Orientation for First Year Teachers

A Taste of Teaching…

The past week I was attending training, new teacher orientation, and professional development for my new job. Before hand, I had so many questions, including, “What grade will I be teaching?” “What content will I be teaching?” “How will I be teaching online?” I was trying not to panic, and due to my previous experience with student teaching a long-term substitute teacher position, I was managing that task quite well. When I arrived to the first day of training, I was surprised at how many non-new teachers there were. In fact, I would say there were more experienced teachers there, than first year teachers.

What this Means for Me

Admittedly, I had a fairly low opinion of my employability after having around 10 interviews and only one job offer. While I realized that many people often don’t get interviews, I was beginning to think that I either bombed the interviews, which would have been pretty clear I think, or they didn’t want to hire first year teachers. So therefore, in my head, which is fairly judgmental I know, this place must have been pretty desperate for teachers in order to hire me. However, there was only one other first year teacher in the group of around 30 new hires! What did that mean? Instead of me being fairly incompetent, I was actually pretty impressive for having secured any first year teaching job!

Other First Year Teachers

To people more experienced in the profession that should be fairly obvious. Most first year teachers have to go to high poverty, high turnover, and low academic districts in order to land their first teaching jobs. Why? Generally districts with high poverty don’t pay as well, which means that experienced teachers aren’t going to want to take jobs there. Plus more affluent districts like to advertise how many average years of experience their teachers have. So affluent districts actively seek out more experienced teachers in order to impress parents and government officials, and as a result, they pay experienced teachers more. Clearly experience should affect pay, but this often results in the kids who need the most help receiving those teachers that have the least amount of know-how. Then the moment most teachers have know-how they flee to better paying districts. Who can blame them? I don’t want to turn this post into the ills of school funding in the United States. So I’ll stop there, but let me know if you would like to hear my thoughts on the subject.  

Orientation

Though, as I mentioned earlier, there were more experienced teachers there than new teachers, all of the newly hired teachers had to go through an orientation program due to the differences in format. Whereas traditional schools have physical classrooms, the school I work at is online. All first year teachers, regardless of school format, must complete an education induction plan (at least in the state I teach at), which includes having a mentor teacher, who helps you become acclimated to the school and to have someone you can go to ask questions.

Professional Development

What else happened at orientation? A lot of lectures happened. Some were long. Some were short. Some were helpful. Some were obvious. Some were required. Some were choice. There was diversity and inclusion training. Then we had an overview of some of the technologies we would be using and received our curriculum and other supplies. Then all of the teachers got together whether new or returning and we got to know who else taught English and who else taught whatever*.  We were welcomed by the administration and I got to meet my mentor, but the really interesting part** was the last day.

The Last Day

Where we could pick what we wanted to learn about. I learned that there were resources for ELLs but that I couldn’t access them. I learned that I was technically not assigned to be a teacher yet with the system. I learned that I was an intermediate level nearpod user and not a beginner. However, in the intermediate level nearpod class I learned that I would have been an expert had I read what the buttons said and realized that creating a nearpod probably works the best in nearpod. However, in all seriousness, the best was getting to know the other teachers and realizing how everyone genuinely wants to help me.

What About You?

What was your orientation like? What did you think it would be like? If you’ve been to one and you were also a mentor for one or have had friends who took part in an orientation how were they different? How were they the same? Let me know in the comments?

Notes:

*I teach English get it? Because I’m supposed to prioritize my subject above all the others like their not important right?

**That came out very weird. My mentor is great.

Sources:

Image credit: "08 Orientation 069" by Shimer College