10 Tips for Aspiring/Early Career Educators

Aspiring Educators and Early Career Educators, as you prepare to receive your placements for student teaching or new job with a class that is all yours for the spring semester, here is a list of 10 things to keep in mind before you venture out on this new chapter in your journey to teacherhood.

1. Be on time. Be ready. Dress for success. Make sure to know what time you are to report to your school each day and, also understand the district dress code for educators and what is or is not allowed. A good rule to follow is to dress to one degree of formality higher than the students and parents you will be working with.
2. Seek student teaching assignments that allow you an opportunity to work with diverse students. It will help in your teaching career to understand and appreciate the cultural differences of your students and will train you to better understand and meet their needs.
3. Be intentional in building a quality relationship with your cooperating teacher. Your cooperating teacher will be one of the best resources you will have throughout your student teaching experience.
4. Be open to trying to understand other people’s situations, ideas, and reasons for making the decisions they make. Learning about the people you are working with will hopefully lead to supportive relationships and successful partnerships.
5. Try your best to be an additional resource to the classroom by asking “What can I do to help my cooperating teacher, students, parents and loved ones or other educators achieve their goals today?”
6. Have a positive attitude with students and the adults that care for them. When you work to understand your students and the people in their life that care for them and build authentic relationships, you will hopefully start to identify gifts and strengths within those students that help them excel. This will put you in the position to help them succeed through catering to their strengths and can provide opportunities for individualized authentic projects.
7. Maintain a professional relationship with your students. Make sure to create and maintain healthy boundaries as you grow to know your students. A safe way to maintain these professional relationships is by not adding or accepting students on social media.
8. Maintain professional relationships with colleagues. It is best practice to not talk about students and their work outside of professional settings where you are strategizing to enhance student success. This should also include not having casual conversations about students and their work with other educators in the building outside of the professional settings.
9. Maintain professional relationships with the public. It is not unheard of for administrators to do an online search before a student teaching placement is made and some parents may do one once they find out that their student will have a student teacher in their classroom. Now is a good time to go through social media and make sure that your online persona matches the level of professionalism you will show in the classroom.
10. Learn about the community. Find out about its history, community resources, and participate in events that will help to immerse you in the culture of the community and provide opportunities to grow to appreciate it.