1. What to Really expect your first year.
Dr. Evelyn J. Gordon

2. Introduction Discuss the following:
What areas have your college courses and student teaching prepared you for as far your first year of teaching?
If there is an experienced teacher in your group, please tell a story about your first year of teaching.

3. Expect to be tired! 53-63.3 Hours per week.
Teachers are at school an additional 90 minutes beyond the school day for meetings, tutorials, and lesson.
Teachers spend another 95 minutes at home grading, preparing classroom activities, and doing other job-related tasks.
For extracurricular activities expect 11 hours and 20 minutes days, on average.
BBC, April 2014
Washington Post ,March 2012

4. Story
“Our work is never done. We take grading home, stay late, answer phone calls constantly, and lay awake thinking about how to change things to meet student needs.”
Washington Post, 2012

5. Expect to be overwhelmed
Novice teachers feel overwhelmed which can be linked to the environment of the school, which includes poor support from administration and parents, difficult teaching assignments, classroom management, and lesson planning.
Banville & Rikard (2009)
Gordon, 2015

6. Study conducted by Melnick & Meister (2008)
Teachers stated that “time constraints in terms of the amount of time required to plan and implement a lesson, as well as deal with all the paper work” (p. 44) was overwhelming.
Due to the constraints, new teachers felt they could not dedicate the time to quality lessons.
New teachers stated “they didn’t realize these complexities as pre-service teachers and were confronted with them as soon as they became in-service teachers” (p. 44).

7. Expect to be all things to all people
Role Model
Mentor
Parent
Counsellor
The role of the physical education teacher
Hendry, L. B.
Educational Research, 17, 2, , Feb 75
Leader/Motivator
Manager
Facilitator

8. Expect to be creative and flexible
Lack of equipment
Out dated equipment
No budget or very
little budget

9. Expect at times to feel alone and that no one truly understands
Physical education teachers often feel isolated from the rest of the school. (Templin 1988)
“Egg-Crate” isolation – being physically separated and having little contact with other teachers, far removed geographically. (Gaikwad & Brantley, 1992)

10. Story
“I felt alone. It was my challenge, my work. There was no one else to help me meet a whole array of new challenges. I had to meet them by myself.”
Catherine, from What to Expect Your First Year of Teaching

11. Expect to experience many emotions
Mad
Sad
Happy
Hopeful

12. Know that college does not prepare you for everything
Some novice teachers reported not being sufficiently taught in content areas that they were teaching (Chesley & Jordan, 2012).
Some areas new teachers want more training:
Technology
Social problems affecting young people today
More real classroom interaction
Amount of planning and preparation
Inclusiveness and Mainstreaming

13. What should you do? Get a mentor!
Teachers that have been mentored highly value the emotional support they received above resources, discipline, parental, management, and other systems (Odell & Ferraro, 1992).
Don’t be afraid to:
Ask questions
Admit you don’t know
Attend professional workshops

14. References
(2014, April 19). What hours do teachers really work? BBC News. Retrieved from
DePaul, A. (1998). What to expect your first year of teaching. U.S. Department of Education.
Melnick, S. A., & Meister, D. G. (2008). A Comparison of Beginning and Experienced Teachers' Concerns. Educational Research Quarterly, 31(3),
Strauss, V. (2012, March 16). Survey: Teachers work 53 hours per week on average. The Washington Post. Retrieved from