After 23 years as a high school teacher (and 19 years prior to that as a community organizer), I’m hanging up my spikes next month and retiring from K-12 education. (I do plan, however, to become a volunteer teacher for incarcerated youth or adults.)
Simultaneously, my grandson Shea is entering a local teacher-credentialing program so he can become a high school teacher.
I’ve written 13 books and thousands of blog posts/articles, and made tons of videos, all offering teaching advice (including an ongoing short series here).
I thought, though, I’d narrow it all to a short list of advice I’d offer to him, and perhaps other educators—and would-be educators—might find them useful:
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“Sorry,” “Please,” “Thank you,” and “What do you think?” or “What is your advice?” should be some of your most-used phrases with students and with colleagues.
These words cost you nothing and can gain you much, but they must be said sincerely. No one likes hearing these comments in a sarcastic tone and no one likes a “suck-up.”
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The best way for you to look good is by creating opportunities to make your colleagues and students look good.
Writing your principal an email several times a year, or verbally telling them, about something impressive you saw another teacher or classified staff member do is great information for an administrator to know, and the word will get around that your saying nice things about your colleagues.
When your students do something well, ask to record a quick video on their phone for their family where you can praise their child and make sure other students hear it. Do this regularly and you will have an enormous amount of “capital” in your relationship “banks” to enhance what happens in your classroom.
And when you see one of your students in the hallway talking to their friends, give them a “shout out” about what a great job they’re doing. They’ll look embarrassed but, trust me, they’ll love it.
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Cultivate strong and positive relationships with your school’s classified staff. Not only are they deserving of that kind of respect, but those connections will pay off for you in many ways.
Some will be from the school’s local community, and have relationships with students’ families, and can be good sources of “intelligence” about neighborhood and family dynamics. And, believe me, a call from an old family friend about a student can have an incredibly positive impact!
In the same vein, it’s not uncommon for classified staff to be coaches and, boy-oh-boy, then we’re talking about Influence with a capital “I” when it comes to student-athletes.
And classified staff have many other helpful talents. Our school’s controller was the only adult on campus who spoke Mandarin, which came in handy when a Chinese ELL student joined my class this spring.
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Always remember what a man who worked with Gandhi in India told me so long ago, “The key to Gandhi’s success, Larry, was that he looked at every problem as an opportunity, not as a pain in the butt.”
As a teacher, you will be facing many, many potential “problems” everyday—students having relationship dramas, their families facing eviction or possible deportation, how to squeeze in teaching this or that concept before the district benchmark assessments.
I’m not dismissing these challenges, but looking at them as “opportunities” to learn, be creative, and grow definitely points toward more effectively maintaining a perspective that will help you hang in there for the long term.
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Never, ever, ever write negatively about students, their families, or your colleagues (and only do it rarely verbally).
I get it—sometimes we have to blow off steam—we’re just human. But nothing good will ever come from putting anything negative on social media or even in writing in private text chats. When I was a community organizer, my advice was always, “Never put anything in writing that you are not comfortable seeing on the front page of the local newspaper.”
Even when we are venting to our spouse or to our closest friend, though, it’s always important to try and remember that, as the old saying goes, “They’re not bad students,- they’re good students who are having bad days (or weeks).”
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You’re going to make lots of mistakes. Acknowledge them, learn from them, and quickly move on.
Don’t be like me, who indulged in “catastrophic thinking” all too often after less-than-ideal student interactions or classroom lessons. I lost many hours of sleep imagining many worst-case scenarios of my teaching career going down the drain over what were really minor issues.
In all those situations, it appeared that no student had given my errors or imagined transgressions a second thought.
I’m sure my grandson will become an excellent teacher, whether he listens to this advice or not.
Let me know what additional advice you think you should be on this list. You can email me at lferlazzo@epe.org. You can also contact me on X at @Larryferlazzo or on Bluesky at @larryferlazzo.bsky.social .