Beginning Teaching Career - What Do You Wish You Had Known?

[Charlotte]

Since you are at a CC (but still applicable anywhere) - know your student population. 
Are they mostly recent high school graduates or working adults?  Will you get dual-enrolled high school students?
Why are they taking your class?  Is this a foundational class that everyone has to take to get started or is it one of the last classes for a certificate/transfer?
What kind of attrition rate is normal for the course?  A 50% or higher DWF rate might be common or expected if it's a class with no pre-reqs.

Something to ask that trusted senior colleague:
How much work is reasonable to expect them to complete outside of class time?  Do most students have access to a computer at home or not?  Is there a computer lab on campus?

What if the class has a mixture of both? From what I know of the school, most are just out of high school but there are several in each class who are non traditional students.

[the_geneticist]

Since you are at a CC (but still applicable anywhere) - know your student population. 
Are they mostly recent high school graduates or working adults?  Will you get dual-enrolled high school students?
Why are they taking your class?  Is this a foundational class that everyone has to take to get started or is it one of the last classes for a certificate/transfer?
What kind of attrition rate is normal for the course?  A 50% or higher DWF rate might be common or expected if it's a class with no pre-reqs.

Something to ask that trusted senior colleague:
How much work is reasonable to expect them to complete outside of class time?  Do most students have access to a computer at home or not?  Is there a computer lab on campus?

What if the class has a mixture of both? From what I know of the school, most are just out of high school but there are several in each class who are non traditional students.

A mixture of both sounds normal.  You can always ask them on the first day what their future plans are and how your class fits in.  A colleague at the local CC says the "no prerequisites, you can just wake up that morning and decide to register" class is more challenging to teach than the "you have to pass Basketweaving I & II to take Basketweaving III" class. 

[Charlotte]

For the OP, I don't think it's helpful to think of CC as a step down or a stepping stone; it's a different type of job.

This cannot be emphasized enough. 

My current non-academic employer has many people who left academia because being a professor at a great R1 means being the project manager, not the person doing the day-to-day science. 

Again, professor is a different job than grad student or postdoc.  We have many people who teach one course somewhere because teaching is interesting as a side gig, but their main job is research here.

That's true and I definitely did not intend to imply that it was a step down. I meant it as not as supportive for individuals who also want to do research. So in that regard it isn't quite what I had hoped to aim for in my career. However, I truly think I could be happy teaching at a community college and doing research on the side. It sounds like that might be more difficult than I imagine though with how busy the college work will be.

[polly_mer]

Unless your research is teaching/learning at CCs, you're not going to be doing a lot of research.  There just isn't time unless you've decided to have no other life outside of your CC job and research.