What I wish someone had told me in my first year

In my first year I cried in the staff room more than once. I had the degree, the lesson plans, the confidence of someone who had never actually stood in front of sixty restless children at two in the afternoon.

The lesson plan is not the lesson

No one told me that a perfect plan can fall apart in ninety seconds, and that this is not failure — it is Tuesday. The teachers who lasted were not the ones with the best plans. They were the ones who could put the plan down and read the room.

You are not behind. You are learning a craft that takes a decade, in your very first month.

Now I mentor first-year teachers. I tell them the same thing I needed to hear: ask for help early, keep one good moment from every day, and remember that the students will forgive almost everything except indifference.