The letter that should have come with my diploma

Dear New Teacher,

Congratulations! You are about to get (under)paid as you start your career and make a difference in the lives of students!

Here is your mission, should you choose to accept it: Teach the state standards and bring all students up to grade level while simultaneously preparing productive citizens for a competitive global society.

Your tools? Your student teaching experience, the best practices you learned at our fine institution, whatever resources you can find on the Internet, and the colleagues at your new school.

Keep in mind as you go about completing your mission that you will need to successfully navigate around the following pitfalls:

• Insufficient supplies
• Pressure from your administration, district, state, and nation to get your students to perform well on standardized tests
• Accountability paperwork. This includes turning in weekly lesson plans, writing IEP's, goal/objective tracking, behavior documentation and assessment reporting. If you thought you went into this for the kids, think again. Your job is to do the necessary paperwork to prove you are teaching the necessary skills.
• Lack of administrative support, and in some cases, respect
• Attending meeting after meeting and training after training. Some will be useful, most won't. In any case, wave bye-bye to your planning time!
• Thinking you can do it all while staying happy, healthy, and sane

Now that we have fulfilled our obligation to warn you of the potential danger of your mission, we can officially launch you into the Real World of Teaching.

Ready, set, GO!!!!