A MOST HUMBLE REVIEW OF: What Every New Elementary Teacher REALLY
Needs to Know (But Didn’t Learn in College), by Otis Kriegel
I found this book while
skimming through educators’ tweets, and the title intrigued me. When I started my BEd program almost a year
ago, I was in the Intermediate/Senior stream and thought I would be teaching
secondary school. I was really excited
when I got the opportunity to be an Elementary Occasional Teacher, and I took
both the Primary and Junior ABQ courses to prepare for this next leg in my
journey, but the fact remains that all my practicum experiences were in
secondary schools.
Perhaps
it’s needless to say that I’m nervous, but I’m nervous. When I found What Every New Elementary Teacher REALLY Needs to Know (But Didn’t
Learn in College), I rejoiced that someone had bothered to write a book for
those of us just coming out of teacher’s college. As a career, teaching is complicated and
expansive. Excellent though the
instructors and programs are, it would be an impossible task for them to teach
you everything you really need to know and should be thinking of in one year
(even in two years, the task is still impossible).
Kriegel’s
book is a written and expanded upon version of the seminars that he gives for
teachers in Teacher Education programs and for new teachers in general. It leaves aside much of the fashionable
education theory that may very well rise and fall with the tides and instead
focuses on the practicalities and logistics of teaching in an elementary
school.
Below I’ve
picked out only a sampling of some of the tips, tricks, and pieces of advice in
Kriegel’s book that I found useful.
The Spare Clothes
Have a set of spare clothes ready and handy in case you
get covered in glitter, glue, glitter-glue, or bodily fluids. Nobody gave this advice to Kriegel in his
Teacher Education program, and nobody gave it to me. I’m grateful for this kind of advice because
while many ascribe to the philosophy that to learn something you must suffer, I
would prefer to be told what to do to avoid that suffering in the first
place. I could have been covered in
glue, had nothing to change into, and realized that I should probably have a
spare set of clothes hanging around, but this way is better. I shouldn’t have to eat poison to learn that
poison can kill me. Nevertheless, I get the distinct feeling while reading Kriegel’s
book that he suffered a particularly traumatic experience because he mentions
the spare clothes at least five times in the Introduction alone.
Teach How to use Supplies
Rather than simply laying scissors, glue, and other
supplies in front of your students and saying, “Go crazy!”, Kriegel advises the
teacher to instruct students on how to use each supply—how to use a glue stick
properly, how to use scissors properly—before having them use it for a project
or activity and before putting on the supply shelf as something students have
access to and can use. In other words,
add new supplies to the shelves or cupboards as the school years goes on, after
the students have learned how to use them, rather than having the cupboards
full from day one. This strategy will
prevent you from becoming the frustrated teacher whose students have made a
huge mess of the classroom, and will prevent you from punitively taking
supplies away until students “show more maturity.” This strategy also emphasizes with students
that more and varied supplies and privileges are earned slowly, not given all
at once and then taken away.
Lunch Boxes
Why does lunch always feel so rushed? I’m open to any advice that can make how I
spend those fleeting minutes more efficient.
Kriegel recommends that the teacher keep students lunch boxes in one big
container, and has the students put their lunches there at the beginning of the
day, when they’re taking off their coats, outdoor shoes, and backpacks. The rationale for this is that it’s no longer
a scramble for students to find their lunchboxes, settle down, and eat at lunch
time. This kind of simple, but powerful
organizational step characterizes the kind of practical advice and direction
that this book provides.
Rainy Day and Wet Shoes Always Get Me Down…
So what happens if it’s a rainy day and you want to
prevent your classroom from becoming a wet and muddy mess? Kriegel recommends having an umbrella bin: a
clean plastic garbage bin or bucket to put umbrella’s in at the door. If the day’s really wet, lay out some big
towels (that you’re keeping on hand in your classroom) on the floor and have
students put their boots and coats on it (this also works with snow pants in the
winter). Also have parents send a spare
set of socks (or better yet, set of clothes) so that students aren’t upset that
they’re walking around in wet socks.
The Homework Folder
I fell in love with this idea! It’s quite simple: each student gets a two
pocket folder. One side is labelled Communication,
and the other is labelled Homework.
Notes and letters to parents go in the Communication side of the folder,
and worksheets and assignment/project pages go in the homework side, along with
a small notebook where students write down the details of their homework
assignments. This folder goes home with
students every day and comes back every morning. The homework folder also provides a venue for
parents to send notes to the teacher. As
a new teacher, I’m always struggling to devise better ways to communicate the
day’s homework to both students and parents.
The simple elegance of this strategy appeals to me. The homework folder quickly establishes a
reliable routine, but a routine that’s not over-complicated. What can be more worrying for the new teacher
than whether or not students remember the homework routines is whether the
teacher remembers it. This system gives
me a way to problem solve where I might have put things, where students might
have put things, and how I should go about finding things that have been
misplaced.
Other Topics
Other topics covered in this book about which new
teachers are often terrified include:
·
Field Trips
·
Working For and With Your Principal
·
Communicating with Parents
·
Acing an Observation
In sum
Kriegel’s book is written and
divided for the teacher who’s busy and doesn’t have much spare time. It can be read from cover to cover, or
indexed, as Kriegel recommends. The
prose is witty and snappy. Both the
advice and the anecdotes often approach hilarity. New teachers will go from splitting their
sides laughing to feeling nausea when they read something about which they haven’t
yet thought.
The
other nice thing about this book is that it wasn’t written ten years ago. Published in 2013, Kriegel’s book has been
written in the age of the internet and also includes practical advice for
teacher’s wishing to run classroom websites, blog, and deal with cyber-bullying.
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