First Day of Teaching Advice

Student teacher in China (Wikipedia)

by William A Lake

Have you just finished your TEFL, CELTA or TESOL? Maybe you haven't even got one?!

Whatever the case, nothing can really prepare you for your first day of teaching.

This article will provide you with some helpful advice to help you keep your cool and maybe allow your first day to go along smoothly without a hitch!

Although this article was written with English as a Foreign/Second language in mind, the advice here could be helpful for any new teacher that are about to step foot in a class room for the very first time.

Not all ESL/EFL teachers are qualified, and being qualified doesn't necessarily make you a better teacher! In fact, we all have to start somewhere. At some point in your career, qualified or not, you will have to enter a class room and teach students for the very first time.

The first thing that you want to do is ensure that you've had a good rest the day before. The last thing you want to feel during your first spell in the class room is tired. If you are tired you might suffer from a range of different unwanted side-effects that hinder your performance.

These might include, forgetfulness, nervousness and many others. So ensure that you get a good night rest before you start.

The most important thing is to be prepared! Be prepared for absolutely any eventuality that you can think of! You never know what might happen.

How are you going to deal with unruly students? How are you going to set the ground rules? How are you going to break the ice? These are just a few of the questions you want to consider before you start your first day.

To continue on the theme of being prepared, you should really write a lesson plan for the first lesson. Your lesson plan, however, will probably not go according to plan! It's difficult to assess how long the students will take to do any exercise that you give them.

So ensure that you have lots of extra activities in case you run short on the ones you already planned. You don't want to get half way through a lesson with nothing else to do!

The final part to this theme of being prepared is that you should get to your class room at least 15 minutes early.

This will give you time to arrange your materials on your desk, get a feeling for the class room (i.e. the size, the desks and whether it's possible to rearrange seating plans for group activities, etc.) and also give you the opportunity to greet your students upon their arrival.

Finally, don't worry about making mistakes. Making mistakes is a perfectly normal part of any learning process and becoming a teacher is no different.

If you do something wrong, your students might not even notice. Move on, get on with it and before you know it your first lesson will be over in a flash!

William Lake is a Lecturer of English, TEFL and Cultural Studies at Build Bright University in Siem Reap, Cambodia. William has published a blog post called " First Day of Teaching English " on his blog where you can get even more advice for your first daywhich you can find on his blog.

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