Tips for New Teachers to Easily Integrate into School Life

When stepping into a new school environment, it's crucial to pay attention to your attire and communication style. These aspects leave a lasting impression on those you encounter for the first time. As a teacher, dressing appropriately, with elegance and discretion, suited to the environment is essential. Whether it's while standing in front of the class, during the first-year meeting, or in a meeting with the Principal's Office, this is important because your attire reflects your personality and respect for those around you. Naturally, you'll also gain the affection of students from the very first lesson if you create a positive impression with the right image of a teacher.

This is something every teacher must be able to do - show students that you care and genuinely want to engage with them. Learn their names and make an effort to remember them, not just for acquaintance but to demonstrate your closeness with the students. Additionally, show concern for students' family circumstances, especially those facing difficulties. If you're assigned as a homeroom teacher, this is particularly important. You need to show your dedication to your profession, instilling trust in your students, which will make them more obedient and attentive. Another crucial aspect is preparing your lessons well, finding ways to impart knowledge in the easiest way possible, creating a comfortable atmosphere so students don't feel confined or suffocated during class.

Did you graduate with honors in pedagogy? Have you achieved a lot academically? Are you confident you'll excel in every aspect of being a teacher from the very first day at school? However, for a new teacher, this is far from easy. The reality is that having knowledge but lacking skills is a common situation for many pedagogy graduates today. Therefore, new teachers need to apprentice for a few years before they can confidently stand in front of a class. So, where and how should one learn these skills? The answer lies with colleagues, those who have more experience teaching than you. Don't show off to your colleagues, especially when you're a newbie and in a new environment where you practically don't know anything. Be humble to learn from your colleagues, especially older teachers with years of experience. Also, try to get closer to the teachers in your subject department. If possible, invite the whole department for a drink to create a friendly atmosphere. Having heart-to-heart conversations will bring people closer, making it easier for you to receive necessary help and integrate into the new environment quickly.

A young teacher not only lacks teaching methods and classroom management skills but also lacks the skills and experience in dealing with students' parents, which is almost close to zero. To make a good impression on parents, you need to regularly communicate with them to discuss the academic and moral situation of their children, and also to timely correct any individual issues. Another crucial point that new teachers need to pay special attention to is communication with parents. While it's not necessary to be overly formal when communicating with parents, young teachers should avoid being too informal. Instead of addressing parents as 'cháu' (a term used to address someone younger), it's better to address them as 'tôi' (a term used to address someone older) to demonstrate respect for their position.

Regarding the School Administration, you need to understand and clarify the school's regulations, requirements for documentation, lesson plans, and records, and strive to complete them to the best of your ability. Additionally, you must be ready to assist the School Administration with tasks requiring youthful energy to demonstrate to everyone that you are an energetic and enthusiastic teacher, such as supervising students during group activities, collaborating with the school board to inspect student discipline, and demeanor...

Along with classroom subjects, extracurricular activities in schools play a significant role in helping students consolidate, expand, and deepen their basic knowledge learned through cultural subjects, thereby enhancing physical fitness, developing awareness of certain areas of social life suitable for their age. Most schools often have many extracurricular activities related to specialties such as quiz competitions, golden bell ringing, creative experience activities, teaching aid making contests. In addition to extracurricular activities, movement activities are also something young teachers should pay attention to. These could be celebrating November 20th, International Women's Day, or March 26th, with various accompanying activities. Be well-informed to participate and arrange professional plans accordingly. Therefore, if you are a new teacher to the school, pay attention to these issues, prepare well if your school has such extracurricular activities, movement activities.

As always, expertise is the most important issue for a new teacher to focus on. Being new, you're bound to be overwhelmed by many things related to your subject, and if you don't take the time to understand and learn about them, you'll find it very difficult to integrate into the new environment, even if you've performed very well in the steps above. So, what specialized factors should you pay attention to?

• Firstly, pay attention to the subject you are teaching and how many extra sessions are allocated per week. Nowadays, schools often have additional sessions alongside those specified by the Ministry. Moreover, you should also carefully study how these additional sessions are organized to devise suitable teaching methods: whether to focus on solving exercises or allow teachers to use their own discretion.
  
  
• Secondly, new teachers need to pay attention to the school's curriculum. Why should you pay attention to this? Because the curriculum is one of the tools that help students review effectively. Typically, schools prepare curriculum for students in one of three formats: with a summary of knowledge and exercises; with a summary of knowledge in fill-in-the-blank format and exercises; or with only exercises. So, what format does your school's curriculum belong to? How are the exercises arranged in it? And above all, how have the curriculum books been used?
  
  
• Thirdly, new teachers should pay attention to the teaching philosophy at the school and within the subject department. In fact, not all schools share the same subject philosophies; sometimes they can be completely different. It could be teaching theory intensively, focusing on exercises, teaching at an advanced level, or just teaching basic knowledge.
  
  
• Fourthly, new teachers should pay attention to how exams and assessments are conducted, including aspects such as the format of the exam (whether it's set by individual teachers or all teachers collectively, and then chosen by the head of the department), limitations on the number of students, and the difficulty level of the exams.
  
  
• Finally, new teachers should also pay attention to teaching demonstrations, good teaching practices, assessing professional documents, and specialized topics.

Being new, you always face surprises and feel unfamiliar with what you encounter. Therefore, to easily integrate into the new environment, young teachers need to remember even the smallest details. So, prepare yourself a personal notebook to jot down all the observations and learnings from the first days at school. Any rule, any attention when solving tasks, the name of the security guard and the phone number of the janitor, the content of the council meeting... all deserve your attention and note-taking. Besides, you also need to quickly memorize the school layout, from the location of the laboratories, the library, to how to borrow and return books, computer labs,... It would be extremely bad if you still haven't memorized all the classroom locations, don't know who manages the library, or what the security guard's name is even after teaching for the whole semester...

As mentioned above, colleagues will be the ones to help you integrate quickly, they will be the ones you need to learn from first at the new school, and most importantly, they are the ones who, together with you, create a strong department within the school. Therefore, show genuine concern, there's no need to necessarily invite them for drinks or to your house. Just a few sincere questions whenever there's an opportunity, no matter how small, at school, you can already make an impression on your colleagues.