a new teacher, what would it be? If you are a new teacher, what advice would you give to older teachers? Mine would be: Put your family and yourself before you put work.
I agree! Mine is similar- Don’t let work overtake your own life and interests. Create a healthy balance.
Everyone's got their own teaching style, it takes trial and error, but you will learn what works for you.
Take care of you! As cliche as that saying is, I am learning the hard way the damage this does if you don't. You HAVE to take care of you. Make and keep your doctor appointments before something is wrong. It is not your fault there are not subs or coverage. If you need to take care of something do it. Your health will suffer if you don't.
Lots of good advice! I would echo this Take care of you. Mrs.Rose, my mentor teacher, told me take care of myself first and to keep scheduled health appointments. I tried to follow that advice. I would make a doctor/dentist appointment in the middle of the day about a month after school started. I would take a day off, go to my appointment, and enjoy the rest of the day just for me.
My advice: as much as we love our jobs, it’s just a job. Work contract hours as much as possible and always put you and your family first. Also, try not to spend your own money on your classroom.
If your district pays you more if you have credits - get the credits - max out what you can earn and save save save for retirement! Check and see if you are in a state where you lose the ability to get your spouse's (or your own) social security - that can hurt later.
I have 2 things that I realised super quickly as a new teacher. I’m over a decade in now. 1. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, many resources are already made and adapting something is quicker than making something from scratch. 2. Also, make sure you own your classroom management game. If you suck at it, ask for advice, ask to observe other colleagues who are good at it, read books, try different strategies etc. but don’t keep doing the same thing and expect your students to magically change their behaviour because it won’t happen. Never underestimate the power of constant communication with parents. If your classroom management sucks, your every day life will be nothing but miserable, and there will be barely any meaningful teaching or learning happening, which is the reason all of us became teachers.
Realize that if you give up everything for teaching (health, $, time, family and friends), you will have nothing when you leave teaching. Your school, your district, most of your colleagues, the students, parents, and so on, aren't coming with you in retirement.
Be open to trusting your students and letting them trust you back. If they trust you today, they will learn from you tomorrow. If you give them choices today, you can ask them to abide by your choices down the road. Yes, this is straight out of Love & Logic. I swear by it for a reason.
Find a district that will pay a decent salary. Start putting something away for your own personal retirement account.
Yes, definitely put money away. It boggles my mind that people don't live within their means and do not have money to put into savings. Oh, I can't save money because my car payment is $999 a month. UMMMM....???
Yes, but it varies from state to state. Where I am now, I have a mandatory 16% of my paycheck that goes straight into the state retirement plan, plus a small amount taken out to pay into medicare. I don't pay into social security, nor am I eligible for SS unless I work enough quarters in the private sector. I will be eligible for medicare as well as health insurance through the state (unless they change it before I retire, which is likely). My state has three choices of plan and I went with the one where my (eventual) husband or minor child would receive the monthly payout in the event of my death. I work a side gig as a city employee at a pay rate just above minimum wage only because it also pays into my pension and counts towards the required quarters for fund maturity. Where I'm from, the mandatory contribution is 9. some-odd percent, plus medicare AND social security, but I wouldn't be eligible to get SS. Stupid, I know. Teachers pay into SS in IL but can't get the money back unless you also work enough quarters at another job. The stability of the funds is also dependent on your state. The state I left is in terrible shape after a governor embezzled from the fund. My (eventual) mother-in-law lost a lot of money that way. My current state was something like 84% funded last thing I heard, which isn't too bad. Portability rules are different as well. I can take money I paid into other states' funds and transfer it to my state, but MIL can't take hers out of IL and put it into AZ's plan now that she's eligible for their plan. It's a patchwork mess that contributes to the teacher shortages in some places. Long story short, we have teacher pension plans, but in many places it's prudent to have a private 401k, IRA, or other retirement plan that you fund yourself because there's no guarantee that you'll get out what you paid into the state plan.
LOL well, it could be car payment or something else that they don't HAVE to spend that much money on. But they do. Then they cry the blues when they are broke @$$ senior citizens with no money saved. I saw an article that said in my area, to live comfortably, you will have to have at least 1million in savings when you retire. I guess that means retirement fund, etc.
Thanks for that, I think I understood most of it. Over here I paid 8% of my salary into my pension and my emplyer (the City) paid another 10% or so. For every year n the classroom I earn 1/80 of my final salary at retirement. So for me 26 years got me a pension of 26/80 of my final salary plus 3x whatever that figure is as a tax free lump sum. I was also able to transfer pension into lump sum at a 12x rate (Every £ I reduced my annual pension by I got £12 tax free in cash). So I took the maximum in cash. This gave me around £70k in cash to invest and a pension still large enough to cover all my bills (Mortgage was paid years back). The scheme has changed recently and new teachers pay a little more in but get 1/60 for every year worked but no lump sum. It is a national scheme so wherever you work in the UK it transfers. That coupled with the pension I got from a previous career in Aerospace has set me up comfortably. When I add in the money I get subbing plus my other little side line of being my building's janitor things are quite rosy at the moment. Just waiting for Covid to go so we can get back to some globetrotting.
Hopefully I'll save at least that much through pensions, Roth and savings, but I'm not going to "ball out of control" in retirement and I plan on being in a very low cost area. I can travel if I need to see stuff.
When we retire we'll only have taxes to pay but no mortgage. We'll have a gas and water bill but we have solar panels so our electric bill is miniscule. The only thing I worry about is health care so hopefully we'll have enough socked away. I'd like to get into one of those ritzy assisted living homes if I make it to an age where I can't take care of my house any longer. There's one in my area that is super pricey but it sounds like a great place if you had no other options.
