmare. Doubts set in. A feeling of
running up the down staircase looms."
"Often there is no one for the green teacher to turn to and that's
when the anxiety really builds."
The above can and often does happen. The gap that exists between the
vision of a bright-eyed graduate of a school of education and the
reality of a first year teacher with his or her own classes is one
that must be faced and crossed by all beginning teachers.
This program is designed to help future teachers discover the gap,
discuss the gap, and develop tools to help cross the gap when it becomes
their time to make that adventure. |
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