A dear friend of mine made a career change to become the music teacher in
our district last year. We spent many hours discussing her trials as a first
year teacher and I found myself repeating one main piece of advice to her: you
cannot know it all and do it all immediately. Like all new teachers she
wanted to have stellar, creative, inspired lessons planned for every class,
every day (K-12!). Remembering the guilt I experienced as a new teacher when I
could not meet my own high expectations, I tried to let her know that we cannot
do it all the first time through.
However, we can use a combination of packaged resources and borrowed lessons
from other teachers and create some great stuff of our own. From there we
figure out what works for us and what doesn’t and then next year, we do more of
what works and we keep fine tuning from year to year.
In a matter of a few years, we end up with some great basic bones that we
can continue to flesh out and revise along the way. If we only beat ourselves
up over what we did not accomplish or what did not work, especially in the
beginning, how will we ever have time and energy to celebrate the little
successes we stumble on while on the way to the next mile marker?