Teaching Realities
What are some "realities" of teaching that you wish your advisors, professors, trainers had taught you so you didn't have to learn them in the teaching trenches?
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I’ve been a teacher trainer, an educator of teachers for a long time. Several decades. Much of that time, I’ve been educating pre-service teachers. Trying as I may to advise student teachers about the reality of teaching that they’ll face, I always miss things.
It’s just hard in a classroom, to really relay the reality of what teaching is like.
However, a little prior warning for beginning teachers would be handy. Even if only for helping teachers get through the bumpy parts of the first year.
What are some things you wish you’d of been told, prior to entering the classroom? You know, the real brutally honest facts that new teachers will have to face.
Read below for some we think are important. But please add your own! Here’s our video version - please subscribe and see our whole “Being A Teacher” playlist.
Here is our list of the top things teachers wish they had been told during their teacher preparation program.
Let us know in the comments, what you'd add to the list!
1. You won’t be happy every day. In fact, most days, you’ll just be getting by.
2. You won’t be having much fun on the weekends. You’ll be so bloody tired, you’ll just vegetate watching full Netflix series.
3. You’ll find and take shortcuts. Sometimes not for the better. You will give students undeserved grades just to get them off your back.
4. Teaching isn’t anything like in the movies! You’ll give up your idealism pretty quickly.
5. You’ll have evil thoughts that you thought you’d never have been capable of ….
6. Sometimes you have to tell students they’re wrong. Despite all the psycho-babble you learned about positive psychology and motivation.
7. You got to act the part. And you’ll do loads of “uneducational” stuff just to get through the day.
8. You’ll attend professional development presentations not because you are excited to learn something new but just to get a break from your classroom.
9. Stress. It will be a toss up between handouts and pills.
10. Your principal knows less than you do and isn’t any help.
12. You’ll need a good sedative. Your best friend will be one of two. Alcohol or pills.
13. Not all students will love you! It's a fact, Jack.
If you haven’t ever heard it, you may also like this classic rant about teaching, What Do Teachers Make? A must for any teacher. I’ll also toot my own horn, in the same vein is my poem - So, You Want To Be A Teacher, Eh?