8 Questions New Teachers Often Ask—Answered

Each fall, new teachers step into their classrooms with urgent questions. How do I keep from being overrun? How can I save time grading? How do I engage the disengaged? Their urgency comes from a good place—the passion to do right by children. These questions often hide a deeper, more anxious one: Am I enough? That’s not a question to fear, it’s your compass.

What follows are eight of the questions that arise most often for new teachers, answered with practical tips and strategies to help you confidently move forward. This is just a start—deeper answers will come from experimenting, noticing what clicks, and evolving.

1. How should I respond to classroom misbehavior?

It’s helpful to post rules, direct kids to practice classroom procedures with feedback, and clarify expectations early in order to reduce behavioral challenges, but your real goal should be fostering an environment in which misbehavior isn’t common—a proactive rather than reactive approach.

That approach, which balances teacher authority and student autonomy, tends to forestall low-level classroom disruptions, since students are more willing to follow directions when they feel both cared for and guided by a capable leader.

Some tips for reducing misbehavior:

• Use a playful tone when noticing on-task behavior—like it’s a personal delight.
• Students are affected by your nervous system. When things go wrong, project a steady authority. If a procedure isn’t followed, don’t roll your eyes. Just pause and reteach it.
• Speak to the behavior, not the student’s character. Instead of “It’s rude to interrupt,” try “James has the floor.”
• Don’t debate class rules with kids. Competence is conveyed when you calmly, consistently enforce expectations (e.g., moving a student to a different seat).

A big part of maintaining classroom order, especially in the lower grades, is investing in small, steady corrections: repeating instructions, redirecting behavior, and reteaching routines as often as needed. Hold the line every single day until students believe that your expectations are not optional.

What matters most: Students want you to be invested in them, as well as fair and capable. Uphold that narrative, and positive behaviors will follow.

2. How do I build positive relationships with my students without undermining my authority?

Trust is earned when you’re both strict and kind. Without authority, kindness feels unsafe, like a friendly teacher who lets the classroom unravel. Without warmth, authority feels domineering.

Try the following ideas to blend care and authority.

Institute a class ritual: During a 90-second Wednesday shout-out, have students briefly recognize peers while you control the time and tone by modeling the first compliment.

Set boundaries without words: Let’s say you’re alone in your classroom when Daisy enters and lets the door click shut. Smile warmly while walking across the room to reopen the door. Boundary set.

Employ the warm demander stance: Warm demanders combine high expectations with a structured environment to encourage every student to reach their full potential.

Finally, share information about yourself selectively—like “Pickleball is my jam,” not “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

What matters most: When students challenge your boundaries, they’re really testing your belief in them. Holding steady communicates “I know you’ll learn to meet this expectation.”

3. How can I keep students engaged and motivated?

Many students, particularly adolescents, experience a dip in conscientiousness and agreeableness when emotional volatility rises. That can manifest as missed assignments and disengagement, particularly when work is challenging. Recognizing these trends is only the first step—the next is meeting students where they are, emotionally and cognitively.

Begin by normalizing discussions of stress and teaching emotional regulation tactics alongside academic content.

Every time you start a lesson, make sure you tell students its purpose. Explaining why an activity is important can heighten engagement.

Make sure students are following along by teaching a new skill or concept with easy material first. Before students tackle more difficult material, direct them to explicitly name what they’ve learned to activate metacognition. This is crucial for helping learners consolidate knowledge and prepare for transfer. Similarly, make transitions obvious: “Before we move on, turn to a partner and say in one sentence what you just learned.”

Even the most engaging strategies can fail to connect if your delivery is fuzzy. Carefully organize the content in your head, and try this test: Can you teach the concept in one minute using everyday language? If not, pause and break it down further. Use analogies, examples, or visual models to clarify your own understanding.

What matters most: Engaging students is a craft, and each attempt sharpens your teaching.

4. How do I manage lesson planning and cover all the standards?

For many new teachers, the workday stretches 10 to 12 hours as planning, paperwork, and grading pile up. Fortunately, covering the curriculum doesn’t have to feel impossible. The key is subtraction: Narrow your focus to what matters most, lean on shared resources, and use smart tools like AI to reduce the number of tasks you complete from scratch in order to create manageable and meaningful lessons.

First, ask your department or grade-level team if they have the following for you to review:

• Pacing guides, unit plans, or curriculum maps
• Activities
• Rubrics and scoring guides
• Grade-level texts
• Materials
• Student exemplars

Carefully modify examples, texts, or activities to reflect your students’ interests, backgrounds, or skill levels, and also to match your instructional style. AI can assist with that process.

Rather than trying to cover each standard equally, identify those that matter most. These are called power standards, and they can be found in pacing guides, state assessment blueprints, and vertical alignment documents. Ask fellow teachers which standards tend to trip students up, and allocate additional support and practice where it’s needed most.

When teachers unconsciously drift toward familiar activities and lessons that are reliably engaging, this can unintentionally shortchange students of the depth and challenge they deserve. The question is not “Will this work?” but “Is this essential?” Crowd-pleasing activities have their place, but essential lessons propel learning.

Other planning time-savers:

1. You don’t have to—and shouldn’t—always plan for epic instructional performances. Leave space in your plans for students to talk, create, collaborate, problem-solve, and wrestle with the content.

2. Feeling stuck on how to structure a lesson? Default to the Gradual Release of Responsibility model.

3. Integrate low-prep, high-impact practices that you can use regularly. For example:

• Reading sprints: Have students read silently for 10 minutes, then discuss two general questions about their chosen text.
• Problem of the day: Provide a single, standards-aligned math problem that students solve and discuss, reinforcing skills without a full lesson build-out.
• Claim, Evidence, Reasoning prompts: Students respond to a science question using evidence from prior learning.
• Sentence stretchers: Give kids a short sentence (e.g., “The dog ran.”) and challenge them to add details.

What matters most: Center planning on power standards and adapt what colleagues share. Skip low-value tasks and aim for ones that have an impact on learning.

5. How can I manage my workload?

Teaching is intellectual-emotional labor wrapped in do-now logistics, but consistently overworking can make you less effective and lead to poor mental health outcomes, including symptoms of depression, anxiety, and increased stress.

To protect yourself, prioritize relentlessly. Don’t expend energy on superficial activities that consume planning time, such as designing elaborate games or creating pretty visuals at the expense of more impactful instructional strategies.

Try a regular weekly cadence, batching similar tasks and leaving time for intentional recovery:

Momentum Monday

• Review weekly goals and prep materials for the day.
• Batch lesson planning for the week. Use templates to streamline.

Targeted Tasks Tuesday

• Grade short assignments.
• Leave when the bell rings. Use this time for personal errands, exercise, or rest.

Wellness and Work Wednesday

• Engage in 10 minutes of mindfulness or journaling.
• Call parents, respond to emails, and update the gradebook.
• Do optional light planning if energy allows. Otherwise, rest.

Creative Thursday

• Design engaging instructional materials (e.g., anchor charts).
• Grade essays or projects.

Finish Line Friday

• Do a quick classroom tidy-up and prep Monday’s materials.
• No schoolwork.

Weekend Recharge

• Saturday: No schoolwork until after lunch. Optional one-hour grading block in the afternoon.
• Sunday: 90-minute planning session in the morning. Then unplug.

If anxiety or dread persists, reach out to a counselor or explore your district’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Most public school teachers have access to EAPs with confidential mental health support.

By year two, you’ll have some lesson plans ready to reuse or tweak, and you’ll know what not to spend time on. For now, give yourself grace.

What matters most: Your students need you at your best. Prioritize, plan, and pad your schedule with sanity breaks.

6. How can I save time grading?

Over the years, I’ve learned that too much feedback isn’t helpful—research shows that trimming back on grading can actually enhance learning. Instead of offering feedback on every assignment, here are some smart, student-centered strategies to save time:

• Hold rapid-fire two-minute one-on-one conferences during class. Students get immediate, personalized guidance, and you avoid hours of writing comments.
• Speak your comments into your favorite AI tool and let it polish your language and generate concrete examples that illustrate your points.
• Once or twice a year, instead of commenting on each student’s essay individually, write a single “letter to the class” that addresses common strengths, recurring issues, and shared misunderstandings you notice across submissions. Distribute copies, take questions after students have processed the letter, and let them revise their work accordingly.
• Once in a while, limit yourself to a single sentence of feedback per assignment. The constraint sharpens your comments and can increase their impact.
• Ask students to grade their own work first and justify their scores with evidence.
• During presentations, jot your feedback on a sticky note in real time. Limited space forces brevity.
• Group work means one comment, one rubric, one grade for the whole team.
• Focus on one key skill (e.g., using evidence to support a claim) with a simplified dual-entry rubric (see below).

AI systems are increasingly matching or exceeding human graders in accuracy on student essays. And while you shouldn’t use AI for grading without checking the results, it can help flag errors and identify patterns in student performance.

What matters most: Shift away from always employing line-by-line grading and integrate alternative strategies that provide meaningful, efficient feedback.

7. How should I respond during a difficult situation with a parent?

Many years ago, during my first month of student teaching, I witnessed one of my fifth graders (we’ll call him Mike) throw a rubber playground ball straight at a classroom window. “Stop!” I shouted. “You’ll break it.”

Mike shot back, “Shut up, butthead!”

That outburst earned him a trip to the office. After school, I was summoned there myself, where Mike’s furious mother told me I’d “messed with the wrong boy.” Then she unleashed 10 minutes of accusations in my direction and left without letting me or my supervising instructor say a word.

That taught me to set a clear boundary: No parent has the right to shout at me. The two times it happened in later years, I responded with, “I’m not going to continue this if there’s yelling.” Both times, the parents calmed down.

The following strategies for de-escalating parents are most effective when preceded by early positive contact.

• Secure backup: If you anticipate hostility, invite a supportive administrator.
• Connect: If you’re anxious that there might be conflict, flip on what I call the “human switch.” Instead of bracing for battle, lean into the interaction as a chance to connect and enjoy the parent—“We’re just two people trying to work something out.” More often than not, this stance leads to a positive exchange.
• Move the chairs: Sit at an angle from the guardian, not across from them like it’s a police interrogation.
• Compliment: “I appreciate how much you care about Terri’s literacy skills.”
• State your goals: “Let’s discuss ways to make sure your child succeeds on the next paper.”
• Take responsibility (if warranted): “I reacted too quickly in class today. I apologize and want to make sure Jason feels respected and supported.”
• Offer solutions: Provide actionable steps and a timeline.
• Schedule an update: “Let’s check in after Friday’s quiz.”

Sometimes, parents cycle through the same complaints. Interrupt the cycle by summarizing and shifting: “Mr. Harper, it’s clear that X is a concern. What do you recommend as a first step?”

Finally, if you notice a student struggling academically or behaviorally, loop the parents in immediately. “It’s not like Alexia to miss three homework assignments. Let’s discuss a plan to get her back on track.”

What matters most: When parents view you as professional, competent, reasonable, and—most important—invested in their child’s success, they’ll be in your corner.

8. What’s a good way to handle cell phone distractions?

A significant percentage of teachers—elementary through high school—surveyed in 2023 reported that “students distracted by cellphones are a major problem.” You’re not alone if you notice phones derailing your lessons.

So what’s the solution? A 2025 review of 18 studies on curbing digital distraction suggests the following:

• Regulate the environment with phone-free zones, signs that remind students of the rules, or a designated area where students park their phones at the start of class.
• Control technology with lockable phone pouches and schoolwide signal blockers. You can’t implement this one yourself, but you can bring up the idea in a staff meeting.
• Implement behavioral interventions via self-monitoring, goal setting, and journals where students reflect on their progress.

Set up a workable system, and lay it out clearly for students. Inform parents and describe the consequences of breaking the rules. Finally, keep an eye out for texting via smartwatches—you may need to treat them like phones.

What matters most: Students resist less when they sense that phone guidelines are consistently enforced to preserve focus and enhance learning.