The most common type of teacher in schools today is a new one, according to Education Week.
Two examples show how modern challenges can play out for new teachers.
For most of her adult life, H., 30, worked on and off, towards a teaching degree. The whole journey from associate teaching degree through student-teaching, with breaks, took seven years and cost close to $60,000 in coursework and test fees.
A year into her hard-won teaching career, H. quit the profession.
“I wanted to quit as a student-teacher many times, but I didn’t because teaching was what I wanted to do my whole life. I thought it would be different in a real school. But it wasn’t,” said H., who requested to be identified by her first initial because, like the new teachers interviewed for this story, she worries about whether being named could impact her employment opportunities in the future.
The trouble began right away: H. said she was hired to teach kindergarten and 2nd grade three days before the school semester started and missed out on new-teacher orientation. She had no curriculum, and her class, while small, had lots of behavior and discipline problems she wasn’t equipped to meet.
“I would get advice about moving around the furniture or being firm. But there was no actual support,” said H., recalling a student who would knock over tables, and who was frequently suspended. “The school didn’t have a great way to deal with these behavioral issues.”
Like H., Chance Manzo got no “new teacher” orientation before launching into his teaching career in the 2022-23 school year. A former actor and bartender, Manzo decided to get his teaching degree at 39, after the pandemic ravaged the service industry. “I wanted a COVID-proof profession,” Manzo said.
He teaches at the PAEC Center, a special needs school in Maywood, Ill., which also acts as a hub for special needs students from neighboring districts. He, too, had a challenging start—but he’s keen to go down the path of special education. “I fell down the right hole,” he said.
Manzo said a mentor helped him learn how to grade student work, when lesson plans were due, and how to prepare Individualized Education Programs for students. But he lacked support on what curriculum to teach, and tools like manipulatives and calculators for his classes.
“It was a lot of cobbling together of resources and information from other teachers. The administration is too busy trying to get more bodies through the door,” Manzo added.
The chances that all new teachers experience the same kind of chaotic first week is now slim, experts who study teachers say, and nothing has hit the profession quite as hard as the pandemic. But the common tensions of feeling overwhelmed and under-supported leave new teachers with the same choices as H. and Manzo: soldier on or quit.
“There is often no clear, effective system when teachers walk in,” said Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard School of Graduate Education and director of The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers. “There has to be a schoolwide understanding of what its norms are.”
Education Week
