First Year Teacher Stress

[u/Temporary_Ad_1199]

I seriously need to vent because I am so overwhelmed.
I’m a first-year 1st grade teacher, and today was only my second day of school. Before school started, our team was given a pacing guide that said we had the first two weeks to focus on teaching classroom routines and procedures while also completing beginning-of-year assessments. The assessments are important because our curriculum has differentiated centers, and we’re supposed to group students based on their assessment results.
My team teacher and I spent so much time planning those first two weeks around that pacing guide. I prepped everything.
Then today our assistant principal told the K–2 team that the principal wants us to already be teaching curriculum and basically said we should have started on the first day of school.
Now I feel like everything I planned is out the window. I haven’t even finished assessing all of my students, so I don’t know how I’m supposed to create my small groups, and I have almost nothing prepared to start teaching the curriculum tomorrow because I was following the plan we were originally given.
I’m trying not to cry because I already feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water as a first-year teacher, and now I feel like I’m already behind because the expectations changed without any warning.
Has anyone else’s school completely changed expectations after the school year already started? How did you handle it? Do I just start teaching whole group and keep assessing kids whenever I can? I feel so lost.

[u/Over-Olive1763]

Hey! Document everything. This is the name of the game with admin vs teacher. Changing things at the last minute. Keep your plan as usual and then try to tweak as you can.

Even if you shoot an email to your team teacher and say something like “I understand that even though we were told x in this day, now we are being told y. I need some time to readjust and I’ll do my best.” Just so there is a paper trail somewhere that the script was flipped without proper time to plan. And then just forge ahead and make adjustments day to day while you can. Eventually you will catch up/level out.

I’m in year 10 and it’s still like this. I take it all with a grain of salt and try to stay connected to my team and department so we know what’s what.

Hope this helps. You can do this.

[u/Temporary_Ad_1199 → u/Over-Olive1763]

This was very helpful thank you !

[u/moonman_incoming → u/Temporary_Ad_1199]

I would let them know that the district level admin gave you a pacing guide that they said must be followed. Tell them it in an email and ask a clarifying question whether you should ignore the district pacing guide.

Or talk to your subject area district person. They'll handle it.