Letters to a First Year Teacher: The Compilation

Dear First Year Teacher,

We have all been in the same place as you as your are about to start your first year teaching and we wanted to give you some thoughts and advice from our individual perspectives. Below are 19 different letters from teachers of various subjects (mostly math and physics). The letters are also compiled as a Google Doc or pdf for those who would prefer the advice in that form as opposed to clicking through various teaching blogs. If you are looking for great teachers to follow on twitter and great blogs to read, this is a wonderful (though of course not complete) list that would be a great place to start.

*Note 1: If you would still like to submit a letter, go for it! I will update, and Drawing on Math will still compile them here.
*Note 2: The quotes I picked for each post are not the titles of the original posts as written by the writers – they are somewhat random quotes from somewhere in their letter that I thought were poignant, unique, or interesting.

Sam Shah, @samjshah, on Continuous Everywhere But Differentiable Nowhere

Daniel Schneider, @MathyMcMatherso, on Mathy McMatherson

Jason Buell, @jybeull, Always Formative

Grace Chen, @graceachen, on Educating Grace

Kelly O’Shea, @kellyoshea, on Physics! Blog

Breedeen Murray, @btwnthenumbers, on The Space Between the Numbers

Mimi Yang, @untilnextstop, on I Hope This Old Train Breaks Down

John Burk, @occam98, on Quantum Progress

Sophie Germain, @sophgermain, on A Brand New Line

Bowman Dickson, @bowmanimal, on Bowman in Arabia

Michael Pershan, @mpershan, on Rational Expressions

Fawn Nguyen, @fawnpnguyen, on her Untitled Blog

Tina C, @crstn85, on Drawing on Math

Joe Kremer, @josephlkremer, on Observations First

Renee, @approx_normal, on Approximately Normal

on Room 289 Math

Stephen Lazar, @SLazarOtC, on Outside the Cave

Emily H, posted here on Bowman in Arabia

Tom H, posted here on Bowman in Arabia

[Updated 7/2]

 Kate Nowak, @k8nowak, on f(t)

Laura Kinnel, @LauraKinnel, on Continuous Reflection

Jackie Ballarini, @jackieb, on Continuities

Lance Bledsoe, @bledsoe, on his Untitled Blog

Posted on June 23, 2012, in First Year Teacher Advice, Teaching and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 20 Comments.

  1. Great list! I wholeheartedly agree with your observation that a room full of teenagers can easily change your lesson plans.

    I recently started a blog to honor those who teach and would be grateful to be included on your blogroll.

    Best,
    Diana

  2. Thank you so much for doing this. I’m preparing to embark on my first year of teaching, and I’m incredibly thankful for everyone for sharing their advice.

  3. Some really good stuff here, thanks for compiling all of these. It was nice reading what other teachers had to say and finding myself going, “Yep, that’s true; yep, that’s true…”

  4. We have a new teacher in the family. I don’t have to see her in the classroom to she will do the best job of any teacher! We are all so proud of Jillian!! She is an all around great lady!
    Lucky students!!

  5. Hi,

    I came across your blog from Samaj Shah’s post,
    The DIY Math Curriculum: Simple tricks to make creating your own material feel less onerous
    by samjshah

    I am mathophile & planning to teach. I am inspired by the math teacher community & looking forward to days when I can contribute to it.

    May I repost “Letters to a First Year Teacher: The Compilation” on my blog http://trivediziemba.edublogs.org/ I

    Thank you.

    Purviben K. Trivedi-Ziemba

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