Hi, new teacher! (Or anyone else attracted to this post’s title.) I know you are out there. This last year’s posts for newbies garnered a fair amount of traffic.

So the Assistant Principal dropped in at the start of class. Your opener fell apart, requiring twenty minutes of instruction. He was probably diplomatic as he explained that openers had to be, oops! five minutes, or maybe ten minutes tops, but he was giving you that funny look. Maybe a coach walked in while Tomas was cursing at Pablo and then sat down to watch you try to explain the day’s concept over the blaring car alarm in the parking lot. Should you have written up Tomas and Pablo? You wonder. Should you have kept going over the car alarm? But what could you have done except present the new material? Maybe you realized you left the homework sheets by the copy machine when you spilled your coffee. With luck, the coach had left before you stumbled on the homework crisis but, if not, you had to explain why there was no homework in front of a helpful observer who was hopefully smiling as you turned red. Maybe you just fell off your stool at the end of class and watched as the little and not-so-little nippers ran off without the evening’s assignment, yelling at everyone in the hallway, “You should have seen Ms. Smith! She looked so funny!”

Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die…

May I suggest you take a break to look at a little You Tube silliness? This was by an Australian company as a public service campaign for Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia. They are adding games and apps from this song. Check out https://www.facebook.com/dumbwaystodie/ for more info.

Eduhonesty: Go look for a few funny videos. Relax. Eat some chocolate. Call a friend.

You will always mess up. Teaching has too many little pieces to ever go seamlessly for any length of time. No job involving little kids or more than a hundred adolescents will ever be in total control. The idea is to get better.

Ask the Assistant Principal for advice. Try to take that advice, which will hopefully make sense. If the advice does not make sense, try to follow it when the Assistant Principal comes in your room.  Ask your coaches for advice. Keep asking for help. Keep testing out the ideas you are given. Some will make your life easier and better. Year by year, you will improve. Your classes will become easier to manage. Your organizational systems will become more automatic and reliable.

But you will always fumble the coffee sometimes. Just smile at the kids and explain what happened. Let them enjoy their homework-free night. When you fall off the stool, laugh. You will have bad days and good days. All teachers do.

Don’t let the bad days psych you out. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Just keep a better eye on those train crossings in the future.