An Introspective and Honest Analysis of a Teacher’s First Year’s ExperiencesOne out of every ten first-year teachers leave the profession after that frightful first year - and author Victor Z. Stanhope knows why. Despite the expansive list of books and resources geared towards helping first-year teachers, none of them illuminate the realities of the first-year teaching experience. THE TEACHING MIRROR: LESSONS LEARNED AS A FIRST-YEAR TEACHER is the first book to explore a first-year teacher’s experience through analyzing journal entries written before and throughout the school year. This book synthesizes the author’s journal entries and experience into lessons for first-year teachers to help them better cope with their upcoming or current life as a new teacher.This book is very helpful for new teachers in that it: -Provides incoming first-year teachers with an honest and practical perspective of the experience.-Connects with and addresses first-year teachers’ emotions and worries.-Offers applied tips and exemplifies their effectiveness.-Illustrates the author’s failures, remedies, successes, and learned lessons. In Victor’s generous book, THE TEACHING MIRROR, he has shared his ‘failures’ and successes, citing each as valuable since ‘teaching in itself is a learning experience.’ He favors teaching skill over content, clearly stating and restating your expectations, and creating a ‘class culture’ where thoughtfulness abides. He stresses making lessons authentic, meaningful, and most importantly, relevant. He describes his ‘mini-emotional collapse’ treated by meditation and journaling when therapy was unavailable. I enjoyed reading every page of this book and recommend it to every teacher, not only first-year teachers, as there are nuggets of wisdom for everyone experiencing successes and failures on the bumpy road to becoming a great teacher, a master teacher. Judy Woods-Knight, author of Teaching School is a Scream! Confessions of a Career Substitute
