Feeling Like a First Year Teacher: Toward Becoming a Successful Online Instructor

Background

Before beginning my career in a tenure-track higher education faculty position, I (Rieber) was a public school teacher for five years, with most of that time spent teaching fifth grade. I've often joked over the years that I hoped my students from my first year of teaching received an education somewhere down the line because the only person who probably learned anything that year was me. It was an amazing year, and I never worked harder or learned as much in so short a time. But, with a lot of help and support from my principal and several experienced teachers at the school – combined with a mixture of perseverance, courage, daring, humility, and terror – I slowly found my way. Of course, I also had some skill, knowledge, and a beginning teaching philosophy (however fragile) gained from my teacher education program at the University of Pittsburgh. Over the course of the next five years I think I became a good teacher. Those five years were an incredibly formative time for me as a professional educator, one that has informed and guided me and my university research in the 25 years since I left the public school classroom.