Things I Wish I Had Done Differently My First Year Teaching.

My first year was dreadful as I had changed my profession from software engineering to teaching... Sacrificing the comfort of my AC seat, comfortable seating and more importantly my 6 figure salary. It took a lot of mind fighting to keep myself motivated and to tell myself that this was the profession that I wanted to do all my life and had dreamt off as a child too. I moved in to this profession with a lot of expectations and set midset. Now, after almost a decade of teaching and working with students, I wish I could have done a few things differently in the first year of this profession, which could have changed by course in this career. 1. I cannot be a favorite of every student I teach - Not every student will love you or will value you for the work you are doing. Inspite of giving your 100 percent, there will be more than 30 percent of the students who dont value you as you expect them to. 2. More student interaction - I come from an old school where we had students actively listening and doing what is being told to. But, working with Gen alpha is much more diffeerent. They belong to a generation, where there is a reason for everything that is done. You need to provide them the required space and give them more time for interaction.

Run the classes in your mind

Some classes seem like a cake walk while some feel so dissatisfactory. While reflecting on, it feels that the classes which seemed to be so satisfactory are the ones which have been extensively planned. While working on the planning, it is important to plan the student reactions too. Though curriculum and lesson plans seem to be sufficient in planning process, I felt what is more important is to run through the class in your mind a day before the class. What do I mean by running the class in your head? Planning through the discussion and taking stock of what the student reactions could be? What would be the questions which would arise in their mind listening to this? What is the real-life scenario that I can relate this lesson with? Planning all this discussion makes the class more efficient and fruitful, giving the teacher the required satisfaction of running an efficient class. After planning using the lesson plan, I prefer to run through the classes either during my bedtime or it would more efficiently happen as I am cooking, taking my evening walk or sometimes during my me time on my favorite swing....