Nothing makes a teacher more stressed than working in chaos or feeling ill-prepared for the next day. Have you ever woke to the alarm only to start worrying about what you are going to teach or wonder if you are truly prepared for the day? If you have ever experienced this, here are a few tips you can incorporate into your routine to keep you organized and prepared for the day.
1. Change Your Agenda
Before leaving for the day, change the date and the agenda on the board. I have a side whiteboard in my classroom that I block off with washi tape for each level of ASL. I place the date on the top then I put the day’s activities. I list the activities in order starting with a bell ringer. Under the day’s agenda, I list the work that will be due or upcoming. I always have the unit test date there so students are well aware of when the unit will end.
I also put the days objectives listed as “I can statements.” For example, If we are learning about food I might write:
- I can name several items of food
- I can order items from a minu
- I can describe the taste of the food I ate
2. Clear Your Desk Space
All studies ever conducted say that clutter causes stress and makes people less productive. Before leaving for the day, straighten up your desk. By no means am I a total neat freak and I do keep several stacks of papers on my desk. However, you can put all writing utensils, paper clips, and other small objects in their place. I keep a basket on my desk that holds a cup (nothing fancy it is literally a red Solo cup) for my pens, post-it notes to make notes of what I need to get done, and other supplies that I will need to access quickly. Find a home for all of these small things and this will help your desk feel less messy and help you stay organized. Just make sure you start off with a clean space in the morning.
3. Answer Emails
There is nothing worse than having 100 emails looming in your inbox. Make it a goal to answer emails and clear out your mailbox before you leave for home. If you someone that keeps 1,425 emails in your inbox, you could be adding stress to your life. Try to clear out some and keep a more manageable number of emails in your inbox. Then respond to any parent, admin, or coworker emails before you leave.
4. Prepare for a Substitute
We never know when we will wake up feeling awful or have to stay home with a sick sub. I always keep a substitute clipboard with an emergency lesson plan on it. Once that emergency plan has been used or is no longer relevant to what we are working on, I change it out. This takes the panic out of scrambling to come up with a lesson while dealing with so many other things on the homefront.
5. Grade Work
This is not always possible but it can save you time in the long run if you input class participation points, test scores, or homework points before you leave to go home. This is not always a possibility if the work needs to be hand graded but it will help you feel more accomplished when you don’t have this on your to-do list in the morning when you arrive at school.
6. Reflect on the Day
It is always important to use reflection in your teaching practice. Think about the day’s lesson and what went well. Focus on what really worked with the students and helped them be successful. Also think about what didn’t work and make tweaks to the lesson so when you use it next time you will be prepared without having to try to remember what needed to be changed. To make this quick, write the corrections on a post-it note and place it on your file. This is best done while it is fresh in your mind.
I hope these tips help you save time and your sanity. Try incorporating one at a time until it becomes a habit then add another one to your routine. Thanks for stopping by.
