Navigating the School as a Smaller Fish: Research-Based Guidance for Teachers of Less Commonly Taught Content Areas

Introduction

Being a new teacher is difficult. There is so much to learn on the job while simultaneously working to inspire students and impact their success. Teacher preparation programs try their best to train and educate aspiring teachers, but the reality is that the most crucial skills are learned from practice and over time. The first few years of teaching are crucial for ongoing career success. Statistics illustrate the serious concern of attrition and retention of new teachers, especially in particular environments, such as urban and rural schools, as well as schools that serve high numbers of students who are most at-risk and underprivileged (Will, 2018). An alarming 40-50% of new teachers leave the job completely within their first five years (Will, 2018). All new teachers of all content areas face universal challenges, such as classroom management, effective teaching, student engagement, communicating with administrators, collaborating with colleagues, and balancing various on-the-job demands.

One thing that can make those initial years of teaching even more difficult is the feeling that you are alone and do not have necessary support. Some teachers may feel as if they are a small fish in a large school, due to the unique nature of their content areas and roles. As the only teacher or one of very few teachers of a specific content area at your school, having to figure things out as you go can be uniquely challenging! The artwork in Figure 1 below depicts the unique situation and feelings that teachers of less commonly taught content areas often experience. When most of the fish in a school of fish are all traveling together, it is important to reflect on what it is like to be the lone fish, finding and navigating your own path at each step of the way.

Figure 1.

Artwork of a school of fish with a school building

Broderick, A. (2020). Fish School [digital].

The title of this chapter refers to Less Commonly Taught Content Areas (LCTCA). How LCTCA is defined may depend on the context, and will certainly differ between a small, rural elementary school and a larger suburban high school, among other aspects. This chapter includes the following as LCTCA: the arts (music, visual art, and other even less commonly taught subjects, such as dance and theater/drama), P.E./health, vocational and technical education programs, newer concepts such as STEAM, gifted and talented programs, foreign languages (especially less commonly taught languages, such as Mandarin Chinese or Arabic, for example), ESL, specialized areas of specific content areas (such as engineering courses at the high school level or highly specialized Special Education content areas), and many more. This chapter centers around a United States context. However, much of the information within is relevant to a global context in many ways because schools and school districts are often organized similarly. Simply put, if you are in the group of teachers, you know who you are and what unites this group.

It may be surprising to consider certain content areas as less commonly taught. For example, most Americans would consider Physical Education to be commonly taught. However, Physical Education classes in US schools have been on the decline and have sometimes been pushed aside over the past few decades, due to stronger emphasis on what policy makers have defined as core academic subjects. Teachers of Physical Education and Health may find themselves teaching extremely large class sizes, sometimes traveling between buildings, and serving a large span of grade levels. Just like other LCTCA, these teachers’ roles are dependent on the type of school and the school and school district culture. Thus, Physical Education teachers may absolutely relate to being included as teachers of LCTCA, depending on their unique situations at their schools. In the current landscape of accountability and assessment driven public education, most content areas that are not Mathematics, English Language Arts, and perhaps Science can be included in the wide umbrella of LCTCA.