24. New Kindergarten Teacher? Here's What I Wish I Knew Before My First Day

Are you a new kindergarten teacher preparing for your first year in the classroom? Or maybe you're switching grade levels and wondering what makes kindergarten so different from every other grade?

In this episode, I'm sharing my biggest piece of advice for new kindergarten teachers: assume they don't know how to do anything.

From lining up and walking in the hallway to using the bathroom, sitting at the carpet, and using school supplies, kindergarten students need explicit instruction for routines, procedures, and expectations that older students often take for granted.

I'll share stories from my own first year teaching kindergarten, the mistakes I made, and what I wish I had known before those five-year-olds walked through my classroom door.

If you're preparing for the beginning of kindergarten, the first week of school, or your very first year as a kindergarten teacher, this episode will help you focus on what matters most: building relationships, teaching routines, and creating a classroom environment where students can succeed.

In this episode, we discuss:

• My unexpected journey into teaching kindergarten
•  Why new kindergarten teachers should assume students know nothing
• The importance of explicitly teaching classroom routines and procedures
• Common beginning-of-kindergarten surprises
• Why relationships and routines matter more than academics at the start of the year
• Preparing students to use school tools successfully

Resources Mentioned:

🔗 Free School Tools Worksheets

🔗 First Week of Kindergarten Blueprint

Show Notes: https://kindergartentoolbox.com/new-kindergarten-teacher-episode-24/

Transcript

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It's the season when so many teachers are getting their teaching assignments for next school year. Some teachers are brand new to the education field, and others are just switching grade levels. No matter how you find yourself in the kindergarten space, welcome to the wild world of teaching kindergarten. Today we're going to chat about my top advice for new kindergarten teachers. So let's dig in. Welcome to the Kindergarten Toolbox Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Murray, here to help you simplify kindergarten with tools and strategies that actually work with real live five and six year olds. Let's dive into your shortcut to calmer days and more confident writers. So a little bit about my history in kindergarten before we dig in here. I was thrown into kindergarten one week before school started without any warning. I was happily teaching learning support in a school that was kindergarten through second grade. And my principal called me. I was, I'll never forget, I was in line at a local burrito shop, and she's like, hey, um, surprise, you know how we thought like your numbers were good and you're gonna stay in learning support. Well, they moved you to half day kindergarten. So I taught learning support in the morning and kindergarten in the afternoon. And it turns out it was the biggest blessing. I love kindergarten. And I think my special ed background really helped prepare me for all things kindergarten. But I had like no time to prepare, and I didn't necessarily prepare the right things. I was thinking about, you know, making the room look warm and inviting and what I needed to teach. And I did have a friend share her plans from when she taught kindergarten. So I knew like loosely like what I should be doing the first week, but I was not prepared at all for how much they didn't know how to do. Because in learning support, we didn't have too many kindergarten students. And when I got them, it wasn't usually right from the start of the school year. So brand new, fresh-faced kindergartners were new to me. And I learned a lot of trial by fire that first week. The biggest advice that I could give any new kindergarten teacher is to assume they do not know how to do anything. Lining up, that's a brand new skill. If they haven't been in school, which many of your students have never been in a school building before, they don't know what lining up and walking down a hall means. I will never forget my first year teaching, kindergarten. We all met in the cafeteria. We checked our class lists and got our kids in line, and I had helpers helping me get them down to my classroom, which was the very last one in the hallway. We turned out of the cafeteria, and a couple of them wouldn't leave the cafeteria. A couple of them started sprinting like they were training for the Olympics down the hallway. A few did stay in line, looking at me like, what in the world are these kids doing? And I felt so out of control. I had no idea that these kids had no concept. We got them in line and heads behind heads, and like we ushered them out. And then it was just a free-for-all. They didn't know that you stay in your spot in line, that you walk, that this line is how we're going to get from place to place. They had no clue. And it really wasn't their fault. I didn't know though, that they didn't know. And so it was a bit of a disaster piece, as my daughter would say. And we got made it through. I quickly, quickly learned that I needed to model everything. We practiced what lining up looked like. Our head stays behind someone else's head and we don't touch anybody, and our hands are at our side and all the things. But you really need to think through what all of those little tiny routines are going to look like for you so that you can explicitly model those expectations, but truly assume they know nothing. They don't know what crisscross means to sit on the carpet. They don't know what it means when you say put something away, line up. It's time for a bathroom break, walk in, like they just don't know what you think that they might know. So you really want to think from the moment that they walk into your classroom that first day, what are you going to have them do? I'm gonna give you another pro tip. It should not involve a pencil or crayons because you haven't taught them how to hold them, how to use them that we only write on paper. You haven't taught them those things. So maybe you have a little tub of manipulatives like snap cubes. They're good. Um, hard to break, right? So you want to be sure that you have thought out what they're doing the moment they enter your classroom, how you're going to handle things like the bathroom. Do you have one in your classroom? How does that work? You'll need to teach them how to wash their hands, how you flush the toilet. You'll need to teach them how to close the door when they go in to use the restroom. That's another fun one I had one of my first years teaching. I was sitting at my uh U table, which I had back near the bathroom door, and a student went in to use the bathroom and he surely did not shut that door. And so we had to talk about we shut the door at school when we use the bathroom. This is not home. And things like that will surprise you. You have to think of all the things. And please remember as you're preparing for the beginning of kindergarten that relationships and routines matter so very much more than academics in the first week, maybe even first two weeks of kindergarten. It's important to lay the foundation and build positive relationships from the beginning and set your routines and expectations so that your schedule feels predictable and safe for your five and six-year-olds, sometimes four-year-olds, if we're being honest, right? In the beginning, your academics becomes learning the routines, learning how to be a student, learning how to use all of your tools. When I say school tools, I'm talking about pencils, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, markers if you have them, erasers, you know, the tools that you'll be using to write and create in your kindergarten classroom. And you really need to explicitly teach your students your expectations for each of these tools. And if you're sitting there thinking, oh my goodness, how do I do that? What am I supposed to do? Tune in for next week's episode. We're going to go through should you have community supplies or individual supplies and how to teach them to use their supplies. We'll get deep into all of that. If you're anxious to get started, I want you to go down to the show notes and grab the link for our free school tools worksheets. You can join our email list and we'll send you those for free. And if you want even more support, there's an option to purchase the school tools slides so you can use those as your teaching points. And the text on those is editable so you can make it work for your students. And that'll give you a great place to start. And like you said, next week we'll dive into exactly how I taught kids how to use their school tools so that everybody was on the same page from day one. And if you're sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, but there's so much more to think about. How am I going to remember all the things for the first week? We've got you covered for that too in the first week of kindergarten blueprint. I will drop a link to that in the show notes as well. It is a recorded workshop, but we are going to do a live workshop later this summer. So uh if you join us now for the pre-recorded, you can watch it and get your footing and then join us live later this summer. And so we'll have a community of kindergarten teachers to bounce ideas off of. I can't wait for that. And as always, you can DM me if you have questions, find me on Instagram at Teaching Exceptional Kinders, or shoot me an email. I love to help new kindergarten teachers. It brings me great joy to see you feel successful and confident and ready to tackle the world with your five and six year olds. Wishing you the best year yet. Kindergarten is the greatest, and I'm looking forward to the next couple weeks where we cover how to prepare for the beginning of kindergarten and how to set yourself up for success all year long. See you then. Thanks for listening to the Kindergarten Toolbox. I'm Amy Murray and I'm so glad you're here. Be sure to check the show notes for all the links and resources from today's episode. For even more tips, tools, and support, head to teaching exceptionalkinders.com or connect with me on Instagram at Teaching Exceptional Kinders. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow along and subscribe to the show and take a minute to leave a review. It helps other kindergarten teachers to find us too. Teaching kindergarten is tough, but you're not alone. Here's to calmer days and more confident writers. You've got this.