Frustrated New Teachers Ask; “How Can I Complete Everything?”

“How can I do it all?” is one of the first questions beginning teachers agonize over. There are so many new tasks and duties that are pulling at your time. And the lesson planning is what you really want to concentrate on.

How can I challenge all students? Can I contribute to my school as a teacher? What are the best strategies to use in each lesson?

BUT you have to attend all these mandated meetings, and you still have to set up your classroom and meet with your grade level team.

Take a deep breath; it gets easier each year!

The first thing you need to know is that It gets easier each year, so take a deep breath and TELL YOURSELF “I CAN DO THIS!” 🙂

AND, to help you out a little bit, I am giving away my “Classroom Routines Checklist” for FREE when you complete the form below. Just provide your email address and I will send it right to you!

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The story below will help illustrate that the “struggle is real.”

The first year of full time teaching (I was a substitute for about six months before) was a third/fourth combination class. The class was in a school and district with high numbers of second language learners (Hispanic).

It was the second week of school and I was sitting at my desk after school working on my lesson plans.

I can still picture the classroom and where my desk was. A “seasoned” teacher was teasing me that I was staying too late…I didn’t have my own kids yet.

Like the highly organized person that I am, I had already mapped out the LA/Math/SS/ and Science into the ten months of the school year. (Mind you, this was two hundred and fifty years ago (wink) so it was before common core and state standards. And GASP…it was before computers.

We had a large document called a district curriculum plan. Anyway, I was just getting my first look at the brand new Health Curriculum (we also had Music curriculum back then)…don’t you just love brand new books?

And Then I Realized….I Can’t Fit This ALL into the Allotted Hours in the School Day!!!

That was my very first realization that “you can’t do it all.” This was quite a realization to a 24-year-old teacher.

Up until then, I was always confident that I could do everything required in the different curricula/texts for each subject area in Elementary School.

At first I panicked, thinking this was a reflection of something I was doing wrong, or leaving out in my ten-month long-term mapping.

So, knowing Language Arts and Math needed to be taught daily, I went back through the Social Studies and Science curriculums to see if I had those correct or not.

After finding these correct also, I compromised and knew that I had to map out times weekly for these other subjects, since daily wouldn’t ever work.

You might also be interested in some other articles I have written about being organized.

Teacher Organization- How to Prepare and Stay Focused.

12 Reliable Survival Tips for First Year Teachers.

How to ROCK your Grade-level change like a PRO.

On a side note; here’s a personal story.

On a little side note, fast forward about 20 years and I’m a site principal for a K-3rd grade school site and my secretary tells me I have a phone call from a former student and did I want to take the call.

I said of course, and it ended up being one of the fourth grade students from this class.

She told me that I had motivated her to be a teacher and that she is the first person in her family to earn a college degree. And she is happily married with a small child. She also said she was in her third year teaching and wanted to let me know that she appreciated all that I had done to motivate her and help her stay on the path and become a teacher.

I’m getting tears in my eyes right now as I’m typing this. Those rewarding times are what makes life great, aren’t they?

Back to the Original part of this story.

The next idea I had was to try to cross reference and combine some portions of the health curriculum with some of the science or reading units that covered similar information.

And also to attempt to embed some of the music lessons to correlate to stories in either English Language Arts or Social Studies. Problem solved, well partially, anyway; since give and take means you have to give something up.

To put a song about the Eerie Canal into my Social Studies unit on Maps meant that I had to shorten the map lesson(s) in order to add the music lesson.

Thus begins the juggling act that is the TRUTH FOR ALL ELEMENTARY TEACHERS!

With the onset of Common Core, some of your choices are taken away from teachers. Many of you are now mandated to teach particular items/skills/concepts.

But the truth remains that you can’t do it all – the challenge comes in deciding what is the most crucial for your new group of students each year.

And since each group of students is different each year, this may change from year to year. You may find that you need to spend more time on phonics with one group and then the next year you need to spend more time on Math and number facts.

I bet you are wondering about all of the other tasks and duties that teachers are bombarded with as each school year begins.

How do you fit all of those into your small little prep period (if you even get that)? Well, that also becomes a juggling act. As you delve into my blog more you will find other articles that address the extra duties of teachers.

Just keep in mind, you’re not the only one who can’t do it all! It’s the truth for all teachers.

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!

Your Teacher Buddy