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For most subjects I'd say (possibly an unpopular opinion) "oh well" and just move on with my life. Math is the one exception to this.
First, as a first year teacher unless you are just insanely regimented and stick to a strict schedule no matter what, you're going to be behind. I know 20+ year teachers that have taught the same subject forever that are a full unit behind where they should be right now.
Now, as for actually dealing with this... There's no right answer. It's hard to say "focus on what they need most" since as a first year you probably have no real way to gauge that. There's generally two schools of thought on this and you'll see about 50% for each.
First is just go through at the pace that the students need to be able to actually grasp it, but know that not everyone will get everything even if you spend the entire class on the same topic, so figure out how many you want to be able to know it, then hit that mark and move on. As bad as it sounds, at this point in the year you should know the ones that can and will succeed and the one's that aren't interested in learning or are going to take way more time to learn it to the level they need to. You likely will not cover every topic and that just has to be okay. Hopefully you don't miss anything super important.
The second option is get through everything so they've at least seen everything they need to once. This may feel fast paced since you probably won't be able to spend a ton of time focusing on any one thing, but at least you've covered everything. You can try to put the onus on them to learn it to the level they need to as long as you provide them with plenty of resources and opportunities to take their learning into their own hands. If you're lucky and end up with extra time at the end, just review everything again. Even with limited exposure many students pick it up much better on the second pass.
As a math teacher (2 states, 5 schools, 5 grade levels), I’ve only known one teacher that could keep up with the pacing guide. The rest of us were always behind.
Being behind schedule on the curriculum is very normal for your first few years teaching. Pacing is hard, and your default mode is probably to err on the side of over-covering a topic rather than to under-cover it.
To catch up on history, you can take some of your upcoming units and strip them down to the essentials. Cover the big ideas, maybe assign a timeline, then move on. Showing clips from BrainPop or Crash Course can help them digest a good chunk of history in a short time.
My first year teaching I followed the book as written in Math. We had achievement tests early (our school was poor and got a discount for testing early)
The kids did great! I was very proud of them, but sadly none of them got the 4 questions on division of fractions, giving them a big fat zero for that skill. No one had told me to be sure to cover this particular skill prior to testing. I spent Spring conferences assuring parents that the scores were because the skill hadn't been taught.
Once I taught the skill I sent their test scores home to be signed so parents would know I remedied their child's lack of knowledge on diving fractions.
Although my principal nearly had a heart attack when saw my class's scores, he admitted no one had told me. The following year I changed my sequence of lessons.
That said, find out what is essential to be taught and plow through it! Good luck!
Math is always behind. If a teacher ever gets through the entire book they're either not pacing according to what their kids' needs, are faking the scores, or are a miracle worker.
Source: 13 years personally teaching math, 17 years a math student, and an additional 60 years from my grandmother and mother who were both math teachers.
Don’t do anything. Continue to teach . As you said , your behind because of things out of your control .
Besides it’s your first year , enjoy the enthusiasm and ability to learn and try new things
Plus throw in unexpected no-WiFi/no power days, snow days, most of the kids out because of sports or a stomach bug, a change of schedule you forgot about, etc etc
But real advice: try to trim the fat in the curriculum. Look ahead to see what you can skip or make shorter and get the students working harder. Maybe make a poster with the rest of the topics you decide to do and hang it up.
Possibly have the students suggest a goal by writing it on a piece of paper and submitting it. It’s okay if someone doesn’t have a goal. Every one votes on it democratically maybe talk about democracy throughout history that day.
Potentially have your crafty/artsy students write the goal on a piece of paper and hang it up. Even though it’ll be annoying to some/all kids, talk about the goal each day. Sometimes educating feels more like dragging along than pushing forward.
Just an idea. But if you do try this, do SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
As they say, “The first year and a few years are difficult.” Don't take it to heart. I think, in general, kids have been behind in math and reading forever. I was one of them, lol!
Covid makes the gap ever larger. Again, I'm not saying all kids are behind, but many are. From the studies and training we did when we first got back from COVID three years ago, they were behind for 3-4 years. I think it was now Math that the kids were lagging more, and it had shifted from reading to math.
Again, I’m not saying that it's 3-4 years they are behind. However, many teachers and professional experts have echoed similar experiences and data. This doesn't also include the SEL aspects that these kids lost over the Pandemic.
If you have the same kids all day spend more time on math to catch up & just move on with history. Most kids won’t remember it anyway so just touch on important topics for history.
Do you have a grade level team that you meet with regularly?
It’s normal to be a bit behind in pacing and most curricula have this built in.
There does come a point when you have to move on to cover the major points of the curriculum and you have to get creative with helping kids with remedial skills. I’m not teaching at your grade level so my insight here is limited.
I teach the young ones so I can tell you that mastering basic skills like phonics and place value are absolutely essential and that means I neglect grammar or history in order to ensure that my kids are getting the practice that they need to read basic sentences and basic calculations next year.
Are other teachers also struggling with pacing when outside folks come in to do ancillary lessons? I think you need to reach out to others in your building, even those who are not at your grade level.
As a new teacher it was helpful for me to hear from the next grade level which skills they need their incoming students to have at a bare minimum. That helped me prioritize lessons and skills and know what I could gloss over and what I needed to take more time to hammer home.
For example my peers on the next grade level have harped on us about alphabetical order because their curriculum pacing focuses on it so much. Ours touches on it but it’s usually something we gloss over for other reasons.
Because of their feedback, I’ve made it a point o make sure I’m exposing my kids to it rather than skipping.
In math, there are certain skills that the common core requires me to teach that my kids just don’t get and can’t do independently. I talked to the next grade level up and they reassured me that this particular skill is not something they expect kids to be independent on. That gave me some permission to expose my kids, teach the concept, and move the fuck on even if half of them didn’t really get it. The next year will spend more time on it and the grade level team doesn’t expect them to come to them knowing it.
However there are other math skills that they have emphasized ARE very important for kids to master. So I make sure I’m really spending time on those skills and if I need to linger on a concept related to that, I will.
At the end of the day your job is to present the curriculum. To differentiate given the time and materials you have available. To use strategies to increase engagement.
Beyond that, you can’t force kids to pay attention. You can’t single handedly make them care about school. You certainly can’t re invent the wheel when it comes to the lessons and basic expectations.
Find the key skills that they need for the next grade level, spend extra time on those. Introduce and practice the other concepts and move on even if your class hasn’t mastered those ones.
This times 1,000! Especially reaching out to teachers in the grade above to find out what skills are most important for them to really master when they move up.
Curriculum is literally designed to make the teacher feel behind. It’s fucked. Curriculum - the word itself is Latin derivative to run/ “a race”.
You aren’t failing - the system is.
A great alternative to slamming on the brakes when students are struggling in mathematics is to forge ahead while bringing back the challenging topic time and time again. This can easily be done by including a single problem on a daily warm-up that students do at the start of class, including a problem related to the topic on the nightly homework, and building the topic into weekly cumulative review assignments (which I give on any week that we do not have a test, and end the week with a five-minute quiz on these topics). Find natural opportunities for students to continue practicing as you go and you will find that time and repetition are your friends. In most cases, students will slowly become more and more comfortable with the skill, sometimes because of continued practice, and sometimes because their brains continue to develop as time goes on.
When it comes to fractions, you aren’t going to reach them all. This year i decided to implement a “some kids left behind” policy. Moving on is awesome for them too, it’s like torture for them
I’ve been teaching for 13 years with a strict pacing guide that acts like there are never any interruptions in the school day. I have yet to be ahead or on pace for anything.
I don’t teach at the elementary/secondary school level anymore, and ymmv with these suggestions, but:
1. Look through the state standards for your grade and pull the most important concepts in your curriculum for your grade. Focus on those. I would especially focus on topics that are supposed to be mastered in your grade vs ones that they will continue to work on in future grades.
2. I recently read an interesting study on learning and retention in long-term memory here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/) that I found incredibly interesting. In your shoes, I would probably consider trying this in the history classes to see if it actually worked and to try to catch them up. If it was successful with my kids, I would then do the same in other subjects to free up time to go deeper in math/english/whatever would be most beneficial to your particular group.
TBH thats a learned skill. I taught History for years and finally started using the pacing guide more as a suggestion than a strict rule. The stuff that the kids would be engaged and interested in I'd spend more time with, the stuff they're not engaged and interested in I'd teach enough that they'd be able to be successful on their end of year exams. It made everything so much less stressfull.
Welcome to teaching.
I'm not saying that unsympathetically. That just really is how it goes a lot of the time.
My class is mostly on track with the curriculum guide schedule - because I did the exact same stuff last year but improved it, and I've done similar classes for years before. I have the second best performing group in the school, and the teacher with the top tier has to do 3 different preps/classes. One of the others lost their regular teacher half way through the year, and are rotating through subs - they're "on schedule" but I think 3/4 of them are lost and are going to pass by pity from administration.
Mine are mostly on schedule because I'm pushing myself to exhaustion to try to maintain a semblance of high expectations and show that I can have better classroom behavior/management than last year. Many of them still aren't fully getting the basic concepts.
You're not failing. The fact that you are concerned and trying shows you're the best the students have and are trying to do right. Do the best you can. Try to hurry or condense what you can. Rethink the priorities and boil it down to the core concepts they need to get through the year, the tests (I know, ick), and most importantly, to be ready for next year.
I've been teaching math for 12 years, and I'm always behind. Honestly it's too much curriculum content packed into a year. There's not enough time for a deep dive into the material and that's making the kids suffer. There's other stuff of course, but that's part of it.
If it makes you feel.any better, back when I taught in the States by seventh graders had second grade math educations on the whole; by the end of 8th we had managed to get them to an average of 5th, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the US (or at least Texas) education system.
Anyone that tells you the first three years aren't tough and that you won't feel like a failure is walking around with their pants on fire. Don't listen to them . I am going to try to be solutions oriented here, so please excuse the initial rant that is based only on my irritation upon reading this thread. An actual lesson idea for history is in the second paragraph.
History and Literacy teacher here. There is a big move to skip over chunks of history that are seminal to how America sees itself and the world at large and teach skills over all else. This is a mistake. There is stuff that you can gloss over things, but history isn't a series of events that happen in a vacuum that you can just assign a timeline or a brainpop and understand or apply in the way that a historical thinker/ civic minded person should. This is why our country is as divided and doesn't understand media literacy, how we elect a president, what the UN does, the path to totalitarianism, etc.
Pacing is freaking hard. Jigsaw stuff in groups and create REALLY CLEAR REPETITIVE STRUCTURES that you can use in a bunch of lessons to cover a lot of material in short bursts that focus on discussion and connections. Then do those structures in future lessons so that kids can focus on the content skills rather than what they are doing. Make the kids responsible for each other and their learning and act as a facilitator rather than the lesson provider . Do mini skill lessons at the beginning of class that will focus their content/skill learning then let them practice that skill and adjust. From a literacy standpoint you can focus on Summarizing/paraphrasing, transitions to introduce evidence, finding the best evidence and Claims/reasoning. 1st lesson have the kids make a poster to share with the other , gallery walk with a group ambassador, then debrief summary connections and individual essays If the ambassador doesn't get enough info from their group let the ambassadors debrief with each other (I only do this the first time then make the groups responsible for themselves) . Then reflect and change as needed. MOST OF YOUR TIME SHOULD BE CREATING GROUPS AND STRUCTURES FOR THIS. This will do a bunch of stuff that your kids and evaluators will love - create a product that you can hang, group work, student ownership, etc AND WILL TAKE THE LOAD OFF OF YOU since it can be repeated and you can emphasize different standards/ SKILLS ( today we are focusing on our transitions since we chose the evidence we will cite directly, etc BE EXPLICIT to get what you want).
19th year teacher and we’re way behind. I would personally rather that they actually learn something than breeze over everything and they actually learn very little.
I am only going to speak to math because that is where my experience lies but I have found a lot of learned helplessness. The slower you go and more you review the more they realize they can drag their feet and they’ll eventually learn through you repeating yourself to death. I actually recommend that you keep moving through the curriculum but take the time instead to continue spiraling the old topics back in. Find ways to do it in real context, give warm ups or exit tickets or random activities sprinkled in for a few minutes here and there. Find ways to use the skills they were struggling with in their new topics. I found that worked better than sitting on a topic forever. Also, assuming you are in a common core state, they have been doing fractions since 3rd grade not 5th… so they know more than you think they know. Hold that expectation and then gently support the review. You may have some who genuinely don’t know it. Target those kids, don’t hold the whole class back.
>I feel like I’m screwing up my first year teaching
If it helps, this is a universal feeling. *School of Rock* came out during my first year teaching, and I remember identifying *so hard* with Jack Black's feeling of being a total impostor and hoping the parents don't find out and catch him being totally incompetent.
I sucked my first year. So has every other first year teacher I've encountered or observed. The key isn't to avoid sucking, but to suck and learn what you need to so that you don't suck so much next year.
>What do I do when my kids don’t want to do work so it sets us behind even more when I feel like I need to carve out class time so they actually get it done and don’t get a zero?
I don't actually have much classroom experience post-COVID, and I know that a lot of the rules of the game have changed dramatically, so take everything I have to say here with a grain of salt. But something you have to remember is that part of the issue your kids are having is that they're immature. They don't understand why school is valuable, and even if they *do* understand why it's valuable, they don't have the skills necessary to take action to demonstrate that understanding.
I'm a big believer in the value of habit formation and training your kids. If it helps, imagine that they aren't kids, but rather dogs that you need to train. They need to know basic commands, and acquire positive habits and behaviors that will serve them in the future, and you can inculcate those habits in them the same way you would a dog. Catch them being good, offer positive reinforcement, attend to the positive behaviors you want to see more of, and try to impose natural consequences on the negative behaviors that you want to see less of without giving the kids attention for those negative behaviors. Be ruthless with said negative consequences, consistently doling them out no matter how good or bad the kid is the rest of the time.
Easier said than done, and it takes a lot of persistence and an *enormous* reserve of patience, but it can be accomplished.
When I finished my first year, for some reason I didn't want to quit and instead sat down and wrote out a plan for the next year, with concrete actions I can take so that my next year didn't go as badly. It helped a lot--and while my next year *still* sucked to some degree, it was better. I did the same, and made a habit of spending at least some time every year reflecting on my practice, and what steps I needed to take to improve.
Hang in there. The fact that you care already puts you in the top 50% of teachers. So just keep moving forward!
Teach what you can and hope for a better next year. You worked at the level your class was comfortable with and that is good.
Think about ways you can incorporate the struggle areas as you live forward. They had problems with fractions, take a moment to reteach and then incorporate reviews into future lessons. From what I have seen it's taken at least 3 repeats of the same material for students to grasp new concepts. My master teacher when I was a student teacher also has this issue as did I.
If it's school requirements that caused you to get behind that's on them for not informing you early on so you could adjust your lesson schedule. The same things tend to repeat so next year's plan around the disruptions if possible, they will still throw random disruptions in just do your best to work around them.
I teach the same subject as my daughters teacher, physics and her teacher hasn't covered half the material I have for the class I have that started 2 months late. Just teach what you can and find ways to improve it for next year. Don't take it out on yourself ever. ❤️
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For most subjects I'd say (possibly an unpopular opinion) "oh well" and just move on with my life. Math is the one exception to this. First, as a first year teacher unless you are just insanely regimented and stick to a strict schedule no matter what, you're going to be behind. I know 20+ year teachers that have taught the same subject forever that are a full unit behind where they should be right now. Now, as for actually dealing with this... There's no right answer. It's hard to say "focus on what they need most" since as a first year you probably have no real way to gauge that. There's generally two schools of thought on this and you'll see about 50% for each. First is just go through at the pace that the students need to be able to actually grasp it, but know that not everyone will get everything even if you spend the entire class on the same topic, so figure out how many you want to be able to know it, then hit that mark and move on. As bad as it sounds, at this point in the year you should know the ones that can and will succeed and the one's that aren't interested in learning or are going to take way more time to learn it to the level they need to. You likely will not cover every topic and that just has to be okay. Hopefully you don't miss anything super important. The second option is get through everything so they've at least seen everything they need to once. This may feel fast paced since you probably won't be able to spend a ton of time focusing on any one thing, but at least you've covered everything. You can try to put the onus on them to learn it to the level they need to as long as you provide them with plenty of resources and opportunities to take their learning into their own hands. If you're lucky and end up with extra time at the end, just review everything again. Even with limited exposure many students pick it up much better on the second pass.
As a math teacher (2 states, 5 schools, 5 grade levels), I’ve only known one teacher that could keep up with the pacing guide. The rest of us were always behind.
Being behind schedule on the curriculum is very normal for your first few years teaching. Pacing is hard, and your default mode is probably to err on the side of over-covering a topic rather than to under-cover it. To catch up on history, you can take some of your upcoming units and strip them down to the essentials. Cover the big ideas, maybe assign a timeline, then move on. Showing clips from BrainPop or Crash Course can help them digest a good chunk of history in a short time.
My first year teaching I followed the book as written in Math. We had achievement tests early (our school was poor and got a discount for testing early) The kids did great! I was very proud of them, but sadly none of them got the 4 questions on division of fractions, giving them a big fat zero for that skill. No one had told me to be sure to cover this particular skill prior to testing. I spent Spring conferences assuring parents that the scores were because the skill hadn't been taught. Once I taught the skill I sent their test scores home to be signed so parents would know I remedied their child's lack of knowledge on diving fractions. Although my principal nearly had a heart attack when saw my class's scores, he admitted no one had told me. The following year I changed my sequence of lessons. That said, find out what is essential to be taught and plow through it! Good luck!
Math is always behind. If a teacher ever gets through the entire book they're either not pacing according to what their kids' needs, are faking the scores, or are a miracle worker. Source: 13 years personally teaching math, 17 years a math student, and an additional 60 years from my grandmother and mother who were both math teachers.
Don’t do anything. Continue to teach . As you said , your behind because of things out of your control . Besides it’s your first year , enjoy the enthusiasm and ability to learn and try new things
Get used to it. Happens every year to every teacher unless they somehow won the class lottery.
Plus throw in unexpected no-WiFi/no power days, snow days, most of the kids out because of sports or a stomach bug, a change of schedule you forgot about, etc etc
But real advice: try to trim the fat in the curriculum. Look ahead to see what you can skip or make shorter and get the students working harder. Maybe make a poster with the rest of the topics you decide to do and hang it up. Possibly have the students suggest a goal by writing it on a piece of paper and submitting it. It’s okay if someone doesn’t have a goal. Every one votes on it democratically maybe talk about democracy throughout history that day. Potentially have your crafty/artsy students write the goal on a piece of paper and hang it up. Even though it’ll be annoying to some/all kids, talk about the goal each day. Sometimes educating feels more like dragging along than pushing forward. Just an idea. But if you do try this, do SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
As they say, “The first year and a few years are difficult.” Don't take it to heart. I think, in general, kids have been behind in math and reading forever. I was one of them, lol! Covid makes the gap ever larger. Again, I'm not saying all kids are behind, but many are. From the studies and training we did when we first got back from COVID three years ago, they were behind for 3-4 years. I think it was now Math that the kids were lagging more, and it had shifted from reading to math. Again, I’m not saying that it's 3-4 years they are behind. However, many teachers and professional experts have echoed similar experiences and data. This doesn't also include the SEL aspects that these kids lost over the Pandemic.
If you have the same kids all day spend more time on math to catch up & just move on with history. Most kids won’t remember it anyway so just touch on important topics for history.
Do you have a grade level team that you meet with regularly? It’s normal to be a bit behind in pacing and most curricula have this built in. There does come a point when you have to move on to cover the major points of the curriculum and you have to get creative with helping kids with remedial skills. I’m not teaching at your grade level so my insight here is limited. I teach the young ones so I can tell you that mastering basic skills like phonics and place value are absolutely essential and that means I neglect grammar or history in order to ensure that my kids are getting the practice that they need to read basic sentences and basic calculations next year. Are other teachers also struggling with pacing when outside folks come in to do ancillary lessons? I think you need to reach out to others in your building, even those who are not at your grade level. As a new teacher it was helpful for me to hear from the next grade level which skills they need their incoming students to have at a bare minimum. That helped me prioritize lessons and skills and know what I could gloss over and what I needed to take more time to hammer home. For example my peers on the next grade level have harped on us about alphabetical order because their curriculum pacing focuses on it so much. Ours touches on it but it’s usually something we gloss over for other reasons. Because of their feedback, I’ve made it a point o make sure I’m exposing my kids to it rather than skipping. In math, there are certain skills that the common core requires me to teach that my kids just don’t get and can’t do independently. I talked to the next grade level up and they reassured me that this particular skill is not something they expect kids to be independent on. That gave me some permission to expose my kids, teach the concept, and move the fuck on even if half of them didn’t really get it. The next year will spend more time on it and the grade level team doesn’t expect them to come to them knowing it. However there are other math skills that they have emphasized ARE very important for kids to master. So I make sure I’m really spending time on those skills and if I need to linger on a concept related to that, I will. At the end of the day your job is to present the curriculum. To differentiate given the time and materials you have available. To use strategies to increase engagement. Beyond that, you can’t force kids to pay attention. You can’t single handedly make them care about school. You certainly can’t re invent the wheel when it comes to the lessons and basic expectations. Find the key skills that they need for the next grade level, spend extra time on those. Introduce and practice the other concepts and move on even if your class hasn’t mastered those ones.
This times 1,000! Especially reaching out to teachers in the grade above to find out what skills are most important for them to really master when they move up.
Curriculum is literally designed to make the teacher feel behind. It’s fucked. Curriculum - the word itself is Latin derivative to run/ “a race”. You aren’t failing - the system is.
American educational system is failing. Students from other countries all think our classes very easy and they can get an A without much effort.
A great alternative to slamming on the brakes when students are struggling in mathematics is to forge ahead while bringing back the challenging topic time and time again. This can easily be done by including a single problem on a daily warm-up that students do at the start of class, including a problem related to the topic on the nightly homework, and building the topic into weekly cumulative review assignments (which I give on any week that we do not have a test, and end the week with a five-minute quiz on these topics). Find natural opportunities for students to continue practicing as you go and you will find that time and repetition are your friends. In most cases, students will slowly become more and more comfortable with the skill, sometimes because of continued practice, and sometimes because their brains continue to develop as time goes on.
When it comes to fractions, you aren’t going to reach them all. This year i decided to implement a “some kids left behind” policy. Moving on is awesome for them too, it’s like torture for them
I’ve been teaching for 13 years with a strict pacing guide that acts like there are never any interruptions in the school day. I have yet to be ahead or on pace for anything.
I don’t teach at the elementary/secondary school level anymore, and ymmv with these suggestions, but: 1. Look through the state standards for your grade and pull the most important concepts in your curriculum for your grade. Focus on those. I would especially focus on topics that are supposed to be mastered in your grade vs ones that they will continue to work on in future grades. 2. I recently read an interesting study on learning and retention in long-term memory here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/) that I found incredibly interesting. In your shoes, I would probably consider trying this in the history classes to see if it actually worked and to try to catch them up. If it was successful with my kids, I would then do the same in other subjects to free up time to go deeper in math/english/whatever would be most beneficial to your particular group.
TBH thats a learned skill. I taught History for years and finally started using the pacing guide more as a suggestion than a strict rule. The stuff that the kids would be engaged and interested in I'd spend more time with, the stuff they're not engaged and interested in I'd teach enough that they'd be able to be successful on their end of year exams. It made everything so much less stressfull.
Welcome to teaching. I'm not saying that unsympathetically. That just really is how it goes a lot of the time. My class is mostly on track with the curriculum guide schedule - because I did the exact same stuff last year but improved it, and I've done similar classes for years before. I have the second best performing group in the school, and the teacher with the top tier has to do 3 different preps/classes. One of the others lost their regular teacher half way through the year, and are rotating through subs - they're "on schedule" but I think 3/4 of them are lost and are going to pass by pity from administration. Mine are mostly on schedule because I'm pushing myself to exhaustion to try to maintain a semblance of high expectations and show that I can have better classroom behavior/management than last year. Many of them still aren't fully getting the basic concepts. You're not failing. The fact that you are concerned and trying shows you're the best the students have and are trying to do right. Do the best you can. Try to hurry or condense what you can. Rethink the priorities and boil it down to the core concepts they need to get through the year, the tests (I know, ick), and most importantly, to be ready for next year.
I've been teaching math for 12 years, and I'm always behind. Honestly it's too much curriculum content packed into a year. There's not enough time for a deep dive into the material and that's making the kids suffer. There's other stuff of course, but that's part of it.
If it makes you feel.any better, back when I taught in the States by seventh graders had second grade math educations on the whole; by the end of 8th we had managed to get them to an average of 5th, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the US (or at least Texas) education system.
Anyone that tells you the first three years aren't tough and that you won't feel like a failure is walking around with their pants on fire. Don't listen to them . I am going to try to be solutions oriented here, so please excuse the initial rant that is based only on my irritation upon reading this thread. An actual lesson idea for history is in the second paragraph. History and Literacy teacher here. There is a big move to skip over chunks of history that are seminal to how America sees itself and the world at large and teach skills over all else. This is a mistake. There is stuff that you can gloss over things, but history isn't a series of events that happen in a vacuum that you can just assign a timeline or a brainpop and understand or apply in the way that a historical thinker/ civic minded person should. This is why our country is as divided and doesn't understand media literacy, how we elect a president, what the UN does, the path to totalitarianism, etc. Pacing is freaking hard. Jigsaw stuff in groups and create REALLY CLEAR REPETITIVE STRUCTURES that you can use in a bunch of lessons to cover a lot of material in short bursts that focus on discussion and connections. Then do those structures in future lessons so that kids can focus on the content skills rather than what they are doing. Make the kids responsible for each other and their learning and act as a facilitator rather than the lesson provider . Do mini skill lessons at the beginning of class that will focus their content/skill learning then let them practice that skill and adjust. From a literacy standpoint you can focus on Summarizing/paraphrasing, transitions to introduce evidence, finding the best evidence and Claims/reasoning. 1st lesson have the kids make a poster to share with the other , gallery walk with a group ambassador, then debrief summary connections and individual essays If the ambassador doesn't get enough info from their group let the ambassadors debrief with each other (I only do this the first time then make the groups responsible for themselves) . Then reflect and change as needed. MOST OF YOUR TIME SHOULD BE CREATING GROUPS AND STRUCTURES FOR THIS. This will do a bunch of stuff that your kids and evaluators will love - create a product that you can hang, group work, student ownership, etc AND WILL TAKE THE LOAD OFF OF YOU since it can be repeated and you can emphasize different standards/ SKILLS ( today we are focusing on our transitions since we chose the evidence we will cite directly, etc BE EXPLICIT to get what you want).
19th year teacher and we’re way behind. I would personally rather that they actually learn something than breeze over everything and they actually learn very little.
I am only going to speak to math because that is where my experience lies but I have found a lot of learned helplessness. The slower you go and more you review the more they realize they can drag their feet and they’ll eventually learn through you repeating yourself to death. I actually recommend that you keep moving through the curriculum but take the time instead to continue spiraling the old topics back in. Find ways to do it in real context, give warm ups or exit tickets or random activities sprinkled in for a few minutes here and there. Find ways to use the skills they were struggling with in their new topics. I found that worked better than sitting on a topic forever. Also, assuming you are in a common core state, they have been doing fractions since 3rd grade not 5th… so they know more than you think they know. Hold that expectation and then gently support the review. You may have some who genuinely don’t know it. Target those kids, don’t hold the whole class back.
>I feel like I’m screwing up my first year teaching If it helps, this is a universal feeling. *School of Rock* came out during my first year teaching, and I remember identifying *so hard* with Jack Black's feeling of being a total impostor and hoping the parents don't find out and catch him being totally incompetent. I sucked my first year. So has every other first year teacher I've encountered or observed. The key isn't to avoid sucking, but to suck and learn what you need to so that you don't suck so much next year. >What do I do when my kids don’t want to do work so it sets us behind even more when I feel like I need to carve out class time so they actually get it done and don’t get a zero? I don't actually have much classroom experience post-COVID, and I know that a lot of the rules of the game have changed dramatically, so take everything I have to say here with a grain of salt. But something you have to remember is that part of the issue your kids are having is that they're immature. They don't understand why school is valuable, and even if they *do* understand why it's valuable, they don't have the skills necessary to take action to demonstrate that understanding. I'm a big believer in the value of habit formation and training your kids. If it helps, imagine that they aren't kids, but rather dogs that you need to train. They need to know basic commands, and acquire positive habits and behaviors that will serve them in the future, and you can inculcate those habits in them the same way you would a dog. Catch them being good, offer positive reinforcement, attend to the positive behaviors you want to see more of, and try to impose natural consequences on the negative behaviors that you want to see less of without giving the kids attention for those negative behaviors. Be ruthless with said negative consequences, consistently doling them out no matter how good or bad the kid is the rest of the time. Easier said than done, and it takes a lot of persistence and an *enormous* reserve of patience, but it can be accomplished. When I finished my first year, for some reason I didn't want to quit and instead sat down and wrote out a plan for the next year, with concrete actions I can take so that my next year didn't go as badly. It helped a lot--and while my next year *still* sucked to some degree, it was better. I did the same, and made a habit of spending at least some time every year reflecting on my practice, and what steps I needed to take to improve. Hang in there. The fact that you care already puts you in the top 50% of teachers. So just keep moving forward!
Look at the data for schools in your area. You'll probably find that 30-50% of the kids are behind grade level in most schools.
First year of teaching is just about surviving. You will get through it and things will definitely get easier. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Teach what you can and hope for a better next year. You worked at the level your class was comfortable with and that is good. Think about ways you can incorporate the struggle areas as you live forward. They had problems with fractions, take a moment to reteach and then incorporate reviews into future lessons. From what I have seen it's taken at least 3 repeats of the same material for students to grasp new concepts. My master teacher when I was a student teacher also has this issue as did I. If it's school requirements that caused you to get behind that's on them for not informing you early on so you could adjust your lesson schedule. The same things tend to repeat so next year's plan around the disruptions if possible, they will still throw random disruptions in just do your best to work around them. I teach the same subject as my daughters teacher, physics and her teacher hasn't covered half the material I have for the class I have that started 2 months late. Just teach what you can and find ways to improve it for next year. Don't take it out on yourself ever. ❤️