 to my channel, Apples NTRS. So today I have a really, really exciting video and I'm really, really super excited about this because some of us teacher YouTubers have come together to create a loop tag for you guys and a loop tag is basically a video where each of us film the video and it is linked to two other videos. So this video has been linked to the person before me and I will link another YouTuber in the video for the next person to watch. So some of the teachers that are participating in this new teacher tag loop are Ms. Tierney, Teacher Tales, Real Rap with the Reynolds, Too Cool for Middle School, Life in Cafootball Land, Kate the Sleepy Teacher, Myself and Genuine Teaching and of course thank you so much to Teach Like a Girl for creating this video. We absolutely love it. So if you've come this far you're almost at the end. You have one more person to watch. Hopefully you just got finished watching Kate the Sleepy Teacher and after this video you will be watching my dear friend Jennifer from Genuine Teaching. So I really hope you guys stick around to the end. I hope you have made it this far in the loop and I really hope that these videos are helpful, insightful and just all around fun because I love doing tag videos and I just think that they're so exciting, especially for all of the wonderful teachers of YouTube. So today's video is going to be the new teacher tag. This tag video was created by Christina at Teach Like a Girl here on YouTube and Instagram. I absolutely love tags. So Christina thank you so much for creating this. I hope that we're doing it justice and bringing all that fun information. So if you guys see me squinting just know that I'm not wearing my glasses due to the glare and I'm basically legally blind. I can see a little bit but I'm like having to squint and I do have my computer down here so that I can see the questions and reference a couple of things that I noted because I read the questions ahead of time and I wanted to make sure that I did include a couple of points that I wanted to address. So without further ado here is the first year teaching tag. All right so before I begin with these questions I'm just going to let you guys know my first year teaching I began in January. January 2015 January 2015. So I have been teaching I've taught this will be my fourth classroom technically I've taught for two and a half years but it seems like it should be four years since this is my fourth classroom so that really was only two years ago um but it will be three years in January this coming year. So here are the questions. Number one what was your worst moment in your first year of teaching? So I just want to just clarify um when you take a job in the middle of the school year not only is it more challenging than taking a job at the beginning of the school year but it's also a lot more stressful um the teacher okay so I remember the situation I was in was the teacher had left the students in the middle of the year she left at Christmas break to voluntarily become the librarian who had left in the beginning or the middle of the school year. Now to me voluntarily leaving your classroom of 24 students to become the librarian is kind of a move so these kids had been really really um these kids had been through a lot the teacher who did leave was gone for about two months uh I think her mother had passed away so she was gone so they had their teacher then they had a substitute and then the teacher decided to leave them to work at the same school where they knew she had left them on purpose so these kids were just they had been through everything and they I'm sure believed whoever's coming to teach us now is just going to leave us too you know so they just had already instilled that in their minds so when I walked in I had 24 students I worked in a title one school I did not know that I was being hired as the ELD teacher ELD is English Language Development no one had told me that that was my position they just said here's a fourth grade position for you it's mid-year um here's what the students have been through and when I walked in the door someone handed me a binder that said here's the ELD um requirements information and I was like uh what this is the ELD classroom like are you kidding I didn't have too many basic ELD or basic ELLs in there so it was okay but for a first year teacher to not to first of all start mid-year second of all not know they're coming into their classroom as the mid or as the ELD teacher and these kids were absolutely just damaged so I remember I walked in I spent the whole day I went through my procedures my expectations they seemed to be doing fine they just were always at each other's throats like you could tell they just didn't get along they didn't want to be there I was nervous they could probably tell but I remember it had gotten so bad around the last I want to say 15 minutes of school when I was trying to get everything wrapped up and everybody packed up and I just remember they would not listen to me they would not stop doing crazy things standing on chairs jumping off desks crawling on the floor and I freaked out I was like holy these kids are out of control and I'm the adult and what am I supposed to do I tried everything you know I tried all of my attention grabbers all my motivational things nothing worked so I went across our next door to the teacher next door who I absolutely adore her we're still friends to this day and I asked her I said oh my god like what do I do and she called the principal she immediately comes in and starts screaming at these kids and the principal the assistant principal and the technology coach who was a really like kind of like a third administrator she was really really helpful and very she did walkthroughs and stuff they all come storming in the principal drags me out into the hallway immediately hugs me and says it's okay he said he takes me down to his office he sits me down he said you have every right to feel this way he said you this is your first day as a teacher and you walked into one of the most difficult classes that you could have ever walked into and he said I have great respect for what you did all day and while I was gone the the teacher next door and the tech coach they were explaining to the kids like listen she came here for you like she didn't need to be here she could have taken a job somewhere else she could have been a sub she's here for you so why why would you treat her this way you know and was very they were very defensive for me and I just remember crying hysterically and it was just insane and the principal had assured me that these kids had been through a lot and that nobody expected me to produce like this amazing wonderful class within what five months that I had left with them and so that was my worst moment in first year teaching was the first day what was your best moment in your first year okay so this happened still in my first year but second class so it's the beginning of the second week of school and the teacher across from me comes over in the morning and just tells me listen I wanted to tell you that the students that you sent me this year from your class are by far my most well-behaved students they're kind they're friendly they are responsible they're respectful and I just wanted to say thank you whatever you did last year with them really really worked and it continued the whole rest of the year they were the best kid ooh they were the best kids in the class most well-behaved so apparently what I did with them the first year the the year from hell worked so if that's all I could accomplish then high five to you Charlotte you did your job okay what is your biggest regret from your first year I regret absolutely nothing from my first year every single thing that happened in my first year was supposed to happen and if it didn't happen I wouldn't be the teacher that I am today I wouldn't be the person that I am today I wouldn't have the insight that I have today and I regret absolutely nothing yeah that's kind of it yeah I don't regret anything because it all was a learning experience number four what is something you wish you knew before you started teaching I wish that I knew about YouTube teachers and all of their wonderful ideas I wish that was as big as it is now back when I was starting out and I also wish I wrote it here I said I wish that I didn't take things so personal so a lot of the times in the first when you're a first year teacher the kids are going to try to test you they're going to take advantage they're going to be rude to you and a lot of people take it personally I took it personally when a kid called me the B word I took it personally when a kid said I was mean I took it personally and you can't do that you have to remember these are not your friends they're your students and at the end of the day you don't have to go home with them so why take anything they say personally number five advice would you give to a first year teacher um I would say just relax uh don't overthink it nobody expects you to be perfect in this first year nobody expects you to produce the highest test scores in the school nobody expects your line in the hallway to be perfect and quiet nobody expects anything from you it's your first year teaching your expectation is to survive um and I would definitely say don't take anything home with you don't grade things at home great things at work definitely plan plan plan plan plan because what you plan in your first year can be used in years to come I still do things that I did in my first year and I would say planning is definitely something that you want to do and take time doing um because like I said it's really going to be beneficial in the future especially with if you stick to the same grade level um focus on what's important focus on your family focus on your friends focus on yourself join a gym or a yoga class or some kind of after school activity that you look forward to that's completely disconnected from work and focus on that um and yeah so I'm also going to include a couple of photos here at the end of this video of my first year classroom and then just some other photos of my experience my first year I think I have some pictures of um some pictures of the kiddos some pictures of my classroom and I just wanted to share those with you so you guys can see like a first year teacher's classroom is not like the cookie cutter Pinterest Instagram classroom like it's not going to look that way it takes a long time to build up to that and it takes a lot of money and a lot of effort but I really really hope you guys enjoy this video don't forget to go to Jennifer's video it's the next one it is linked down below and thank you guys so so much for watching thank you for being here and supporting my youtube channel if you haven't already please subscribe to my channel it really means a lot to me and I love you guys thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one bye