The second six weeks is over,

and I feel fine. I think the awful period of adjustment is over, and now I know my students well enough that they get on my nerves because of their inconsistent personalities and not because I'm stressed out. It's a huge step in the right direction.

Side note: No one told me how much teaching would be like parenting. Or at least if they did, I wasn't listening very closely - because I was not expecting to feel as old at twenty-two as I do. I don't just teach English to these kids. I also discipline them, reward them, reprimand them, lecture them, and occasionally pop them or make them sit in a corner and think about what they've done (okay, that's just one student). It's a crazy, all days a week, if-you-don't-stay-on-them-they-run-over-you kind of job. I can't say that I've experienced the rewards that so many teachers speak of, at least not enough of them to make me want to love making a career of teaching high schoolers. I'm not adverse to it; I mean, we do get the summers off. But I still am not enthusiastic about making this a permanent gig. The good thing about that is I don't have to have my mind made up yet.

Here are just a few tips I have for first year teachers from my experience so far:

1. Always have more prepared to do in class than you can possibly imagine being able to finish.
2. Even if it makes you feel odd or bad, call parents on the first day of school if student misbehavior is disruptive enough that you feel you need to do so. It works.
3. Do everything you can to put responsibility for submitting work and getting make-up work on the student and not on yourself; when you try to be responsible for everything, it makes you stressed out and therefore less effective as a teacher, and it teaches the student that you will do the work for them, so they need not do it themselves.
4. It's never too late to try or introduce some new procedure or rule. Don't think you have to implement every discipline strategy or rule on the first day of school.
5. Always be careful of what you say and how you say it. No one ever really explained to me how much politics are involved in the school system.

Now that I, the expert after twelve whole weeks of teaching, have dispensed these tidbits of advice, I am sure I will forget of blatantly disregard one or all of them very soon. Keep me in your prayers...