Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.
Jenna McNulty woke up at 3:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning with a 102-degree fever and chills. She’d need to take her first sick day as a teacher, but it wasn’t just a matter of sending a quick email and crawling back into bed. So McNulty, then a third grade teacher at Hamilton Heights Elementary School in Arcadia, got up and typed out detailed instructions for a substitute.
“As an elementary school teacher, your sub plans are, like, seven pages long, because you’re teaching eight subjects and also you’re with the same kids all day. So you know exactly how those kids work, who’s in charge of what, and who does what when,” she told Year One, a podcast documenting McNulty’s first year in the classroom in Indiana.
Each episode explores a different issue McNulty encountered during the 2023-24 school year, her first year on the job. In addition to sick days and substitutes, Year One tackles budgeting on a teacher’s salary, supporting students with IEPs, and managing challenging classroom behaviors.
When the curriculum and ed tech company Carnegie Learning, which produces Year One, approached McNulty about podcasting through her first year, she was nervous. She decided to share her story anyway to help other new educators through their own challenging firsts. “I hope that they take away that it is okay to not be a perfect teacher,” she told Chalkbeat. “In fact, there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. As much as your students are learning year after year, you are learning year after year, too.”
This school year is McNulty’s second in the classroom, and she’s teaching fifth grade math at Zionsville West Middle School in Whitestown.
The Year One podcast premiered in August, and new episodes, which McNulty recorded in real-time last school year, drop every few weeks. The next one, on spring challenges, comes out on April 8. McNulty’s experiences are the focus of the entire season, but the podcast, which is hosted by the journalist Kanika Chadda-Gupta, also features topical interviews with other educators.
McNulty spoke recently with Chalkbeat about how COVID restrictions affected her teacher training, classroom learning curves that were steep and surprising, and how podcast listeners are responding to Year One.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How and when did you decide to become a teacher?
I’ve wanted to teach for as long as I can remember. I was the kid who would beg to go to school. When I was at home, I would “play school” with my stuffed animals and print out worksheets for them to do. My mom was an educator, and she played a big role in sparking that interest in me.
Majoring in education in college was tough because it was during COVID. A lot of my student teaching and observation opportunities were stripped because of COVID, when my peers and I were not allowed to enter schools or schools were shut down in the first place. Luckily, by the time I was a senior, ready for my official student teaching placement, I was able to experience the full classroom in all its glory. While that showed me what being a teacher was really going to be like — which scared me a little, I won’t lie — it also affirmed my lifelong passion for teaching.
Why did you agree to document your first year in the classroom in a podcast?
I wanted to share my journey as a first-year teacher to document not only the rewarding moments of my first year in the classroom but also the challenges. I felt compelled to break the facade that I saw so much on social media that teaching is just colorful classroom decor and perfectly curated lesson plans. I hope to showcase the realities of being a teacher so educators like me can feel less alone.
What proved to be your biggest learning curve during your first year in the classroom? What was the most unexpected learning curve?
Behavior challenges. Learning what management strategies work for various groups of students feels like endless trial and error and can be exhausting at times! The most unexpected learning curve, though, was learning how to teach using my school’s curriculum. You really only feel comfortable using whatever your student teaching placement had you use, so to learn a whole new curriculum was an unexpected hurdle. I had to take extra unplanned time to understand how they wanted me to teach it.
The podcast tackles so many of your firsts. How did you choose what topics to cover?
As I was recording the podcast in real-time throughout my first year, certain milestones and topics kept coming up that would raise alarm bells to me as something I wasn’t necessarily fully prepared for coming into teaching. I knew that other new teachers would want to know how a real teacher tackled those things.
For example, I talked about state testing a lot on the podcast — helping students feel prepared while also providing social-emotional support. If the school you’re at emphasizes state testing, then especially as a third grade teacher, it’s going to take up a lot of your time and brain space.
What has been the audience response so far?
I knew it would resonate because it’s what I would’ve wanted as a first-year teacher. It lets new teachers take a peek into my diary, essentially, and so many new teachers are reaching out to me telling me how much the podcast has helped them feel prepared to enter the field. What did surprise me is how many veteran teachers have also been loving the podcast. Many told me that it has taken them back to their early years of teaching and reignited their spark for teaching.
I felt compelled to break the facade that I saw so much on social media...
What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?
This year, my favorite lesson to teach has been how to find common denominators while working with fractions. I was able to use storytelling as a teaching strategy, so the idea of making the denominators match really stuck with them. The story I told was about going out on a dinner date and not matching outfits with the person you are going with. Think of denominators as the pants you are wearing, and think of numerators as the shirts. You’re not ready to go out to dinner if you’re wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and your date is wearing a ski suit! You both need to change to match your fancy restaurant’s dress code.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?
The best advice I’ve ever received for teaching is that it’s still going to be there tomorrow. That huge stack of papers to grade, that parent email, that extra data form you need to fill out — it all will be there tomorrow. It is OK if your to-do list isn’t all the way completed by the time you leave school at the end of the day. There are literally only seven hours in your school day. You are human and can only do so much! It took me a couple of months of teaching to understand this advice and truly let myself live it out, but boy has it changed my perception of teaching and the workload it brings!
Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.
