The First Year English Teacher's Guide to Beartraps

About the Book

At some moments, new teachers are exhilarated. At others they wonder darkly how anyone ever convinced them to try the job.

Here’s help for new English teachers.

The book is organized into four, jargon-free sections: “A Few Basics,” “Theory and Practice,” “School Culture,” and “Personal Survival.” Within each section there are short, focused explanations of how things actually work in high schools, and how to avoid the traps of overcommittment, classroom management, unruly student behavior, and school politics. There is also an appendix of tried and true “recipes”-- approaches to a variety of teaching challenges.

About the Author

Jon Potter was educated at Marlboro College and Harvard University. At Harvard he received an MAT and CAS, and worked as a Teaching Fellow in English Education. Later, he taught at Antioch-Putney Graduate School of Education, and for The University of Maine. He has taught English in a three-room school in Vermont, was the Chairman of the English Department in both a rural high school and a prestigious private school, taught in a Middle School, and is currently teaching English in a coastal Maine regional high school. He has published poetry and a number of plays.