TIASL: I love this book! My absolute favorite part of the book was the long, annotated list of strengths that new teachers might bring to the classroom (Chapter 6, Your Teacher Personality). You noted that everyone who comes into teaching has at least a couple of these gifts. What inspired you to see new teachers as unique personalities, rather than inexperienced technicians needing strategies?

Click here to read the rest of the interview on Nancy Flanagan’s blog, Teacher in a Strange Land.

Now you can download discussion and reflection questions for rookie teachers from the downloads tab on the left.

These chapter-by-chapter questions are for teachers reading See Me After Class during or immediately after their rookie year. As you know, this means they’ve already learned some of the lessons in the book the hard way. These questions will help you help them help themselves help their students. Everyone benefits when teachers learn from each other instead of trial and error.

Now you can download discussion questions for undergraduate and pre-service teachers from the downloads tab on the left.

This chapter-by-chapter guide is specifically tailored to readers preparing for the first year of teaching. The Microsoft Word format is easy to modify as needed, leaving you more time to develop that lesson on Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Here’s my poem. Does this have anything to do with teaching? You decide.

They say the journey of a thousand miles
Begins with a single step
Yet here I am 900 miles in
And I’m a mess
One point left to pass my biggest test
Immobilized on the doorstep of success

I’ve been following one yellow brick at a time
Letting the road lead the way
And now I’m at the door
And don’t know what to say
Worried the Wizard of Oz
Will laugh and turn me away

People keep telling me to
Breathe…
But I forgot how
I’ve been waiting years for one moment

And it’s now.

Click here for a list of websites for teachers, pre-screened, organized by grade level, and ready to help you find the sites you need, when you need them.

My advice: Don’t try to visit every listed site right now. Save this list as a “favorite” on your computer, and use it to find websites as needed.

But I recently picked up a new book, Roxanna Elden’s See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers, which I wish had been around when I started teaching. Elden, a teacher down in Miami-Dade, skips the treacle and talks straight, with a heavy dose of practicality, a dash of cynicism, and wry humor. I dug it, and recommend it.

Click here to read the article on Rick Hess Straight Up.

Given my own dyspeptic nature, it’s no surprise that she had me at “No Child Left…Yeah, Yeah, You Know,” a chapter in which she utters truths that the “it’s for the kids” mafia has long sought to censor. She observes, “We sometimes have kids we don’t like: bullies, eye-rollers, girls who look like younger versions of our ex’s new girlfriend, et cetera. We know we shouldn’t have favorites, but certain kids make our day, while others just make our day harder.”

Elden cautions elementary teachers not to slip into a false sense of security: “Grade school kids are little and cute, right? They’d be terrified of going into a classroom when they weren’t supposed to, right? I mean, it’s not like two of your sweetest, best-behaved fourth-graders would sneak out of line at the end of the day, hide in the boys’ bathroom, sneak back into the room, open your desk drawer, steal an expensive toy belonging to their classmate, and let you come back into the room with the girl’s mother to find a $100 toy inexplicably missing, right? Wrong. Lock your door.”

I appreciated this as a far more amusing and erudite version of my old classroom motto: “Every child is capable of great things, and also of stealing Mrs. Schweitzer’s Lexus, driving it off an embankment on Interstate 10, and wrapping it around a telephone poll at upwards of fifty miles an hour.”

Elden offers one of the pithiest analogies I’ve heard for how teachers should view their principal: “Your administration is like a bra: if it provides the support you need, you look better and feel better. If it fits poorly, it gets in your way and can even become painful.” She’s downright generous to administrators (”Who,” she writes, “don’t get me wrong, do important jobs”). She’s less enamored of “presenters or auditors from a downtown office” (”who,” she writes, “do…jobs”).

Elden is funny enough that she’s got Dave Barry (yep, THAT Dave Barry) blurbing her book. Barry writes, “You know how you’ve always thought if you were a teacher, you’d go insane? Well, this very funny book proves that you definitely would. But in a good way.”

In four pages, Elden lays out for new teachers–with specific guidance and simple explanations–a filing system that would’ve saved me endless grief, and one that’s a whole lot more practical and straightforward than what some high-priced instructional coaches are peddling.

I loved her take on professional development…and research. Elden writes, “As you attend training sessions, you will learn that if your students are not using ‘learning logs,’ your entire year may be a waste of time. Some of the kids may even ‘unlearn’ everything they have learned in their lives. No, wait! Kids can’t understand what they read unless you have done pre-reading activities with manipulatives. No, sorry, that’s wrong, too. Research has shown that any sentence beginning ‘Research has shown…’ can end in many contradictory ways, especially if someone is trying to sell something.”

Look, you get the idea. If you’re a new teacher or an aspiring teacher seeking some smart guidance, check it out. If Elden strikes you as amusing, again, check it out. But, come on, it’s not easy to find an author who quotes a teacher saying, “I came back from being out and was still a little sick….and the first thing the students told me was that they missed the substitute.”

Click here to read the rest of this interview on Alexander Russo’s blog, This Week in Education.

How would you describe See Me After Class?

RE: It’s a funny, practical guidebook that acknowledges teaching is not like the movies.

What book or books inspired you or were a model (or may be familiar to readers)?

RE:  I grew up reading Dave Barry’s work, which was why it was such an honor to get a cover blurb from him. He has a way of picking out the humor in every situation which influenced my outlook on life, and later my own writing. I’m also a fan of Scott Adams’ Dilbert books, which mix funny observations with career advice, and I used a few parenting and relationship advice books as models.

Why do we need yet another education book?

RE: Most books written for new teachers are either inspirational stories or training manuals. Training manuals repeat the over-simplified messages many teachers already learned in training. They don’t help teachers who are struggling to put their training into practice. Inspirational stories gloss over the fact that becoming a great teacher takes time, and even great teachers have bad days.

You say your book acknowledges that teaching is “not like the movies.” What’s wrong with teacher movies?

RE: There’s a genre of teacher movies best described as “inspired-rookie-teacher-goes-above-and-beyond-and-fights-the-system-to-help-underprivileged-students-because-no-other-adult-cares-about-them.” These stories might be inspiring to non-teachers, but Hollywood-style portrayals of our job make real teachers feel like failures. After all, many of us used to watch these movies and pictured ourselves in the lead roles. Now we’re stuck in the uncut, un-edited versions, and no one is sticking to the script, including us.

Are there any broader effects of these inspirational stories about plucky teachers?

RE: Many of the teachers who tell these Hollywood-style stories have left the classroom by the time the book or movie comes out. Career teachers are compared to the unrealistic standards they leave behind. Many of the new accountability measures seem to be created with the idea that every part of our students’ lives would be under our control if we had enough dedication to make it happen. Rookie teachers are especially susceptible to these images. Some beginners don’t realize that they can damage their careers by trying to recreate the bold moves of movie teachers, who confront their bosses, make plans behind their principal’s backs, and invite students to their homes without notifying parents. The truth is, movie stunts are not meant to be tried at home.

What makes you qualified to write this book, compared to anyone else?

RE: I’m now a National Board Certified Teacher, and have taught many different subjects and grade levels, but I still remember my first year clearly. I set out to write the book I needed during my own first year, and was also lucky to find teachers all over the country willing to share their stories and advice.

What mistakes did you make as a first-year teacher?

RE: My first year I spent a tremendous amount of time, money and energy trying to be a great teacher. Unfortunately, I spent them in the wrong places. I stayed until after well after school hours every day and bought creative, unnecessary supplies, but couldn’t get my lessons back on track when they got derailed. I brought home piles of paper every night, but my grade book was nearly empty when report card time came. The worst part was the feeling that I was the only one making these mistakes. I had dreamed of being a teacher for most of my life. By November I was sure I had chosen the wrong career.

How would your book have helped you?

RE:  The stories would have let me know I wasn’t alone, which would have improved my confidence and morale. Some of the basic stuff, like the ready-to-use filing system and ten-day-countdown to the school year would have helped me start the year on solid ground. The most helpful part would have been the classroom management chapter, which addresses the pitfalls in common management advice like “be consistent,” and “give positive reinforcement.” I had heard all these things before starting teaching, but when my classroom management broke down, they became easier said than done. I needed more than just a repeat of what I learned in training. See Me After Class could have helped me pull my classroom back from the edge of chaos in the middle of the year. It would have been much better for my students, not to mention my mental health.

How has the book been received so far?

RE: The most common reaction has been, “Where was this book during MY first year?”

Don’t you know teachers don’t have time to read?

RE: See Me After Class is meant to be weekend reading – likely after a really bad week. Teachers should be able to pick up the book on Friday, finish it over the weekend, and walk in Monday as a better, more confident teacher. Not perfect, but better.

If you were going to write or star in a movie set in a school, what story would you tell?

RE:  If I were going to write a book or movie set in a school, it would have more than one star. Schools are run by a whole bunch of imperfect human beings. Our personalities and personal lives influence our teaching. So do outside issues such as poverty and politics. There are plenty of stories about police officers and doctors that show these people as complete humans, but there aren’t many stories that do the same for teachers.

Why didn’t you write this as a more serious, less cute type of book?

RE:  The book is serious – it’s just not preachy. Teachers already know our job is important, and the days we feel we’re bad at it leave us very demoralized. The last thing we need is to open up about our mistakes and have someone say, “Well, that never happens in MY class.” We need someone to say, “That has happened to me, and it’s not an easy problem to solve, but these are the solutions I’ve developed.”

“…These constant panic attacks
Frantic packing
Of standardized practice facts

Keep teachers fighting
Biting each other in the backs
Like rats
Packed into the back of a classroom
And trapped…

A storm is forming
With each teacher cheating the next
Sweat dripping
From eye sockets and necks…
No time to rest

All we hear about IS this test….”

Download the full poem from the “Downloads” tab on the left.

Click this link to read the full review at internet review of books.