An Organized Classroom

If you’re a teacher- you have probably already started back to school or getting ready to start. If you are anything like the FBU girls, you feel like you cannot get organized enough! I know there are a lot of you teachers out there that feel the same way, so hopefully some of these tips will help.

·         3 reasons to: LABEL everything!

o   (1)You may or may not have an assistant, but if you do- labeling everything not only helps your assistant, but it helps you. It helps the assistant already know where things belong before having to interrupt you to find out where you need things to go.

o   (2) If you need to be absent for any reason, the substitute teacher can come right into your classroom and not have any problems finding anything!

o   (3) It saves you A LOT of time. I try to stay super organized at school! When you have 18-20 of everything coming in at once, it makes a big difference to already have a designated spot for it to go.

§  You may think that labels are too expensive and they are time consuming, but trust me. Once you label- you’ll never turn back. Also- if you put labels on your wish list, parents are always willing to pitch in!

·         Organize Electronic files

o   When working on the computer, it is very tempting to place files just wherever you can put them. The key is to remember where you put them so next year you can find them quickly and revise them to use them again.

§  You can do this by organizing all your files in years you are teaching. Ex. This year everything you make you would place in a folder labeled “2010-2011.” Inside that folder you can make subfolders according to whatever your needs may be.

§  CLIPART! I spent many hours this summer organizing my clipart. When I get clipart I’ve been so bad about saving it with whatever name it comes with. This is a HUGE mistake. Change the name to whatever you will remember. Such as- if the clipart is a girl holding an apple, save it as “Girl with apple.” This makes it much easier when trying to find that certain clipart you’ve been looking for.