Anne B. Kocsis - How to Be Successful in Your First Year of Teaching High School: Everything You Need to Know That They Dont Teach You in School

A few years back we lost our beloved pet dog Bear, who was not only our best and dearest friend but also the Vice President of Sunshine here at Atlantic Publishing. He did not receive a salary but worked tirelessly 24 hours a day to please his parents.

Bear was a rescue dog who turned around and showered myself, my wife, Sherri, his grandparents Jean, Bob, and Nancy, and every person and animal he met (well, maybe not rabbits) with friendship and love. He made a lot of people smile every day.

We wanted you to know a portion of the profits of this book will be donated in Bears memory to local animal shelters, parks, conservation organizations, and other individuals and nonprofit organizations in need of assistance.

Douglas and Sherri Brown

PS: We have since adopted two more rescue dogs: first Scout, and the following year, Ginger. They were both mixed golden retrievers who needed a home.

Want to help animals and the world? Here are a dozen easy suggestions you and your family can implement today:

• Adopt and rescue a pet from a local shelter.
• Support local and no-kill animal shelters.
• Plant a tree to honor someone you love.
• Be a developer put up some birdhouses.
• Buy live, potted Christmas trees and replant them.
• Make sure you spend time with your animals each day.
• Save natural resources by recycling and buying recycled products.
• Drink tap water, or filter your own water at home.
• Whenever possible, limit your use of or do not use pesticides.
• If you eat seafood, make sustainable choices.
• Support your local farmers market.
• Get outside. Visit a park, volunteer, walk your dog, or ride your bike.

Five years ago, Atlantic Publishing signed the Green Press Initiative. These guidelines promote environmentally friendly practices, such as using recycled stock and vegetable-based inks, avoiding waste, choosing energy-efficient resources, and promoting a no-pulping policy. We now use 100-percent recycled stock on all our books. The results: in one year, switching to post-consumer recycled stock saved 24 mature trees, 5,000 gallons of water, the equivalent of the total energy used for one home in a year, and the equivalent of the greenhouse gases from one car driven for a year.

Acknowledgements

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, American author and professor (1931 Present)

I am extremely lucky to have an opportunity to teach and learn while I do what I love most writing. This book is dedicated to my wonderful friends and family who constantly help me navigate the never-ending challenges in my daily life. I would like to offer special thanks to Kathy Heisler and Michelle Sharp for helping me compile sources to interview while my son was in the hospital. Additionally, I want to thank my editor, Kim Fulscher, whose patience and advice continues to help me become a better writer. Above all, I wish to thank my children for teaching me what is important every single day. John, Matt, and Katie: I love you; you are my inspiration!

Foreword

Becoming a high school teacher is possibly the scariest and yet most rewarding of jobs, next to parenting. In a way, you are a surrogate parent to your students, sometimes spending more time with most of them than their biological parents and/or care-giving guardians, and influencing them in ways those adults can or do not. I congratulate the author, Anne Kocsis, for addressing the real issues from preparing a viable rsum to handling difficult parents to celebrating your career choice. Kocsis presents the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to teaching in todays high schools thankfully, she also presents ways to address and master the good, the bad, and the ugly. As high school teachers, we encounter all three every day.

Teaching in American high schools is tricky business. And, as is so sadly but accurately stated at the start of Section I, the dismal survival rates for high school teachers could spur their own distressing reality show, depicting the tears and frustrations of those teachers who dont make it. But the case studies in this book, along with my personal promise, are evidence to the contrary; proving that teaching at the high school level is one of the most gratifying and satisfying careers out there. We often get to teach what we know and love to students who need us and who, upon leaving our classrooms, will invariably miss and thank us.