Educational Leadership

Carol Ann Tomlinson
One to Grow On
Three Wishes for New Teachers
I don’t
recommend trial
by fire as the
preferred route
for inducting
new teachers.

Idid not benefit from a teacher induction program in the dawn of my teaching career. My first day of teaching was the start of the second marking period in a rural K– 12 school in North Carolina. The principal wasn’t present the morning I became a faculty member. He often didn’t come to school until the day was well underway and frequently left before it ended. I wandered into the faculty lounge before the bell rang to begin the teaching day.

It seemed like a reasonable place to wait until the principal came. Unfortunately, he didn’t come before I had to go to my classroom, and it wasn’t a reasonable place to do anything!

The conversation among the teachers (who never spoke to me) cast the students as incorrigible and witless. It left me entertaining the possibility of abandoning teaching before I entered the ranks. The school, which I’ll call Highview High, had pitifully few resources. Textbooks were scarce, the library collection was slim, and there was no money to spare in the community.

We never had a professional development day— no parent meetings either.

And yet, although the year was remarkably difficult, it was remarkably rich for me. I don’t recommend trial by fire as the preferred route for inducting new teachers. But I’ve come to see that three of my experiences that year were pivotal in my development as a teacher and a human being. So here are three things I wish every new teacher could have.

fortuitous. Mrs. Gardner had a certain reverence for teaching. Her students’ regard for her approached reverence as well. The proximity of our two classrooms meant Mrs. Gardner inevitably saw my missteps as a first-year teacher and knew of my few golden moments. Her words to me were few, though purposeful and potent. She never tried to “correct” me or overplay my small victories. Instead, she modeled how good teachers approach students.

She took her subject area seriously and
worked diligently to ensure that her students
did the same. However, the
most essential thing I saw
in her for the 27 weeks our
lives intersected was that
she had unequivocal respect
for every student she taught.
A human being always
trumped a lesson plan. Her
students felt seen, known,
valued, and trusted, so they
took her class seriously. I
knew that not only because
of what I saw, but also
because of how she treated
me. She made it safe for me
to learn from her—and from myself.

Carol Ann Tomlinson is William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundation, and Policy at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia in Charlottesville; cat3y@virginia.edu. She is the author, with Marcia B. Imbeau, of Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom (ASCD, 2010).

1. A Colleague Who Models the Essence of Teaching That Mrs. Gardner’s class was right next to mine at Highview couldn’t have been more

2. Freedom to Think Creatively

The poverty of resources at Highview actually provided me a wealth of opportunity to be resourceful. I had no scripted text to follow, no pacing guide, no bells and whistles to engage my high school charges. There were no school counselors, no specialists. There was just me, a barren classroom, and 30-plus students five times a day. I had no idea that some educators might find this situation unacceptable. I just knew that each day I had to figure out how to invite my unlikely learners to get jazzed about ideas that seemed remote from their lives.