Here is my biggest piece of advice: learn to say NO! And I'm not just talking about to the students either. I definitely took on too much during my first year because I couldn't say "no" to just about anyone.
I joined my school's AVID site team (see previous post about AVID) the summer before I even started working and I went to nearly every meeting (I missed a few due to other things I put on my plate). AVID site team was definitely a good thing to say "Yes" to and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, I learned a lot, made friends with some of the more experienced teachers at my school (in this town that is a big deal because usually they don't talk to you until you've stuck around for at least 3 years), and it made me look good to my boss. I taught AP Chemistry my first year, most schools won't even think about letting someone teach AP in their firs three years, mine assigned it to me my first year! This was a huge undertaking, especially because I had to propose a new textbook and take on things like presenting at our school's college readiness night to explain why students should take AP courses. Don't get me wrong, I loved the vote of confidence and I would not want to give up teaching this class, I just would have liked a few years of experience under my belt before taking on such a large task. The next thing I did was sponsor my school's drama club (I've never been involved in drama before or really had friends in the drama club so I had no idea what I was getting myself into). I had two students ask me if I would sponsor the club for them, they told me 'oh yea, you'll get a stipend and all you need to do is sit there while we run everything for you' HA! How naive was I!? I ended up having to spend a majority of my evenings (the only time I would have gotten to spend with my boyfriend) and a fair number of weekends working with the drama club. I had to find people who knew what they were doing to work with the students to make our productions even semi-decent. It was a drain on my time, relationship, and mental health. Not something I would take on lightly. Now you'd think that giving up three of my days each week would be enough, but no...apparently I like to torture myself, and also, I can't sit idle while something is going wrong. In this case, I'm talking about the poor communication between our department chair and everyone else. For some reason what he thinks he hears/says is very different from what the rest of the department thinks we hear/say (oddly enough, the rest of us usually agree). He also had WAAY too much on his plate (far worse than me). So during basketball season, which is also right around the time of trying to get another drama performance set, he asked me to basically do his job for around 2.5 months. Of course, being me and not wanting things to remain undone, I said "yes" again. Oh, and let's not forget the student council constantly asking me to chaperon this or chaperon that; that is where I finally drew the line and said "no". Which of course upset the older teachers who felt I "wasn't paying my dues". Yea, right, I'd like to have seen them take on as much in their very first year teaching!
I took on all this stuff while also dealing with the normal challenges of being a first year teacher like figuring out how my school works, what classroom management techniques work for me, trying to develop lesson plans, figuring out how things should look for my MTE (measuring teacher effectiveness score) and trying to adjust to living in a new town where the only person I really knew was my boyfriend who moved with me!
So in case you weren't listening, let me say it again. Learn to say no. I would recommend that you not take on more than one extra thing in your first year and do some chaperoning. I read somewhere something that I wish I had seen sooner which is that people will appreciate it more if you say no to a request than over-commit yourself and not follow through on the things you say you'll do. And after my experience with a department chair who did just that, I would say it is definitely better to say no than to fall through on your commitments.
