What I'd Tell a New Teacher: Wisdom from a LinkedIn Thread

A simple question on LinkedIn recently sparked something special: “What's one piece of advice you'd give a pre-service teacher who is now eligible to teach?”

What followed wasn't a list of tips people had read in a book. It was a thread full of educators, some decades into their careers, some coaches, some school leaders, reaching back through their own experience to offer something honest to the next generation. Reading through the replies, a handful of themes surfaced, from people who had clearly lived them. Here's what they had to say.

Build Your Professional Learning Network - Early and Deliberately 
The original post set the tone as I kicked off the conversation: build your PLN, your Professional Learning Network, within and beyond your university, your school, and even your country. Investment equals value, and I am grateful for exactly that kind of network.

A few commenters gently pushed back on the idea that early career teachers should take any job they can get. Instead, look for a school that genuinely values professional practice, mentoring, and professional standards. The goal isn't just employment; it's learning your craft from teachers and leaders who have real expertise in developing that craft in others.

It wasn't a throwaway line. A PLN isn't an abstract concept; it's actual relationships with actual people you can call on, often stretching well beyond the walls of any one school. I extended the idea into something almost architectural: know your “six degrees of separation.” Every teacher you meet knows another teacher, who knows another, and those connections built over coaching sessions, conferences, shared coursework, social media, quietly become the scaffolding of a career. I shared that sometimes, all it takes is one person who believes in your potential to redirect the entire trajectory of your work.

Treat the First Years as a Journey, Not a Test
Maybe the most reassuring thread running through the comments was this: your first years aren't a performance test. They're a learning journey. Reflect often. Seek feedback. Adapt without shame. Great teachers, several people noted, aren't born fully formed, they're built through continuous iteration.

This idea showed up again in a line that's worth pinning above any new teacher's desk: don't spend your first years trying to prove you're a teacher - spend them becoming one. “Act from Clarity: not proving yourself but improving yourself.” You're not expected to arrive as a finished product. You're expected to keep growing, and that's the job, not a failure to meet some invisible bar.

Choose Your School as Carefully as It Chooses You
Tied closely to this was the recurring call to find a mentor and then ask that mentor which teachers are worth observing. I was curious - do early-career teachers need to actively seek out a mentor, does the school provide one, and how do you even know if a mentor is effective? It's a fair question.

Relationships Are the Curriculum Beneath the Curriculum
If there was a single word that recurred more than any other, it was relationships. One commenter distilled it into “the 3 Rs: relationships, relationships, relationships” - always remembering the person behind the student, facilitating learning rather than simply “teaching,” and investing time in the craft because it pays dividends later.

As one commenter put it, kids won't remember whether every lesson was perfect; they'll remember how you made them feel, whether you believed in them, and whether your classroom felt like somewhere they belonged. I linked this comment directly to Maya Angelou's famous line about people forgetting what you said and did, but never how you made them feel. It's a cliché because it's true, and this thread made it feel true again.

Take Care of Yourself; You Are the Resource
Amid all the talk of craft and connection, there was a firm, practical warning: teaching will drain you if you don't put boundaries in place. You are an essential resource, and turning your attention toward the human beings in your life, not the flashy distractions, matters as much professionally as personally.

One reply reframed self-care not as an act of selfishness but as basic maintenance: it's okay to switch off. It's okay not to turn metaphorical cartwheels in every single lesson. Being kind to yourself was named explicitly as part of being a good teacher, not a departure from it. I offered the metaphor that came from my own mentor: teaching is a vortex. Advice easy to hear, harder to believe, until you're a few years in and it clicks.

Focus on What You Can Control
A particularly clarifying piece of advice came in the form of a short mantra: "control the controllables". You can't control every student, parent, policy, or curveball. But you can control your preparation, your mindset, the relationships you build, and how you show up each day. I tied this back to a specific piece of pop culture wisdom invoking “Let It Go” from Frozen as a genuine coping mechanism for the things outside a teacher's control. It's a small, funny detail, but it points at something real: sustainable teaching means knowing the difference between what's yours to fix and what isn't.

Don't Reinvent the Wheel  
Several experienced educators gently pushed back against the instinct many new teachers have to build everything from scratch. Borrow. Adapt. Learn from those who've done this work before you. I summed up this comment by simply stating that teachers should recognise that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

This connects to a broader point about not doing the job alone. It might be your class and your students, but good teachers lean on their teams, and great teams pool their strengths to meet the needs of every learner. No one, not even the most naturally gifted teacher is meant to carry this work solo.

Stay a Learner Yourself
Being “eligible to teach” is a starting line, not a finish line. Several commenters emphasized that the education journey has to continue. Always be willing to learn more, adapt as you learn more, and hold onto what I called “confident humility.” (Recommendation: Read Adam Grant: Think Again)

This extended into a broader philosophical note: teachers are in a formative phase of “becoming.” Who you are as a teacher is dynamic, not fixed, but your “why” should stay steady underneath it. Spend real time examining and understanding your purpose. Talk, read, and think your way into meaning. And never underestimate the simple power of kindness and smiling at your students.

Find Your “experienced” and Find the Marigolds 

One especially memorable piece of advice, offered almost in passing, was this: find your experienced; find the veteran educators around you and let them shape you. Someone followed it up sharing about Marigold and I shared Jennifer Gonzalez's well-known piece on “Marigolds”. The idea that some colleagues help you grow and thrive, while others quietly stunt you, and that new teachers should actively seek out the marigolds in their building.

See as Many Great Teachers as You Can

The thread closed on a simple, almost old-fashioned piece of advice: see as many amazing teachers in practice as you can. I commented on the “Pineapple Chart”: a system some schools use to let teachers signal when their classroom is open for others to drop in and observe, and reflected on the privilege of being the coach who connected effective practitioners across a school. Watching great teaching in action, it turns out, may still be one of the most underrated forms of professional development available.

The Thread's Real Advice

Strip away the specifics, and this LinkedIn thread was really saying one thing in a dozen different voices: teaching is not something you arrive at; it's something you keep becoming, with other people's help. Build your network. Find your mentors. Take care of yourself. Focus on what's yours to control. And remember that long after your students forget the lesson plans, they'll remember how you made them feel.

For anyone eligible to teach and wondering where to start, I hope the advice shared by my professional learning network provides a helpful starting point.

Always curious,

Andrea

"Know the Source Before You Cite It"

A citation is a shortcut for trust. It says I didn't make this up, someone researched it, here's who and where. That shortcut only works if you've actually read what you're pointing to. 

Knowing the source means more than the reference itself. It means knowing what question the authors set out to answer, what evidence the claims were built on, and whether they ever went back and revised their own work later.

Most people skip that last part. It means reading past the one sentence that supports your point, to the sentences right after it that complicate it. A claim that leadership matters usually comes with a caveat that the effect is moderate and indirect. Often, nobody quotes the caveat.

 

Cherry-picking isn't always dishonest on purpose. Sometimes it's just easier. Read the abstract, pull the line that fits, move on. I get it, reading a whole paper takes time and most people don't have it, or think they don't. But the whole value of citing research is borrowing its rigour, and rigour doesn't transfer through one sentence. It transfers through the whole argument, caveats included.

 

Before you cite something, ask yourself honestly: have I read this, or have I read a version of this that already agrees with me? If it's the second one, the research isn't backing your position. You're backing it into a role it was never built for.

Reading the whole paper is the minimum, and anyone can do it. But when I question a citation, I reach out the author. Many in educational research are generous and happy to answer any questions about their research. 

Thank you to those who continue to keep me connected with educational research.