Hey All!
This is a spoken word Poetry that I wrote as advice for new teachers. It's a teacher-take on Baz Luhrmann's speech "Everybody's Free to wear Sunscreen"
Hope you enjoy it!

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 2010....Become a teacher, if I could offer you only one tip for the future, teaching would be it.
The long term benefits of teaching have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.
I will dispense this advice now.....

Enjoy the power and beauty of your students, Oh never mind, you will not understand the power and beauty of your students until they have left you. But trust me in 20 years you'll look back at class photos and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility laid before them and how fabulous they really were.
They are not as badly behaved as you imagine.

Don't worry about finding a job, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be the things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blind side you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
Don't waste time in jealousy, sometimes your ahead, sometimes your behind, the race is long and in the end it's only with yourself.

Remember great assignments your receive; forget the bad ones. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what grade you want to teach yet, some of the most interesting people I know taught a different grade at 22 then they do now at 40.
Be kind to your Secretary, you'll miss her when she's gone.

Maybe you'll be a principal, maybe you won't,
Maybe you'll coach a team, maybe you won't,
Maybe you'll quit after 5 years ,
Maybe you'll celebrate your 40th teaching anniversary with your family.
Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either, your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's .

Get to know your students, because at the end of the year they're gone for good
Be nice to their siblings, they are the best link to their past, and the people most likely to stick with them in the future.

Understand people from the Faculty of Education will come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on, work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get the most you need the people you knew at the Faculty of Education.

Teach in an urban school once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Teach in a county school once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Accept certain inalienable truths, educational costs will rise, students will cheat and you too will get old.
And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young educational costs were reasonable, students were noble, and children respected their elders.

Don't expect anyone else to mark for you.
Maybe you have a TA, maybe you have an eager student, but you never know when either one will run out.

Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth

But trust me on the Teaching.....