Keeping Track of it All

When I started out as a general ed teacher - I felt like balancing my schedule was quite the circus act. In one ring I have my students and their needs.  The general round of items included time blocks for language arts, cursive, math, spelling and word study, science, social studies, and a resource class.  Then in the next ring there was the before school, during lunch, and after school schedule that entailed duty, meeting with parents, emailing coworkers, field trip destinations, in class visitors, students just emailing to say hello, after school clubs, committees, sports... You get the idea.

The most comical thing about it was the fact that none of this included my home life.

Now as a resource teacher, balancing a schedule is equally challenging but in a very different way.  You're schedule is never quite the same, some classes won't be attending due to field trips (hooray for extra planning and prep time, boo for getting behind on our art project), testing schedules, prep work, meeting with grade levels to plan and align my curriculum with theirs, emailing visiting artists, administration, parents... I'm sure you get this idea too.

To keep a plan book that is already pre-set is madness for a resource teacher - especially since each day can look very different from the prior one.  Not only that, but I never have enough pages and who wants to re-write repetitive information over and over again?  Do you ever have that problem?

My answer to this challenge was to create an artsy-fartsy planner-template.  I admit, it has a contemporary meets vintage vibe.  There are our templates to rotate through.    I did this so that I could enjoy some of my favorite quotes (admittedly I am a Macklemore fan and yes I have attended concerts of his amidst hundreds of college kids) on a rotating basis with variance in clip art I chose.  You'll notice that the name of the teacher is blank so that you can fill it in according to who you see when on which day (does that even make sense?).  There's also a space for extra notes and a side bar for supplies I need to remember to pull out or prep.

This is my gift to you.  I hope you find it useful and an enjoyable tool to help you start each day out on the right food... Or left?