The First Month of School
Wow! You've Made it!

The first month of school will be the most exciting and most stressful time in your teaching career. You will have to get the room rolling, start filling out paperwork, start thinking about report cards, have parent conferences, Open House, and you will have to try to do it all professionally and quickly.

Once the realization that you can’t do everything perfectly hits, take the time to make a list of the things that need to be completed in the first month of school and prioritize them.

Making a labor-intensive art project with your class would be fun, but having an accurate feel for the children’s abilities at academics is more important.

Cooking with your class would be exciting, but making sure where they are in reading is more important. Once you get the feel for where your kids are you will be able to guide your instruction with more accuracy and confidence.

This is also the time where you begin to get very tired. It is because you have spent from 6:30am – 8:00pm every day working on school “stuff”.

Take a break.

Leave your desk messy. Don’t grade the last few papers. Stop going on the Internet and searching for lessons until all hours.

All of that can wait a little while. In your calendar write down times for YOU, plan them in. If you don’t you will be burnt out by Thanksgiving and hate your job. Remember to have fun. That's why you went into teaching, it's fun!

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Still have questions? Contact me about the first month of school in your classroom.