r/ElementaryTeachers

Just got offered my 1st teaching position teaching either 1st-2nd ELA or 4th-6th ELA! What are your classroom must haves? Also best teacher planner?

Title says it all, I have plenty of paper, whiteboards, writing utensils, all the basic stuff, but what supplies does a kindergarten teacher ACTUALLY need? I’m very new to this but feeling optimistic!

Hi. I'm a fresh graduate. recently, I gave a demo class and an interview at a school. they appeared to like me and promised to call me again in the middle of July for another demo.

Here's the thing, the first demo I gave was directed towards 6/7 graders. They want me for first and second grade.

I have trained in a kindergarten before and I'm generally good with kids, but I would like to study and look at HOW to deliver information to children of that age because I believe that's the most challenging part about these classes.

Please provide me with books, online (preferably free) courses, YouTubers that help with such a matter, and whatever else comes to mind. thanks a lot!

I had an interview today and even though I thought it went “okay. “ my mentor teacher called me 10 minutes after my interview ended to tell me the school that I interviewed for called her and asked for a reference about me. That has to be a good sign right? Has anyone gone through this and they ended up not getting the job?

Hey, all!

I interviewed last Friday. On Monday I was informed that I was selected. The recommendation for hire was sent in on Tuesday.

I'm excited, but also very anxious. What's the usual follow-up and when can I expect it? Would it be by phone or email?

Thanks!

Genuinely don't know what happened here and need some advice from people who've experienced this before because this is honestly a first for me 😭

Two weeks ago we did a multiplication lesson for the day and this student was crushing it. Whole day went smooth after the initial explanation and she breezed through her worksheets with almost zero help from me. I genuinely thought she had it down with how well she was doing that day.

Yesterday we revisited multiplication in class and it was as if she had never seen it before in her life. She didn't remember the name (kind of understandable I guess, but in my defense I said it a lot that first day lol) didn't remember how to do it, didn't remember any of the tips/methods/tricks we used to work through the questions. All of it was just gone like Men in Black memory wipe style 🕴️ the questions yesterday weren't harder than before either, it was literally the same level of difficulty and even after some re-explaining and presenting my same lesson from two weeks ago, she still struggled a bit with the work.

I don't know if I just didn't teach it well enough the first time? or if this is more normal than I realize and just part of the learning process? but this is genuinely the first time I've had this experience where a kid does so well with a concept one day and then struggles quite a bit with the exact same thing the next time they see it.
I guess I'm trying to figure out how to actually make a lesson stick instead of it disappearing a couple weeks later because it feels like that's exactly what happened here /: Anyone have strategies that have worked for you to make your lessons stay with your students? or have some more insight on how/why this happens?

In my city, public schools are closing because of low enrollment. I get that part of it is due to lower birth rates, but a lot of parents are choosing charter and private schools instead. Some of those even have waitlists! There’s one public school in my city that’s set up like a charter school, and guess what? It has a waitlist too.

This makes me wonder why aren’t public schools trying to adopt more appealing ways of teaching to attract families? Or am I missing something?

I have an upcoming demo lesson interview for 2nd grade in front of a panel and I did my student teaching a 6th grade classroom. Advice and tips are greatly appreciated! I live in CA for reference ☀️

Hi all, my wife teaches 1st grade and she’s been asking me to help find good educational games for kids because she know that I work in IT (haha). Her class likes tech time a lot, but some apps are just flashy junk or too baby-ish (probably oriented on 2-3 years kids). She needs something actually useful for reading practice and languages studying, maybe with progress tracking (that will be cool).

Any platforms do u trust in elementary classroom? Free or paid is fine, just not another thing that makes more work for her. We're based in Estonia. TIA!

Hey!

I just heard back from the school I interviewed for. The email says "congratulations, you're a finalist", and that they're having trouble hearing from my references.

Does this mean I got the job?

I am in a very unique situation . I was a both a para and a student teacher. At the end of my student teaching I was reported by a coworker for a weird reason that I’m sure had racial and sex stigmas attached. You see I wrote letters to my ELA class like my professor told us to and with permission from my mentor teacher. Another teacher found one and reported to my principal “I don’t feel comfortable with him passing out letters to students” and when she didn’t get the response she wanted she told HR and claimed it were yellow boundaries behavior. HR opened up an investigation. Parents and students were interviewed and nothing came of it. I was absolved. However, since it’s an at-will state, I was terminated - still appealing and arbitration is coming. They basically said I’m a risk and it’s better to just to let me go now. Compassionate teaching??? Anyway.

I applied for a position and I don’t think the termination or investigation is on there. See I created the account and completed the application during the spring 2025, prior to the investigation which happened that fall and didn’t finish until January 2026.

Another thing is I was terminated for my act as a student teacher - which did affect me as a para.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I updated my account and disclosed the information. Typically when I apply, it’s a one click process because my application was already filled out. I know I’ve disclosed it in recent applications for new districts, even though I’m not sure if I should’ve.

I’ve been pulled to interview (in the district I previously had a profile with) and I don’t know what do I do?

It’s a unique situation. I know I was terminated as a para, but it was for a student teaching action. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to disclose that. Isnt student teaching supposed to be a learning process?

I want to be proactive and contact HR, but I don’t know if I should or if I should wait until after I interview. Would HR understand that I just forgot to update my profile, or how it’s a unique situation and I didn’t understand how to respond? I did call a few weeks ago for clarity but never got a response.

What do you think about it? What should I do?

I'm getting close to renewing my teaching license (Ohio) and working on my required pd hours. trough Model Teaching since it seemed like a convenient way to complete them online. Other than that, is there any more paperwork/requirements I need to complete before I submit he application? How long does the process take usually?

Our son had a wonderful time this last year with his 3rd Grade teacher. It turns out that she will be teaching 4th Grade next year and my son was over the moon because of how much he enjoyed her class. We were also very impressed by how this last schoolyear went and we thought about requesting our son to be placed in her class again.

Are parent requests for child's classroom teacher acceptable? Or is it annoying and maybe a red flag? We know the teachers do a lot of work on their own to set up classrooms for the following year, but would this special request come back to bite us (or our son) in the butt?

Looking for some advice.

I am being reassigned to 5th grade from MS math intervention. I have never taught elementary before.

I am very familiar with 5th grade math content thankfully.

I have never taught ELA so that is my biggest worry, along with teaching a self contained classroom. I do have some literacy training and curriculum trainings this summer that should be helpful.

I do enjoy MS a lot, so I should be good with the 5th grade age.

Hit me with all your advice!

Grading has been a struggle for me to really get a proper grasp on the past 3 years teaching 2nd grade.

Do you enter assignments into a grade book? What do you do for kids who don't finish assignments or turn them in? Do no-names get a zero that contributes to their grade? How do you turn your grade book into a report card grade? (we do 1,2,3,4 with 1 being fail and 4 being exemplary)

Hey!

This is a follow up to my previous post.

I had my interview yesterday. I was the 3rd candidate to be interviewed out of 6. When I left there were 2 candidates that were waiting to be interviewed - seems they were a little behind. It's a Title I dual language school and there are 2 vacant positions. I have about a 33% chance.

Some background: Although I'm looking for my first teaching position, I did my full year residency/student teaching in a Title I dual language school, receiving my master's, multilingual learners' endorsement, and teaching cert. I have 10 years working in a Title I dual language school - I've been a para since a couple years out of high school. Just for full transparency, I am a Black man.

I felt the interview went great. I answered to the best of my ability as a new teacher.

• I expressed passion for my work.
• I talked about family and community involvement and how important it is.
• I also talked about inclusion and culturally responsive learning and how I incorporate aspects of my student's identities into lessons.
• I told them how my work is data driven and how I teach to the state standards.
• For class management, I shared how important beginning the day with a meeting where students share their mood and something special that may have happened since school let out, and how I check-in with those who shared having big feelings.
• I went on to shared how at the beginning of the year it's important to practice policy and routines with students and model expectations.
• Used examples on how to support ELL - the different scaffolds and partnership with bilingual support.
• How flexible I am.
• How important it is to validate students' feelings in the event of emotional outburst and break spaces and behavior plans.
• That I don't speak in deficit language about a student.
• I provided recommendation letters from former students who are now in middle and high school (they were given at my going away party at the school). I also provided two print outs of my favorite lessons from last year.

I'm a big reflector and some of the things I forgot to mention were: explicitly supporting neurodivergent students; how often I reflect on lessons or interactions with students; tiered interventions; restorative practices (although I talked about PBIS and community circles), my belief in non-punitive measures; and an emphasis on my willingness to learn.

You never know who people want to hire for their positions, so I'm not holding out hope of getting picked and I'm already back looking for job openings (it's scarce but it'll pick-up in the next few weeks, I'm sure).

The school probably interviewed until around 2-3p. When do you think they'll make a decision? When do you think they'll begin reference checks? Would they start immediately, or pick back up Monday? Do I read as a valuable candidate?

Whatever feedback you have I'll take with me into my next interview.

Thanks!

I’m a little nervous about even making this post. I’m going to be a new 4th grade teacher this year. I also have what I feel is pretty extreme math anxiety. I had a really terrible third grade teacher (she was downright abusive) who used to humiliate me for getting math problems wrong in class. It made me terrified of math and I think it made me miss out on a lot of the basics. I had a very shaky foundation in math for a long time. I’ve since caught up (for the most part), I’ve passed all my classes, all my Praxis, etc., but I still find myself occasionally panicking when I’m put on the spot being asked to solve even very basic math problems. The thing is, I’m not worried about teaching my students. I’m confident that I can know my curriculum and help my students learn (I did it in student teaching and some of my students even told me that I helped them understand concepts they couldn’t get before). However, I have had embarrassing moments where my mentor teacher asked me to write a simple multiplication problem on a poster board or something (just an example) and I froze and couldn’t come up with the answer because my brain just goes blank.

I’m not so much looking for a solution on how to stop this from happening because I know it probably will occasionally, but I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that maybe I’m not the only one or that I can still be a competent teacher despite this? I feel like it’s my deep, dark secret that I’m always trying to hide from everyone. Like “If I can just be a stellar teacher in every other way they’ll never notice I kinda suck at math” lol.

If there ARE any resources or suggestions for helping with this I would love to hear them!

Hello - I am in need of ideas for PTA activities to raise money for my child’s school. We already do scholastic but trying to be create and engaging for parents and students.

Thank you!