New Teacher Tip #6

Continued from "Things I wish someone had told me before I started teaching (or maybe they did and I just didn't listen)"

6. Build a network of colleagues you can trust. Teaching can be a pretty lonely job. You spend hours every day in your classroom working with kids or planning, and no one ever really gets a sense of what's happening inside your room except for you. Find some colleagues that you can commiserate with. You'll need people to lean on when you have a challenging day or a boring staff meeting. You'll want a network of people to trade ideas or victories with, and at some level, you'll eventually crave adult conversation. Don't let your classroom become a cave from which you rarely emerge. Teaching is much more fun when you can share with people who know what you're going through, especially in those first years.