New teachers fight jitters

Carrie Kirschner/The independent

Summit Thu, May 22 2008

— Teachers and students headed back to school Monday in the Boyd County School District, and for a handful of the system’s 275 teachers, it was a special day — their first as teachers.
Excitement mixed with nervousness was the dominant feeling among first-year teachers the weekend before school was set to start.
“I think I’m just excited to have my own class and get in and get my feet wet and experience everything we’ve talked about,” said Emily Ream a first-year physical education teacher at Boyd County High School.
“I just hope all my lessons go smoothly. I’m not really nervous about the kids. I’d rather talk to kids than adults.”
Ashley Sanders, another first-year teacher, said she was excited for the first day of class, too. Sanders is teaching English at her alma mater.
“I’m excited about trying out new ideas, seeing if they work or not,” she said.
Three days into the school year on Wednesday, Sanders said the job was meeting her expectations.
“It’s going great,” she said. “I was a little worried and nervous at first, but everybody has been really helpful and nice. All the students are really great; they are really energetic.”
“It’s a lot better than student teaching,” she said. “At first you’re nervous, but ultimately there is no one in there judging everything you do ... you’re a lot more comfortable and I enjoy that.”
The biggest challenge so far, she said, was getting up early for school. “The schedule is a little difficult because I haven’t been getting up this early since I was in high school,” Sanders said.
Classes start at 8 a.m. and Sanders said she has been trying to arrive at 7 a.m., which means she’s getting out of bed at about 5:30.
John Johnson, a recent Morehead State University graduate and Boyd County’s new high school band director, said his teaching experience is going smoothly as well.
Johnson got a jump-start at the school year from some of the other first-year teachers because the band starting practicing several weeks before classes commenced.
“I was pretty nervous the first day,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”
The biggest challenge for Johnson has been laying some new ground rules and sticking to them. “I had to come into a program where rules are already established,” he said.
Johnson said sticking to those rules with 30 students toting instruments has proved to be a little overwhelming at times. “I have new gray hair I didn’t have when I started,” he joked, but added he thinks he’s succeeding. “It just takes structure. The administration, the students and parents have been great to me.”
Johnson’s first indication of how he is doing as band director will come Friday at the school’s first football game against Bracken County.
“It’s a take-home (test), kind of,” he said. “Once the kids go out to perform I sit on the sidelines. When they go out to do it, it’s all them.”
Debra Caudill, a 29-year music teacher at Boyd County Middle School, said she remembers being “overwhelmed” on her first day of teaching, too.
“You have to spend all day with them. You tell them your name and then you’re kind of lost,” she recalled. “Now it’s different. You’re told exactly what to teach.”
“I think any beginning teacher is going to have those butterflies — the fear,” agreed physical education teacher Teresa Dempsey, who is also in her 29th year of teaching at Boyd Middle.
“It’s a feeling ... when you know you have the lives of these kids and the impact you can have, it’s overwhelming; not everybody can be a teacher.”
Like Caudill, however, Dempsey said she believes incoming teachers are in many ways more prepared for their first day than she was almost 30 years ago.
“These teachers coming in are a whole lot better equipped than we were,” she said, but added there is also a lot more pressure, paperwork and preparation required.
Sanders can vouch for that. She said she spent considerable time this summer preparing for her first semester of teaching.
“I’ve pretty much been working on this whole semester through the course of the summer. I’ve been trying to map out the whole semester,” she said.
“I was very nit-picky about that first day. I wanted to make sure it went smoothly. They always tell you to over-plan and that’s the best advice I’ve gotten.”
CARRIE KIRSCHNER can be reached at ckirschner@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.