The first year of teaching is intense. Managing workload, getting to know your students and working out what good teaching looks like in practice all take time. And yet they are skills that ideally need to be mastered quickly. High drop-out rates among newly-trained teachers suggest the need for more help developing coping strategies throughout their early career.
The good news is that these challenges aren’t unique to you. Most new teachers experience them, and the knowledge and support of more experienced colleagues can make navigating that first year considerably easier. So, what can help you survive your first year of teaching?
Read on to learn about:
Difficulties of being an early career teacher
What does the research tell us about the first year of teaching? Bluntly – that it’s hard. A fairly high proportion of teachers leave the profession in their first year, but this drops significantly for every subsequent year a teacher remains in the job. Essentially, there is something about the first year that’s uniquely challenging. Why is this?
Many factors contribute to the increasing complexity of teacher workloads. Greater social expectations, coupled with lower societal recognition and growing accountability to parents, guardians and policymakers, mean the pressure has never been higher.
Other professions ease new graduates in, by providing lighter workloads, fewer clients and relatively straightforward cases.
Unfortunately, teacher preparation cannot fully replicate the realities of the classroom (particularly on behaviour and workload, the research suggests) which then represent a shock to the system.
Like engineering or business programmes, teacher training might benefit from more focus on realistic, complex problem-solving. But in the meantime, teachers are often thrown straight into the deep end. So how can you deal with this, and survive your first year as a teacher?
The phases of a teacher’s first year
Research has identified five common emotional stages that most new teachers experience in their first year.
- Anticipation: Characterised by excitement and anxiety.
- Reality shock: Early enthusiasm gives way to ‘reality’ and ‘culture’ shocks.
- Survival phase: Beginners may struggle to keep going.
- Disillusionment: Toward the end of the first term, morale dips, and teachers question their abilities, though the holiday break can help them recharge.
- Reflection: At the year’s end, teachers reflect on how it went and prepare for the following year.
There is another common, and more hopeful moment, however. When a teacher continues through the hard yards of the autumn term, it’s very common to see things begin to settle and click, particularly as the year heads towards the Easter break. There are a number of tools which can help smooth this transition, from self doubt and worry, to beginning to thrive.
Firstly – it is vital to remind yourself that you are not the only one. Reading articles like this one can help bring that back to mind, but also simply talking to more experienced colleagues will bring a glut of stories about the challenges of early career teaching and how to get through it. Equally, talking to the other early career teachers in your school can be really helpful, for exchanging tips, for camaraderie and esprit d’corps, and for keeping each other sane as you develop your craft.
Secondly – if behaviour is part of the difficulties you face, and it nearly always is, prioritise this. Lessons with poor behaviour are draining and demoralising, and are one of the experiences most likely to generate an “I can’t do this” feeling. The good news is that there are lots of small, practical wins that can make a big difference here – strategic seating plans, minimally invasive interventions, front loading the means of participation. A huge win is Pastore’s Perch, which simply changes where you stand in the room while giving instructions. There are many strides forward you can make with simple, nuts-and-bolts techniques like the above.
Thirdly – you need a system to self-reflect on your lessons. Consider keeping a lesson diary. The purpose of this is firstly to avoid a view of your own practice that skews negative. We all tend to pore over lessons that have gone wrong in excruciating detail, whereas the lessons that go well are a smaller positive bump. The diary invariably shows that this is not the case. The other purpose is to record small, concrete actions that either damaged the lesson or improved it. Over time you’ll build up a bank of what to avoid and what to replicate, and lesson quality will improve in a way that compounds.
It’s also useful to remind yourself of why you entered the profession, and to ask for help early and often. Research shows that to thrive in your role, key personal characteristics include altruistic motives, strong intrinsic motivation and a sense of self-efficacy. Understanding these phases can help you normalise your struggles and see that what feels overwhelming is in fact a shared experience.
Satisficing: the art of doing “good enough”
Early in your teaching career, aiming for perfection can be exhausting. Instead, focus on finding solutions that are good enough for now. Psychologists call this satisficing, doing what works well enough to keep you (and your students) moving forward.
Remember, the sufficient solution is not necessarily the optimal one. In your early years, you won’t get everything perfect, and that’s okay. Many new teachers are incredibly demanding of themselves, but constantly chasing the ‘perfect’ solution can lead to frustration and burnout.
For example, instead of spending hours designing the perfect lesson, use a proven template, adapt it quickly, and reflect afterwards on what could improve based on your experience of how the class went. Remember – all-singing all-dancing lessons that take hours to design are not necessarily any more effective. A simple, well-run lesson that takes the students from point A to point B should represent your typical professional rhythm.
Inexperience can make it hard to see how well you are doing, and the reality is you’ll never be able to please every student. Focus on doing your best with what you have, each day’s experience adds to your growing toolkit of solutions.
How can mentoring help?
Mentoring and induction programmes of various kinds have claimed to solve the teacher attrition problem, but the current evidence for their effectiveness is mixed. With research showing that teachers find it difficult asking for help, could mentoring be the key to supporting new teachers in the classroom?
Mentor relationships can provide valuable support for early career teachers. Having a positive, social and professional mentor who has ‘been there and done that’ helps you feel understood and gives a point of reference for advice. Motivation for experienced teachers to take on mentoring roles is often intangible, though mentoring benefits both parties, as it prompts reflection and dialogue about teaching practice.
Seeing teaching techniques demonstrated live, or modelled through videos can help new teachers visualise what effective practice looks like, and then apply those skills in their own classrooms.
One interesting study showed that early career teachers who were introduced to the concept of Retrieval Practice through video models and written instructions implemented it more effectively than those who only read about the theory. This highlights how powerful modelling can be in teacher training, not just for understanding a concept, but for translating it into action. It also underlines the valuable role that experienced mentors play in helping new teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice during those challenging first years.
If your school doesn’t have a formal mentoring programme, don’t be afraid to reach out informally. Even a short conversation in the staff room with an experienced teacher can help you feel understood and help you find realistic approaches to classroom challenges.
Final thoughts for early career teachers
Teaching doesn’t necessarily get easier because the problems go away. It gets easier because you become better equipped to deal with them. Each challenge you encounter adds to the bank of experience you can draw on next time, helping you make quicker and better decisions.
In your first year, you won’t always know the perfect solution, and often there won’t be one. Focus on finding an approach that works well enough, learn from what happens, and make use of the experience around you. Over time, those individual decisions start to become the professional judgement that experienced teachers rely on every day.
