by Alan Haskvitz

Most teachers have at least five years of university, months of student teaching, and have sat in classes given by about 50 different educators to prepare for teaching. Despite this, these sites offer ideas new teachers can harvest from those who have gone through the same process.

In my experience the three most important things for any new teacher to do are:

• get a mentor,
• contact parents early and often, and
• make it a point to have a good time on the job.  

Thus I have listed sites with these ingredients in the hope the time and money spent preparing to teach result in a lifetime of first school days.

REC Resources

Assessment Ideas: A very complete listing

Check out these Classroom Discipline Sites

Explore Resources for New and Experienced Teachers

How and Why and What We Are Teaching
Teacher support sites

REC New Teachers Page
Behavior and classroom set-up links

Send in the Clowns
Teacher humor

Summer Jobs for Teachers

Teachers and the Law
The most important laws and how the impact teachers

Teaching and Stress

Traits of Good Teachers

Working with Parents

Worldwide Web resources

Designing Support for Beginning Teachers
More for the district office, this site has a printable program that helps retain teachers.

Federal Survival Guide for New Teachers
A good, but general, site prepared by the government, it offers insights and help for new teachers.

Help for New Teachers
For middle school teachers -- not well organized, but certainly full of worthwhile materials to help middle school teachers better handle their charges.

New Science Teacher Survival Guide
If you teach science this is a must visit site. It has all types of ideas and even includes tips on dealing with special needs students.  Get podcasts, too.

New Teacher Helpline
Links to teacher survival help sites

New Teacher Resources
This site has a vast amount of data and even a PowerPoint on how to organize a classroom.

New Teacher Survival Guide
72 pages of good advice

New Teacher Survival Guides
For every month -- interesting take with a good number of ideas

New Teacher Survivor Central
Discovery Education offers lots of links, but they’re poorly organized and have very little information on what they offer.

New Teacher Training:  Resources and Advice
Links to all types of information for new teachers -- a diverse array of articles and ideas to be explored with some controversial issues and common sense links supplied.

Resource, Tools & Tips for New Teachers
Lots of tips and a hotline -- Scholastic has provided an invaluable resource with many good links.

Sample Resume Template
Just in case you get caught in budget cutbacks, always keep your résumé up to date.  This site has many ideas.

Survival Guide for New Teachers
How they can work effectively with veteran teachers, parents, principals, and teacher educators

Teacher Staff and Student Survival Kits or Ideas
For primary grades

Texas AFT New Teacher Survival Kit [PDF]
Excellent printable booklet from Texas that walks new teachers through the various ways they can prepare for their teaching experience.

When All Else Fails, Turn to the Survival Kit!
A fun survival kit