One of the most frequently asked questions I get on social media is, 'what is your advice for a first year special education teacher?' Being a first year special education teacher can feel overwhelming and so isolating. Often times I felt like I was on 'sped island' as I liked to call it just treading water attempting not to drown. Honestly, sometimes I still feel like that. After many tough days at work, I found myself repeating phrases like 'I didn't learn that in college'. No matter how many years into your teaching career, I promise you will still repeatedly tell yourself that. Sped work is hard, rewarding work that can be emotionally exhausting and draining if you allow it to be. Coming from a teacher who unfortunately allowed special education to be my life and my only life my first year of teaching, I really struggled and found myself so mentally exhausted and always looking forward to the weekend or the next extended break.
As I reflect back, I hope this post helps first year sped teachers realize their worth as a human being outside of being a special education teacher. You are a person first, and an educator second. You deserve time off and self-care habits. You deserve a prep and a lunch. You deserve to allow yourself the time outside of work to focus on you. You deserve to be more than your job title. So how can you avoid that first-year, sped teacher burn out? How can you manage the new transition to the professional world feeling like you're not doing enough to be enough for your students, classroom or school? I've created a list of things you should focus on as a first year teacher, and things to avoid that can create a negative pitfall of burn out for your first year.
Picture: Wellness morning check in hanging from the desk is from @navigatingbehaviorchange on instagram!
Set Limits: If you get anything from this blog, realize you are worthy of setting limits for yourself. Being a first year teacher, it's so easy to want to prove your worth to your school and administration. You want to join all the clubs, participate in all the organizations and volunteer your time to show you are capable and able. Truth is, you don't have to. Being a first year special education teacher, you already have so much on your plate. Your district should be supporting you and guiding you through this transition. Set limits to things you are engaging in, create limits of arriving and leaving from school, set limits about realistic tasks you can accomplish for the day and/or week. Realize that when your body is tired, you need to impose and stick to your limits of self-care. I often found myself saying, 'If I just got (insert random tasks) then I would feel better and I could relax", and honestly it's just not true. We as teachers will always find things that need to be done creating a never-ending cycle of tasks.
Be Realistic: Realize you can't do everything you want to in the first year. There were so many things my first year I focused so hard to do only to realize a year or two later, I wanted to change it. From data collection systems, organization, classroom management, etc. Take the time to slow down and reflect on goals that are attainable and realistic for you to complete your first year. We often see so many classrooms and think to ourselves 'this is my dream classroom'. 'If I just do all of these things then I will be happy'. Your dream classroom is yours to create over time. I remember my first year, I had no decorations up. To me, spending hours on end decorating my classroom was not going to make my students successful. Be realistic with creating systems and procedures that fit your classroom philosophy and realize building a classroom takes more than your first year.
Positive, Positive, Improvement: End each day in your classroom with the idea of telling yourself two positive things that happened and an area of improvement. My first year of teaching, I found myself always critiquing myself on areas of improvement I could do in my classroom. And I'm telling you, the first year of teaching there will be a lot. Sometimes, for many of us who are hard working, it's much easier to lay out areas we can improve than areas we are good or excel at. However, taking away each day with more positives than areas of improvement can shift your mind into realizing your worth of the classroom and how your creating a positive environment and making a difference for your students. Even a simple success is necessary to be celebrated. Keep a journal, make a mental note, share it with our colleagues. Just keep it positive!
Relationships: Focus on relationships. Whether that's relationships with your students, colleagues, admin or parents/guardians of your students. Make yourself and your presence in the school known. Create positive relationships with your student's parents/guardians by reaching out frequently and often with positive news about their child. Create a system where you can touch base with them often. Show your students their worth in your classroom and that you want to invest the time and effort into getting to know them and forming a safe space for them at school. Surround yourself with colleagues that build you up.
Don't be afraid to ask for help: Too often my first year of teaching I wanted to feel competent, hard-working and doing everything myself. I mean, everything. Whether that was looking for a file on the share drive, creating resources or trying to find all of the copies of the math tests for the year. Trust me, it's just not worth your time and sanity to do everything yourself. Don't hesitate to ask for help. Ask for help, make a mental note of where to find or get resources and focus your time on things that matter. Asking for help isn't a sign of being inferior, it's a way you are getting your needs met through the resources around you. It's a way you are caring for yourself by not putting time and effort into tasks that don't contribute to the learning of your students or your own self-care journey.
Take your lunch and do your prep: One of the most regretful things I did as a first year teacher was sacrifice my lunch and/or my prep for the sake of feeling like I needed to respond to all behavior, oversee all parts of my classroom and because it really is just hard work creating boundaries in a special education classroom. For many of us, students are in the room when we are eating on breaks, due to a scheduling conflict or even in behavior. One of the hardest things is creating time around taking care of yourself. When we are first year teachers, we don't feel we need the break. We've been working for 4 years to finally get into the classroom so we want to be present and do it all. However, when we don't take care of our brains and bodies, our brains and bodies begin to show us that we need to take care of them in negative ways. There will be days, that behaviors will fall into your lunch or prep and a scheduling conflict arises, but don't make it the norm. Don't sacrifice your mental health. Your students need a more well-prepped and cared for teacher than you think.
Classroom Management: If you choose to focus on anything at all your first year, let it be your classroom management and your system of rewards and consequences (remember, consequences are just what happens after a behavior. Think restorative justice, circle talks, or natural consequences of making right with behaviors, etc.). I spent my first year in trial and error with so many systems to find what worked best with our classroom and our group of kids. It's ok if your first system you come up with, doesn't work. It's ok if you try a few things before you find what is best. It's ok if you go home one weekend and come back with a new idea you want to try. You'll quickly find teaching is constantly a work in progress. Good classroom management will make or break your room. Create that your focus and work to create a system that is best for you and your students.
Mentor: Find someone(s) in your building that can be your mentor. Find someone you can feel safe with and have honest conversations with. As a first year teacher, it is crucial to find people who support you and can guide you through. Utilize your mentor to understand the unwritten rules of the building, to go to as a sounding board or to guide you through tough decisions as a first year sped teacher (and believe me, you'll have a lot). Find your marigold. Find that person who wants to help you grow and grow themselves. Find your marigold and stay away from the walnuts. If you haven't, read this blog post after you're done reading mine. Our principal gave this to us our first year of teaching and it's stuck with me ever since. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/marigolds/
Trust your paras: For many of us special education teachers to new positions, many of the paras have been in the position way before us. They've seen the classroom in many ways and it's critical we take their input and advice and move forward with it. Take the time to get to know them as people, not just as paras. Ask for their feedback and what they feel needs to happen in the classroom. When you are working on a special education team, you have the unique abilities to be working with a team and potentially all together in one room. The cohesiveness and fluidity of the team should be seen and known. Create an environment your paras feel able to voice their opinion, but also allow for their thinking to be challenged. One thing we do in our classroom is have a 20-30 minute meeting each week to discuss students, classroom procedures or overall overviews of the classroom. I allow my paras to create the agenda. I keep sheets of paper inside a cabinet. Throughout the week, my paras add to the agenda questions, concerns or observations for us to discuss at our meeting! This helps ensure everyone's voice is being heard and we are creating a safe space for the transfer and discussion of ideas.
Parent Engagement: Connecting with parents is critical to a successful year as well as ensuring the success of the student in your classroom or on your caseload. For many parents, they just want to know their child is loved and cared for. That's it. When you allow parents to know you have their child's best interests in mind it allows them to develop trust and confidence in your abilities as their special educator. Connect often with them, call them for positive actions their child does, always reach out to check in on them, schedule meetings as necessary for the parent to feel heard, help them create the carry-over of success at school to home and/or check in on how the parent is doing. Positive, parent engagement doesn't come naturally, it takes time. Time for them to trust and support you knowing you are making the best decisions for their child.
Schedule: I'm not sure what to tell you about making a schedule as a sped teacher, other than it is one of the hardest most stressful things you will do as a sped teacher. You will look at that schedule more times then you'll want to even remember, and every time you will find something new you need to fix or things that just aren't aligning. This is my best advice for creating a schedule: be prepared to update it many times. Be prepared to look over it and look over it more. Be prepared to redo it over again. Once you feel you have it set, a new student will be added or a schedule change will need to be made. Be prepared to make small adjustments and be flexible knowing these changes will happen. When creating the schedule, open a spreadsheet and add in all the non-negotiables to the spreadsheet. Things that you know won't change or have to be done. Create staff and supports around the non-negotiables before working in the other things.
Review the IEPs: One of the most critical aspects of being a new special education teacher is inheriting so many new IEPs and having to review them all. It's a very overwhelming task that can seem impossible given all the diverse behavior plans, different levels of support and range of abilities. When reviewing the IEPs, sort them by grade level and then by classes the students are in. Review the behavior plans, academic goals and their present levels. Meet or email the student's previous years teacher and briefly discuss what classroom accommodations were the most helpful for the student. Gather the behavior plan materials and have them prepped and ready to go. Also, keep in mind even after reading through an IEP there will still be some things that just can't happen until you meet the student. For example, building relationships and fostering a nurturing classroom environment.
Classroom Decor: Here's the deal about classroom decor. For many of us, the social pressure of creating a pinterest-perfect classroom is hard. We see all these pictures and imagine what our 'dream' classroom will look like. We envision the decor, organization and items we will be able to finally offer our students. However, everything you have ever been told about seeing a government funded classroom versus a teacher funded classroom is true. Pinterest-perfect classrooms cost money. You will receive very limited classroom funds. Many of those won't go to decor as you will need so many other materials. Be the teacher that is ok with a classroom that doesn't have a lot of decor. It's ok to not have a color scheme, pretty decorations or the best materials. Realize you can't create a classroom you want the first year. Focus on the things that matter and then the rest will fall into place.
First Impression: One thing I choose to focus on that was important to me my first year was creating a positive, engaging first impression for all of my IEPs meeting. I felt it was important to create my best impression during the IEP meeting. And for many of my parents, that was the first time I ever met them! Create a meeting where you are inviting parents to participate and engage with you. Create an IEP that highlights their student's strengths and creates goals attainable for their stretches. Show the parent that you are an advocate and looking out for the best interest of their child. When we choose to build relationships with our student's caregivers, we are harboring a positive circle of communication among the whole IEP team and creating a lasting first impression that involves trust.
Everyday is a new day: As you work your way through your first year of teaching, remember to treat each and everyday as a new day. You are going to have hard days and you will have days full of accomplishment. Don't stress on the tough days. You will have them. Remember your tough days don't determine your worth as a teacher. The tough days are there for you to grow and learn from. They are there for you to reflect on. They are there for you to know and do better from. Tough days should be expected, just don't dwell on them. Wake up each day with a fresh start and create a new opportunity for you and yourself to learn from.
As your progress through your first year, one of the biggest things I want you to remember is that you can't do everything you want in the first year. Create attainable goals for yourself just as we make them for our students. Practice and implement self-care. Understand your limits as a human. Create healthy work-life boundaries and know your worth. Many of the best things for us are the hardest things to do. Let's be honest, you've graduated and made it this far! You have put your time in to do the hard part. You are entering the workforce being able to work with a bunch of amazing students and do a job you will love. Create positivity and room to appreciate the work you have put in. Save space for yourself as you are so capable of doing hard things and setting boundaries for you. First year sped teacher, you got this!