TheTeacherGuy.com

Let me start this by saying that this is my story and I believe that everyone’s first year of teaching comes with their own frustrations. There is of course some overlap, but I don’t want anyone to think that my experience is ubiquitous. I have only been a teacher for about four months as of writing this but there are definitely headaches that come with this job just like any other. With all of that out of the way let’s begin the list with our first frustration of being a teacher.

No one warns you or really teaches you about lesson plans

Hopefully I am alone on this and in other certification or master programs there are actual courses, lectures, whatever on how to lesson plan. I am going to be completely transparent here, when I first got into teaching I originally thought that there was some kind of playbook, or binder that gets handed to you for you to teach out of for the year. I guess in a way seasoned teachers have this for themselves, but I seriously thought that as soon as you became a teacher that this was handed to you on your first day. In a way there kind of is a playbook to go off of if you are talking about state standards, but beyond bullet points of what the state wants you to cover, there isn’t much there. There definitely aren’t links provided or tests already written.

The textbooks aren’t all that great

If you read my last frustration and thought to yourself, “but my teacher just taught out of the textbook, chapter by chapter.” I guess that is one approach you can take, but I am honestly not impressed by the textbooks out there. I teach middle school history, and all of the textbooks that I have seen so far only scrape the very surface of what history is supposed to be about and then fills in random spots within the chapter by trying to shoehorn in vocabulary words that don’t really make sense in the greater context of the chapter. Instead, it seemed like the editor gave the writer a list of words that had to be covered in the textbook arbitrarily, and then the writer lazily put it into whatever chapter seemed right.

No one prepares you for the feral

I am not trying to parent-shame here as a lot of my kids have wonderful parents that really do want what is best for them, but some of these kids seem to not know the meaning of boundaries or what is appropriate in polite society. I can’t blame the kids, as they don’t know what they don’t know. And most of the kids that do have problems controlling themselves in class, have backgrounds where parents are working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. It’s a tough world out there and I am not discounting anyone’s experience, but it seems as though some of these kids have never been told that standing within one foot of another person is inappropriate, or at least not polite.

The realization that the lockdowns left these kids behind

I know that we have left the No Child Left Behind policy back in 2015, but that doesn’t mean children were in fact done being left behind. When I first started this year I of course got on teacher TikTok and watched the videos about all of these kiddos who were reading 3-5 grade levels below where they should be. But, as I soon found out not only was this not an over exaggeration but it also left out the fact that a lot of these kiddos were also 2-4 grade levels behind in math. I am mainly a history teacher, but I also teach some technology classes and in those tech classes I feel like I am having to battle with the fact that some of my 7th and 8th graders can’t convert fractions to decimals or basic pre-algebra.

Pre-teens ask really awkward questions

I love my job and my kids are some of the best kids in this world. But that does not mean that they don’t put me on the spot and make me cringe every once in a while. I think the most common one for me may not be so common for everyone else out there, but my kids love talking about religion. There is nothing wrong with that except for the fact that once they learned that our religions don’t match up ( I work in a small rural school that is 99% white christians and I am Jewish ). They ask me questions that I am not always comfortable with, as I know that as I parent I would be very confused if my child came home telling me about how their teacher was talking openly about religion in the classroom.

Parents who don’t show up for their kids

I have kids that are excellent at whatever their “thing” is, whether it be sports, music, theater or just being really smart. But when I show up to support the kids in my class at whatever their thing is, their parents are nowhere to be seen. Don’t get me wrong, I am super impressed how the community shows up for these kids in droves, but when I have some of my students asking me to show up because they know their parents aren’t going to be able to make it and they really want someone to show up for them, it really frustrates me.

I know that it seems as though these frustrations make me out to look like I hate my job, but that can’t be farther from the truth. With every frustration I have listed here there are opportunities for improvement. Not to mention a million reasons as to why what I do is the greatest job in the world. So, to all of my new teachers out there that are facing their own struggles and frustrations just know that it does get better, and summer will be here eventually. As always if you have any questions comments or concerns please don’t hesitate to let me know.