Organization Tips

TIP #1
Create an overview of your year/semester
I don't know about you, but there is never enough time to get everything done that I need to do. When I got my school calendar for the upcoming year, I would buy a cheap calendar and start plotting out timelines. I would mark off all school holidays, workshops, etc. I would put in exam dates. I would include anything that might impact how much actual teaching time I would have. I always made sure to definitely include homecoming week (total chaos) and state testing (ugh!!). Then I would look to see what was left. I would pull out the units I planned to teach and decided how much time I could realistically devote to each one. My school was on a 4x4 block plan. Each semester had two nine weeks. At the end of each semester, we were done, and I would get a whole new crop the next semester. The class periods were 95 minutes each. So I had to very strategically use my time to get everything accomplished I needed to accomplish. Looking at a semester overview made planning so much easier. Could I only afford to spend three weeks on Romeo and Juliet with my freshmen? Then I probably couldn't include the weeklong research idea I'd thought of. (Yeah, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition. But...I'm retired. lol!) I would keep this at the front of my planner binder for a handy reference guide. Sometimes things didn't work out exactly like I had anticipated. There are always unplanned assemblies, bad weather drills, etc., to throw off your schedule. You know what they say about the best laid plans, right? But it's nice to start off with a plan, and it helps to solidify your ideas for your lessons, too.

TIP #2
Use a monthly planning guide.
Before I discovered this idea, I would have sticky notes everywhere on my desk reminding me of this meeting or that worksheet I needed to create. This is really just a page of reminders and notes for the month. It makes life so much simpler when all this information is in one place, and you can put your finger on it immediately. Including it in your planner binder is just icing on the cake. Kinda like one-stop shopping. :)

TIP #3
Keep all the materials for a single unit in a separate three-ring binder.
I used to keep everything in file folders, but this was not a very efficient method. Once I moved to binders, I loved it! Everything I needed for my unit was there in the order that I used it. When I needed copies, I took the original out of the notebook, ran the copies, then put the original back. Easy peasy!!

TIP #4
Do not keep copies of extra handouts.
I would keep copies for ONE WEEK. This is for students who are absent from my class. If they don't take the initiative to pick them up within that week, then they are just out of luck. Sounds cruel, I know, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

TIP #5
Keep a running list of ideas throughout the year for the following year.
I had a page in my teacher binder for just this purpose. Whenever an idea of a new way of doing something or an item I would like to purchase would occur to me, I'd jot it down. That way, over the summer, I could review this list and decide if I wanted to try or purchase what I had written down or not. It certainly made things a lot easier than me trying to wrack my brain to remember something that was just on the tip of my tongue. Yeah, I had a bad case of teacher-forget-eritis.

TIP #6
Have a plan for everything that happens in your classroom and begin teaching it to your students on day one.
Especially important are plans for makeup work, substitutes, turning papers in, students with extra time, classroom flow, what to do with returned papers. My class procedures ran 22 items long, but it covered everything.