During my first year of teaching, I had little clue what I was doing. I had no training, was on a temporary teacher’s license, and was thrown into this position after another educator left two weeks before the school year started.
I wanted to make math engaging for my students, but in reality, my seventh graders struggled to retain anything I “taught” them. Every day, we embarked on a new activity. We were up and moving, doing group work, and giving presentations.
But my nontraditional approach to teaching mathematics wasn’t working. I knew this because my students were falling behind the pacing guide the school district had given to me. My students were also failing their district assessments.
At the Deltona, Florida, middle school where I was working, I was so focused on being known as the young, cool teacher that I lost sight of what was important: getting the kids to learn and understand the material.
I tried to model myself after one of my favorite high school English teachers, but I couldn’t exactly replicate her creative literature lessons when teaching about rational numbers and probability.
My colleagues assumed that I was best positioned to understand students’ technology use, social behaviors, and slang — and while that was true, it didn’t necessarily translate into middle school math skills.
After driving myself mad with creative but ineffective lessons, I decided to reach out to a more experienced teacher to see what I was doing wrong. She told me to stop worrying so much about what the kids think of me and prioritize what they need to succeed. She helped me analyze my students’ classwork and test scores and taught me how to devise lesson plans.
The first thing she ever told me was to take a deep breath before planning out lessons. Then, she showed me how to plan nine weeks at a time, align my calendar with district deadlines, and use color-coordinated organizers — pink for group activities, for example, and blue for tests — to stay on track. She encouraged me to do student surveys with questions like “What do you like most about yourself?” and “What are your hobbies?” to get to know the kids better.
I am currently a fourth-year teacher — these days, I teach algebra to ninth and 10th graders. I realize now that much of what tripped me up early on was that I didn’t understand how to differentiate my lessons to meet the needs of diverse learners. What I found out the hard way is that differentiation means creating a lesson that meets the needs of each type of learner.
Changing course, I was able to stretch out my lessons over multiple days. I typically only needed three days to cover one section — on expressions, equations, and inequalities, say — and I was able to teach multiple types of learners in those three days.
On the first day of teaching a new section, I catered to the visual and auditory learners. Students were given guided notes that had definitions, example problems, and fill-in-the-blank statements. On the second day, I catered to the more hands-on learners, with gallery walks, scavenger hunts, and partner activities. On the third and final day, I would check students’ understanding of the concepts with a mini quiz, a Jeopardy! style classroom contest, or group discussion.
Many of my students had processing challenges and took longer to understand what I was teaching; I had to change how I taught my lessons and timeline so they could be successful in my class.
I learned from colleagues that every first-year teacher makes mistakes differentiating their lessons because of the pressure they are under. New teachers may also imagine cracking the code on creative and engaging lessons without considering that those lessons might not be what their students need.
I am still learning. Every child learns differently. I learned in my first year of teaching that not every kid wants to play educational games in class. Some might want to sit down, take notes, and work in a traditional setting because that’s how they feel they will succeed.
By the end of my first year teaching, my students’ math scores were up, the kids were more engaged, and by catering to my kids’ needs more, they were having fun.
Ivy Sage is a support facilitator for Algebra 1A and Algebra 1 for ninth and 10th grades at Pine Ridge High School, in Deltona, Florida. She has been teaching for four years. When she is not working, she enjoys going to theme parks with her fiancé and friends or spending time with her dog.