Hindsight truly is 20/20.

And the wonderful advantage of this is that if you can glean the information that others have experienced in this hindsight so that you can avoid making the same mistakes, then even better.

Isn’t that what teachers, mentors, leaders, and parents are for?

With that in mind, I submit to you a few of them many things I could reach back and tell myself as a first-year teacher.

• You don’t know everything.

You don’t know everything.I was particularly prepared for my career in music education. I had taught private lessons for a few years. My dad was a band teacher. I spent 6+ years working in music retail. I thought I knew everything I needed to to be successful my first year (at least!) of teaching.

I even got a relatively kushy job: opening a brand new school.

But I was wrong. It wasn’t easy to build a program from scratch, and I didn’t know everything there was to know.

I did a fine job with purchasing, recruiting, and managing all I had to. I truly rose to the occasion. But when they handed me my budget for the year I felt instantly out of my depth of knowledge. I didn’t know how to read a simple pro-forma statement [that’s just a fancy way of saying ‘here’s what we THINK will happen money-wise this year’].

My friends, if you can take a little accounting class before you get into the thick of it, I highly recommend you DO.

• Appreciate (and utilize) your mentors.

Again, I had a pretty good situation starting out, and pretty darn good mentors.

The amazing woman I student-taught with was just a phone call away. We even met and let our kids play together regularly. My dad was just a few miles down the road and could come and work with my ensembles as often as I needed. Many of my colleagues were my friends.

But did I appreciate them? Did I call them as often as I really needed help?

Nope.

Part of it was ego, part of it was pride. Part of it was that I wanted to try things myself. And that’s okay, too. But if I could go back I would stay in touch even more. I would explore further resources.

But to be fair to my former self, that was before even YouTube existed. There were not blogs. There were not podcasts.

Since I’ve been teaching elementary music I have taken advantage of the many resources available to mentor me as someone who was secondary-emphasis. I’m happy to say that now, hindsight taught me a lesson.

• Have a management plan and stick to it.

I distinctly remember at least one time when I lost my temper with my class. I threw my baton down, stormed into my office, and slammed the door. A few minutes later, a few students knocked on the door, promising to do better.

But the truth is, if I had posted specific rules and applicable consequences and stuck to them, I would have never had to lose my temper. Because it wouldn’t have been about me at all. Their behavior would trigger a consequence. It takes the teacher entirely out of the situation, which makes it better.

My problem was consistency.

So, know what to do…do it….and stick to it.

All of these stem from the exact same issue, which is the final lesson I would tell myself:

• Leave your ego at the door.

Nine times out of ten, if we’re struggling with classroom management, dealing with our colleagues, or struggling with our administration, our own ego is what is to blame.

If we have teachable hearts, then when we discover some way we can improve, we will jump on the chance to do it, to take it on, and to improve. If our ego doesn’t overpower us, then when we have a conflict with a co-worker, we can approach it with a learning heart, open to empathy for their feeling, and the conflict will be far more quickly resolved.

We’ll learn from our mentors, and be able to engage with our students on a more personable level.

So, yes. Please leave your ego at the door.

Finally, I would tell myself to…

• Love yourself beyond measure.

Too often we think our jobs are our life, but I beg to differ. Our jobs as music teachers are only part of our lives. Once our careers are over, our lives are still there.

I would never want to look back and regret not taking that vacation, or not engaging in that class, or learning that new skill. As teachers we tend to give and give and give…often more than we have. It is this more than anything that helps us burn out of the career. We forget that the job is just a part of us, not us entirely.

Some day, we’ll retire. Or change jobs. Or, like me, choose to stay home and raise children. And that’s okay. Go get that massage. Go to that movie. Work harder than you play. And love yourself beyond measure! You already love your family, your students…probably everyone that you know. But unless you love yourself and care for yourself, you will soon have nothing left to give.

So take care of yourself. Spend time in your fun zone. Do things you love, outside of your career. Don’t ever look back and think of how much more time you spent working with your students than you did with your own kids. And don’t ever get to the point where you don’t know what you like because you keep letting everyone else choose for you.

There is is: 5 things I would tell my 1st year teacher self.