The School Milieu: The Shock of the Familiar

My First Year
In this article from the September 2002 edition of NEA Today magazine, several teachers give month-by-month accounts of their first years.

NewTeacher.com
This noncommercial web site intended to support new teachers provides frequently updated articles of interest to those in their early days of teaching.

Administrators: Mixed Bag and Many Hats

American Association of School Administrators
This professional organization for principals and other school administrators has 14,000 members from all over the country.

National Association of Elementary School Principals
This organization for elementary and middle school principals offers publications, news highlights, and more.

National Association of Secondary School Principals
This is "the organization for principals, assistant principals and aspiring principals" of middle and high schools.

Peers: A Mixed Blessing

National Association for Beginning Teachers
This is a professional organization for those starting out in their teaching careers.

Teachers Helping Teachers
The goals of this site are to provide inexperienced teachers with basic tips and ideas that can be used immediately in the classroom, and to provide a forum for experienced teachers to share their expertise.

Instruction: So Much to Learn

Beginning Teacher Toolbox
This home page is from the web site of an organization that sells books for new teachers, but it also offers free resources, including links to lesson plans and other resources.

What I Wish I’d Known When I Was a New Teacher
This page includes tips from veteran teachers on lesson planning, parent communication, behavior management, classroom organization, and more.

EZ School
This web site, associated with Amazon.com, is filled with ideas, including teaching plans and worksheets for a range of subject matter.

Lesson Plans Links
In addition to their own collection of lesson plans, the staff at AskERIC have collected this set of links to many of the Internet's major lesson plan sites for teachers.

Students: Friends or Fiends?

I Love Teaching
This site, created by experienced high school teacher Darci Hammond, offers lots of practical advice to preservice and new teachers.

Phases of First-Year Teaching
This article describes a common series of feelings about teaching and students that teachers experience during their first year.

Parents: Natural Allies with Different Agendas

Parent Involvement
The weekly online publication, Education Week, has prepared this "hot topic" summary of trends in parent involvement in school. The article includes links to many organizations and related news articles.

Playing Their Parts: What Parents and Teachers Really Mean by Parental Involvement
Public Agenda presents the results of a recent survey that shows that parents and teachers have some differences of opinion about parents’ and guardians’ involvement in their children’s schooling.

National Parent Information Network
Presented by two of the clearinghouses of ERIC, the Educational Resource Information Center, this network provides an extensive library of online publications for teachers and parents, as well as newsletters and links to other organizations.

Surviving the First Year of Teaching

What to Expect Your First Year of Teaching
This online publication from the Department of Education is an excellent resource. It combines many of the practical tips and much of the advice in this chapter of your textbook with several resources helpful to beginning teachers.

Survival Guide for New Teachers
This free publication from the U.S. Department of Education includes chapters on working with veteran teachers, working with parents, and working with administrators, as well as other helpful sections.

New Teacher Center
This research center, located at the University of California-Santa Cruz, is dedicated to helping new teachers. At their web site, you can find research articles, online training and videos, and links to other helpful sites.

Phi Delta Kappa New Teacher Center
This web site from the professional organization Phi Delta Kappa includes features such as "Ask the Teacher Across the Hall," an advice column for new teachers, and "Finally, I’m the Teacher," diaries from first-year teachers.