Making Your First Year a Success: A Classroom Survival Guide for Middle and High School Teachers

"Provides tools that give new teachers the confidence to face complex classroom challenges. When teachers have a successful first year, they are more likely to return and continue making a difference for children."
―Catherine H. Payne, Principal
W.R. Farrington High School, Honolulu, HI

"Provides specific and practical advice, from how to create wonderful lessons to dealing with difficult parents, all geared to the needs of new secondary teachers."
―Catherine Kilfoyle Duffy, English Department Chair
Three Village Central School District, Stony Brook, NY

A practical guide to overcoming the challenges of your first year.

You′ve completed the course work, student teaching, and interviewing. The job is yours. Now what? The first weeks and months of a new teaching position can be the most demanding of your entire career. In this new edition of their bestseller, veteran educators Robert L. Wyatt III and J. Elaine White share a combined 50 years of teaching experience as well as insight and advice from hundreds of teachers in the field they have personally trained. Comprehensive yet concise, Making Your First Year a Success, Second Edition is expressly tailored to assist secondary teachers. Updated topics in this thoroughly revised second edition include:

• Integrating technology into classroom activities
• Connecting lesson planning and standards
• Incorporating differentiation into the secondary classroom
• Dealing with stress and nurturing yourself emotionally and physically

Whether starting fresh with your first group of students or revitalizing your commitment to the profession you entered many years ago, this handbook will easily become the well-worn reference you turn to again and again for quick tips, practical applications, and words of encouragement.

Robert L. (Bob) Wyatt III is Professor of Education at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, where he has taught for the past 13 years. He also taught education courses as a graduate instructor at the University of Oklahoma while completing his doctorate. He taught at the secondary level in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, and at the college level in New Mexico and Texas for 25 years prior to achieving his master’s and doctorate degrees. He has led more than 150 workshops and seminars for staff development during the last 15 years. He has twice been named Teacher of Excellence at East Central, an honor that can only be awarded every four years and is usually nominated by students and elected by peer review. He was among the top five teachers contending for Oklahoma Teacher of the Year while teaching secondary school. He has partici-pated in the Oklahoma Commission for Higher Education portfolio review committees for several colleges in Oklahoma as part of their preparation for NCATE reviews. Wyatt is a language arts specialist with a Ph.D. in both the elementary and secondary levels of language arts. He has taught undergraduate courses in methods for language arts, social studies (both elementary and secondary), and natural science (elementary); Clinicals I, II, and III; strategies for effective teaching (elementary and secondary); Portfolios I, II, and III; children’s literature; young adult literature; psychology of education; foundations of education; Composition I; and grammar. He teaches graduate courses in modern philoso-phies of education, contemporary issues of education, advanced language arts problems, techniques of research, and public relations for school administra-tors and librarians. Wyatt has two other books published: The History of the Haverstock Tent Show: The Show With a Million Friends, published in 1997 by Southern Illinois University Press, and Making Your First Year a Success: The Secondary Teacher’s Survival Guide, coauthored by Dr. Elaine White and pub-lished by Corwin Press in 2002. In addition to his teaching, Wyatt is a selling artist of watercolor and oil paintings. He also has three novels out for publisher review, is a former owner/editor of a weekly newspaper, and is the author/publisher of three books of local history and several journal articles in national, regional, and state journals. He is the president, a director, and an actor at Ada Community Theater, ACT II.