From Surviving to Thriving: A Teacher's Growth Story

When discussing the struggles of my first year in the classroom with other educators, I was met with the same response: “Your first year teaching is the hardest! After that it gets easier”.

Well, from my experience, they had it wrong.

Hello!

My name is Mrs. Watring and I started blogging to share my teacher-created resources with other teachers and parents and share my experiences in the classroom and my thoughts on education. I am passionate about education and believe that students deserve quality learning experiences from teachers who feel confident and prepared to teach the content.

Year 1

During my first year of teaching, I felt confident in providing quality learning experiences for my students. While I struggled with students staying on task or managing student behaviors, all-in-all the first year was so easy looking back now. Sure, I did have a student sniff diluted hydrochloric acid that we were using for a chemical weathering lab, but the issues in year 1 are small potatoes compared to the problems I had in year 2 and year 3 of my teaching career.

Year 2

My second year of teaching started great. I was excited and confident. Plus we found out that our daughter was due in June 2023! Everything was looking pretty good for that school year. However, as the year progressed things got more and more out of control. I found myself constantly arguing with the same students about the same things. I was yelling more. I found myself getting overwhelmed and stressed out during certain class periods.

On one particularly challenging day, I had a student post a picture of me on social media calling me a cow. I was 7.5 months pregnant. He was retaliating against me because I disciplined him for being disrespectful when I asked him to return to his assigned seat.

To say I was displeased was an understatement.

My administrator seemed like he wanted to brush it off, but I was not going to let that happen. I felt personally attacked. The safety of me and my child was jeopardized. I stood my ground and got the student removed from my class, but formal disciplinary action from the administration did not take place.

After that, I was fed up with working in a public school. I interviewed for a virtual teaching job for which I received a formal offer of employment. I was elated. I had an out from the place that caused me nightmares, but there was a problem. Well, 2 problems.

I would be making about $8,000 less than I would if I stayed and would have to start the virtual training 4 weeks after delivering our baby.

That did not work for me. The point of working from home was to have a career that allowed some flexibility. That was not flexible and the salary decrease would have made our lives incredibly difficult. So on to year 3, I went.

Year 3

After spending the summer with our newborn, let’s just say I was not thrilled to go back to work. Due to the current state of American Maternity leave, there was no way that my husband and I would be able to survive if I took 12 weeks of unpaid leave. After using all of my sick days.

After using all my sick days!

I was so mad at the system because I felt as though it was failing me. I pushed through the challenges of balancing a newborn and a full-time career. I thought I was coping pretty well. Until just before Easter.

To summarize a bad situation with a few details: The administration was ignoring my concerns about a student who posed a possible threat to other students and myself. Long story short, the postpartum anxiety monster struck again, and I found myself ready to leave in-person teaching. I would say I was desperate. One subpar interview later, I found myself stuck teaching public school for another year. Great.

But, being the eternal optimist that I am, I decided to take the summer to figure out why I was struggling so badly in the classroom. I needed to find a way to make sure that I never had a school year like year 3 ever again.

The Struggle Is Real

So, what happened to the sense of success and confidence I had as an educator?

I still feel like a “New Teacher”, even though I am preparing for year 4 in the classroom. Upon reflection, last year was pure chaos.

Classroom management? More like chaos management.

Lesson planning? More like winging it.

Grading papers? A never-ending mountain.

What had happened to the teacher who had her lesson plans complete and was prepared most days? I’m beginning to think that that group of students, who will be seniors this year, were just great students.

I didn’t have a classroom management plan. I knew how to fill in a lesson plan template, but was that good enough? Also, good luck deciphering the standards.

I was taught that I needed a classroom management plan, how to fill in a lesson plan template, and that to understand the standards, I just had to unpack it by looking at the parts of speech. As someone who struggled with English and grammar, I never stood a chance.

It took me 3 years of trial and error to make a plan that I hope will help solve these problems that all teachers face.

My Summer

As I worked in the first weeks of summer, I discovered that I didn’t have a plan for how I was going to be successful. I had to learn how to make a plan to be successful. I signed up for a Math book study. I know, I know, I teach Science. Signing up for the book study turned out to be the most helpful thing I could have done. The book study is on the book “Building Thinking Classrooms...” by Peter Liljedhal, which aims to make Math more engaging for students and how to get students thinking about math. I am taking concepts and tasks from the book and adapting them to make them work in a science classroom.

I have spent countless hours sifting through numerous professional development books to put together an organized classroom management plan as well as some really great resources for myself in the hopes of being more organized and successful in the classroom. 

I started this blog so I can share my experiences, resources, and thoughts with other educators and parents. I want to create a community where knowledge is shared openly. I started posting resources to my Teachers Pay Teacher Teachers so that I could share them with other educators. You can view my store here. 

As a rural WV teacher, it should go without saying that if I can help other educators while I make some extra cash, well, that’s a dream come true! I want to be transparent about my efforts to make a living writing and creating educational resources so that I can work from home to be with our daughter.

Lessons Learned

• Classroom Management is not the same thing as discipline
• Plugging and chugging lesson plan templates did not work for me
• I needed to get organized before I started planning lessons
• I needed a long-term plan for success

Where I'm Going

I have plans to continue creating educational materials and resources, not only for science, but for other content areas as well. I also have future ambitions to design a comprehensive homeschool curriculum.

Education is extremely important to me and I hope to make a meaningful difference for educators and students everywhere.

I invite you to subscribe to my blog, follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers here, and leave comments with your thoughts and ideas for resources you would find helpful as an educator. I want to create resources and materials that are actually helpful!

This blog and my library of resources are a work in progress so check back soon to see what’s new!

Until next time!

Mrs. Watring