Making the leap to teaching
'No textbook or class fully prepares a new teacher for the job of educating students.'
About Dustin Saalman
Age: 23
Hometown: Tiffin, Ohio
Education: Bachelor’s
degree from Eastern
Michigan University
Assignment: K-3
teacher, self-contained
classroom for students
with emotional
impairments
Quote: “If anybody
could do this job, I
figured that I could.
But, it was a huge leap
from theory to practice
and I’m still learning.”
I took over my first classroom in April 2006, right after student teaching and before graduating from Eastern Michigan University. I replaced a long-term substitute in a self-contained special education classroom in Ypsilanti.
The classroom was a self-contained room for students with a wide array of disabilities who also have unique behavioral needs that make it difficult for them to succeed in a general education classroom.
At first sight, my room seemed very
large and kind of empty. There were seven
desks in the middle of the room, one for
each student, and a few study corrals off
to the side, littered with random objects.
There was a row of computers that obviously
weren’t being used by students.
My desk was barren, with the exception
of some standardized tests that had
been distributed to all of the classrooms.
There was little to signify that this room
was even being used as a classroom at that
time; there was very little on the walls, no
order to the arrangement of the furniture,
and nothing on the walls to represent the
students in the class. The room felt cold
and impersonal.
I discovered that the transition from the long-term substitute to me had been handled poorly by everyone involved. There were no lesson plans ready for the week that I started and I had no idea what the students had been working on, what they did or didn’t know, or even what materials were available to me.
What helped me survive were two things that are not character strengths for me—relying on relationships and asking for help.
Luckily my classroom was in the same building where I had done my student teaching, so I had already formed relationships with other teachers, so I had people to go to for help.
My biggest asset was the para-educator in my classroom, Lisa Paschal. She had been with the students from the beginning of the year and she knew what they were capable of and what they had been working on up until that point. I can safely say that I was very arrogant in thinking that since I had the training and a degree, I was more than capable of taking on the task at hand, while discounting that Ms. Paschal had the experience, which far outweighed my five years of college.
I returned to the same classroom this fall. Things should be a little easier this time around because I know my students and my school. Also, my district assigns new teachers a mentor, so I will have someone who knows the ropes who can advise me.
Because I didn’t have a mentor yet last spring, I threw myself in. I got to know my co-workers, found allies, and got involved with my union right away. I was active in Student MEA while in college and now serve as a building rep for my local association. I’m hoping to get to know the system a little better—and to avoid the pitfalls that new teachers face.
There is no textbook or class with all the answers to fully prepare a new teacher for the job of educating students. Despite the circumstances, I’ve gotten off on the right foot. And, I’m still looking forward to the journey ahead.
Wanted: New teachers
The MEA Voice is looking for teachers who are in their first five years of teaching to write columns about their experiences.
iWe would like to run a regular column with alternating authors, providing insight into what it’s like to be a young teacher. It will focus on successes and challenges with students, joys and frustrations of the teaching profession, classroom discoveries and surprises, rewards and disappointments, survival tips, union involvement, or other insights the authors provide about working in today’s classrooms.
Authors will be paid for their columns.
Please e-mail your resume, with a writing sample, to: Karen Schulz, Creative
Communications Consultant, at kschulz@mea.org by Nov. 1.