When I was in grad school, when everyone was on Zoom and staring at each other in little boxes on their screens, my professor dropped a bombshell. He said he was a bad teacher for the first seven years of his career. I was appalled.
He talked about how his instructions could have been clearer, his classroom management was decent but needed improvement, and his lessons and worksheets needed more focus.
Being the pigheaded person I am, I was confident every mistake he made I wouldn’t. I absorbed the information he gave us about rectifying all of these issues. His red, bold-faced feedback on my lessons and worksheets meant one step closer to greatness.
Even though I had never stepped foot in a classroom, my cockiness was immense. I figured if I was learning from such a phenomenal teacher, there was no way I would be a bad one.
Then, I started teaching.
On my first day of classes, I spent more time worrying about crafting the perfect teacher outfit than what I would be doing that day with my students. My co-teacher, whom I had met two days before, said he would handle everything. Imagine my surprise when I learned I had to create a syllabus for my classes, something I didn’t remember receiving when I was in high school or come up with icebreakers. Plus, what was all of this talk about creating Google classrooms?
Like a fish out of water, I flopped. My first day set me up for three months of tears and utter failure. While I had lessons, my structures and expectations weren’t in place. I had worksheets, but sloppy instructions. I graded without taking my students and their strengths and weaknesses, which I wasn’t developing either, into consideration.
With each disastrous grade I gave and each ‘lesson’ I tried to teach, I didn’t understand the problem. I found myself blaming my students. They didn’t listen. Their middle school teachers had failed them. I was not the problem.
I was also not the solution.
One day, my assistant principal came in to observe me. I was teaching a 9th-grade class on social justice. Instead of eagerly consuming the material I was throwing at them, they were more focused on eating their lunch, even though lunch had been the previous period. A student badgered me for a fork so they could eat their Chinese food, the smell wafting around their peers, who shouted, “Let me get some!” Cartons were spread out on the table, preventing laptops from being placed and work from being completed.
I said nothing.
Actually, I looked for a fork while my AP stared at me.
Another student picked up a random book behind him titled ‘The History of Sex.’ I inherited my classroom library and hadn’t spent any energy weeding through it because I assumed every book had to be school-appropriate. He shouted from his side of the room, “Can I read this, Ms.? Can we talk about sex?” The others snickered, and my face turned a deep shade of red.
My assistant principal looked at me as I grabbed the book and tried to get the students back on task. I can’t remember what I was teaching that day, but I can assure you there wasn’t much teaching or learning happening in that room.
This was further later confirmed when I went in for my observation debrief. My AP stared at me without an ounce of remorse on her face and said, “You won’t last another year. You have zero control of your classroom. There is no learning going on.”
My heart dropped. I was as still as a statute as she named everything wrong in my classroom. Naturally, the Chinese food was the first thing on the list.
I argued it was one bad day. My next period was smoother. Of course, she wasn’t there for that, but it didn’t matter.
As I cried in the dark back in my classroom, I knew she was right, but I refused to believe her. Me? Zero control? I learned from the best, so I had to already be the best!
After drying my tears, I found myself back in grad school, reflecting on my professor’s journey. The realization hit me: I, too, was a bad teacher. But instead of succumbing to despair, I saw it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Instead of quitting and succumbing to the idea that I would never be a good teacher or make it to the end of the year, the anger and disappointment I felt toward myself fueled a fire inside me.
I took my AP’s tips and implemented them in my classroom. From setting Do Now’s for the first five minutes to adding timers to everything so we didn’t veer too far off from the lesson. I practiced teaching my lesson in the morning to lessen my nerves. I began to listen to my students when they were struggling instead of moving on to the next topic.
I became a better teacher through feedback but struggled throughout my first year. While I would love to label myself as a ‘good’ teacher now, I know there’s still plenty to learn about teaching. My second year was faced with similar but different issues. My third became my fight song, where differentiation became a word I internalized instead of just something I nodded my head along to.
So, if you’re starting your first year as a teacher, remember you will fail multiple times. Your lessons will flop, and your instruction may be clear to you but not to the thirty-four eyes blankly staring at you. Being a bad teacher is OK, as long as you do everything to work towards attempting to be a great one.
