Being prepared changes everything for teachers in a classroom
I clearly remember feeling nervous and excited when I started my first day as a student teacher. It was the end of my teacher prep program and I knew that I had just this one semester to figure out how to do the job of teaching. I didn’t know if I was prepared enough to be the teacher.
Eight years later, I know that I have really spent the past eight years preparing. Each year, I learn more to become better the next year. I know now that I was not truly prepared for the classroom at the end of my preparation program, and I know I’m not alone in that feeling.
My first year, similar to that of the many other teachers I know, was a sink-or-swim experience. I am a special education teacher and I realized quickly that the extra time I spent learning about different disabilities in my program didn’t even touch on what I would face in the classroom. It didn’t prepare me to work with my nonverbal student who had autism, or to manage the more severe behavioral problems, such as when my students would kick and punch. I’m lucky that I had an excellent mentor who taught me to manage students in a variety of different ways, and had support from a very good director and seasoned teachers. Other new teachers might not be so lucky.
If we want our students to continue to grow and make progress every year academically, socially and emotionally, we need teachers who are ready for the challenge. We lose many teachers before they even get the opportunity to feel comfortable in the classroom because they feel unprepared. This is a national problem: 40 percent to 50 percent of teachers leave the profession within the first five years, including 9.5 percent who leave before their first year is over. It took me until my sixth year to feel truly ready, but almost half of new teachers don’t wait that long.
I believe there are a number of things we can do to prepare new teachers to be ready on Day One. One priority is to update the teacher training programs with expanded classroom time. Programs must provide new teachers with hands-on experience to best meet the needs of today’s students. Such hands-on experience could include expanded student teaching time, more guided time with classroom management in a real classroom, and supervised lesson planning and delivery early in the program.
Soon, New Mexico will release the new Educator Preparation Program report cards for universities in our state to maintain and monitor standards for our universities. This report card will give New Mexico’s teacher preparation programs the opportunity to grow and improve in order to best meet the needs of their upand-coming teachers and therefore better meet the needs of the students in our classrooms.
Our universities, local school districts and state education department should continue to partner to best prepare our new teachers. Universities and local school districts should create model learning schools or classrooms together, with the support of great teachers, and the state education department should partner with the universities to create learning experiences for professors and college students that are relevant to today’s student needs.
I hope to see more excited student teachers who are ready to make a difference in our classrooms. Our New Mexican students deserve it.