A Little Help from your Friends

A friend of mine went to South Carolina to teach, and she is not having a fantastic time. She asked for advice from other teachers.

Anyone whom I have spoken with about my experiences this year knows that it has been a little rough. ....

I have spent the last week taking a class ... called "Teaching Children of Poverty." I figured I was faced with 4 options:

1. run crying back home
2. look for a different job in S.C. ...
3. go back to where I was this year and try again. ...
4. search out some kind of information and develop some kind of plan so that next year I will not be in such excruciating mental pain. ...

I have done a lot of thinking this year about why this experience was so hard...

So here are my questions, and maybe some of you can help.

What does a new teacher need to be successful?
What should she do when she doesn't get it?
What challenges have you overcome and how?

It is so sad that teachers and students have to live like this.  While I am only another new teacher stumbling through the experience, here were my thoughts on the first question.

Ug... I really wish I knew what to tell you. Some things off the top of my head are


1. Flexibility: DON'T try to win every battle. Pick the battles that are necessary for your students to feel safe and to learn. You may not accomplish everything you plan, and that is ok. I have many children of poverty who act out because they really do need a lot of time to think about it. I have some students I will wait 30 seconds for, but that is what they need to feel (and be) successful.


If it takes two days to get through a worksheet, fine, but that is one worksheet they can feel proud of instead of two half-done worksheets that leave them feeling insecure and lost.


If you have students who lash out every time you make them read, maybe they can't read... and maybe they are very embarrassed by it. Find another way.


Make sure you are appealing to various intelligences, keep them drawing, acting, moving around, etc.


2. Compassion: find what is likable about the individual students. Remember, someone, somewhere loves that child, and if that is not the case, those kids need you even more. These kids might be coming home to empty houses, no electricity on occasion, neglect, or even abuse.


3. A little pocket money: Set up a behavior/reward system, and scour the dollar stores for fantastic deals. Something as small as a juicy or a mechanical pencil can be a very big deal to students who live in poverty. And it helps them see that you care about them and you want to reward them.


4.  Find at least one teacher or administrator who shares the same pedagogical values as you and who values you as an educator. Sometimes you just need that one person on the outside who can tell you that you ARE doing a good job.


Anyway, I am nowhere NEAR perfect, and I have had a lot to overcome as well. These are just some of the tactics that helped me through on my darkest of days.
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