Do you have to do PD on a snow day?

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Company cultures range from very lax to very strict—and this is a subjective rating.

On your first teaching assignment, you might encounter unusual-to-you rituals or perspectives. Here are some questions and considerations First Year Teachers wrestle with:

Are you ok with having administrators in your room observing you once a week or so? What is your definition of Teacher Support?

There’s The Company Handbook—and then there are The Unwritten Rules. Are you being clued in on those quickly, or do you have to find out by being chastised every time you make a mistake?

How are snow days handled? If students don’t have to report, do you?

Does anyone arrive early? Are folks in a hurry to leave at the end of the day?

Are you able to share your concerns about the Higher Ups to the Higher Ups freely, or are you keeping that sh*t to yourself?

Is your time respected?

Are the things you are asked to do capable of being done during work hours, and if not, is it expected that you take things home? (I don’t mean that they say, “Finish this at home”. What I mean is, everybody in the organization pretty much knows it’s too much and to keep your job or at least not get written up you need to spend some personal, private time at home doing work).

How do you take a day off? Do you have to talk to the supervisor directly or can you request your days off online?

How do you go to the bathroom, how do you enter the facility, and how do you enter your teaching space? Who is responsible for helping you with these?

The negative answers to these questions encourage teachers to leave, and quite often the teachers feel like they’ve failed in some way. Not so.

And we help with this, both on the administrative end as well as the teacher end.

The Piano Instructor can be seen on YouTube, heard on Spotify, and read on Substack. I clearly would love to train your new teachers. Contact me via email me at Info@ThePianoInstructor.net.

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