Advice for new teacher

[Regicollis]

I just got a job teaching web programming at a vocational school. It is a temporary position and I don't know how many hours I will get - bottom of the food chain really - but it beats unemployment any day.

The web programming I know like the back of my hand but I have never taught before so I would be really appreciative if some of you could give me some advice. My job will be to be an extra teacher in large classes and to help two specific "special needs" students. I hope there are some experienced teachers here who can give me some advice on how to do a job like this as good as possible.

[tallguy]

I just got a job teaching web programming at a vocational school. It is a temporary position and I don't know how many hours I will get - bottom of the food chain really - but it beats unemployment any day.

The web programming I know like the back of my hand but I have never taught before so I would be really appreciative if some of you could give me some advice. My job will be to be an extra teacher in large classes and to help two specific "special needs" students. I hope there are some experienced teachers here who can give me some advice on how to do a job like this as good as possible.
Be fair, be kind, be consistent, be in charge.

And know your shit cos they'll suss out if you are blagging in two seconds flat.

Oh and try to avoid falling into the trap, I have seen so often with other teachers, of ending up disliking the badly behaved kids. I've even fallen prey to that myself when I started out and am ashamed of it. I will always cut some extra slack for any kid who struggles with school work and who also is badly behaved. Probably the best way to illustrate why is by the following analogy:

A kid moves into a new home. In this home, the existing occupants are all really good runners. Each day they go out and run. Each day they win prizes. Each day they proudly bring their prizes home and put them on the shelf. They ask the new kid to come out running with them. However, this kid learns immediately that he is just not very good at running. Each day he goes out and does his best. But, each day he comes back empty handed. The other people in the house helpfully inform him that it's not really the prizes that are important, it's the taking part that matters. They also helpfully do this whilst simultaneously asking him to place their latest prize on the shelf.

This kid quickly realizes he has two choices. Either he continues to go out each day and run to the best of his ability. Each day he fails to win a prize, Each day he comes home empty handed. Each day he feels like crap. And, he knows well enough that, despite their protestations to the contrary, those other kids will go on to receive even bigger prizes later in life on the back of the ones they are winning now.

Or, he can just stick two fingers up and refuse to play a game he can never win at. Sure, he will do even less well than if he at least does his best. But, from a psychological health point of view, his choice to stick two fingers up and completely refuse to play is an entirely rational one. Your job, then, is to persuade him that it is still worth it despite that.

That's why the "low achievers" in school will be more likely (though by no means guaranteed) to have concomitant behavioural "problems". Try not to forget that when the little buggers are making you want to wring their necks.

[Firebrand]

The trick is to be flexible, adapt your methods for the kids you are teaching. Where a lot of teachers go wrong is assuming one approach can work for all kids. You have to change your approach if your initial approach fails rather than just shouting the original approach louder. Different people learn differently and so you have to pay attention to them even more than they do to you in order to ensure they understand.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Don't give exams everyday and if someone is absent don't do a SHIT ton of in class work that can't be made up and whose points count toward final grade.

[Thrasymachus]

The most important thing to do is give them a gentle hint that likely they won't find a job. Many people today pay for training or go to university and they have crap in their hands to show for all the time, toil, stress and debt. You are just participating in the system fully if you help lie to them by obscuring this sober reality.