We teachers returned to school on July 24th and the students returned on August 2nd. That means we had the kids 2 days last week, Wednesday and Thursday. And it went well. This year I had to revamp my classroom management system and I think I have something that will work for me. Let me explain;
My first 7 years of teaching was at private schools. Even though these private schools were at the lower financial end of the spectrum and most of our students were on financial aid, they were nevertheless private school students. Classroom management was not a huge priority as these students did their work and listened and were respectful and all that stuff. So my classroom management was a little lax because it didn't need to be really strict and tough. Well, now I'm at a public school. And in spite of the fact that this is a charter school and parents have to go out of their way to send their students here, it is still a public school. Last year I handled my classroom management like I was still in private school. That did not work. So I spent the summer thinking, revising, and planning out my classroom management and the first 2 days went fairly well. I find that I have to be much stricter with these students then I needed to be with my private school students. So I have seating charts, strict rules, and basically zero tolerance. I'm not really that kind of teacher, but I find that if I am stricter and keep more order, we can actually have more fun. So we are off to a good start.
I do have 4 preps and that is a lot. I'm teaching chemistry - 3 sections, AP biology, AP chemistry, and conceptual science, 1 section each. That's a total of 6 sections with 4 preps. I am working on organization. This is something I struggle with all the time and it drives me crazy. I know that I have to plan in advance in order for things to run smoothly. I am a better teacher when I know what is going on and I am prepared to tackle it. Towards that end, I have tried a number of different things and none of them work the way I had hoped they would. Last year I used a passion planner. That was okay, but space was limited and I couldn't note all the information I wanted to and that created a problem. I ordered a special calendar book for this year and I could tell after two days that it was not going to work the way I had hoped. I have tried a teacher binder with a calendar in it a few years back and honestly, that worked the best to date. I'm clear that nothing is going to be perfect until I design it myself, but I still don't know exactly what I want so that makes it difficult. I am returning to something like that. I have created a binder with monthly calendar pages so that I can see an overview of the month. These layouts are followed by weekly layouts that have 4 days, Monday - Thursday, and a space for notes. Each day is broken up into 4 sections, one for each class plus one for my prep. I am also going to work on lesson plans that I will print out and keep in a separate binder by class. I'm honestly not exactly sure how this is going to work, but I have to come up with something that has all the things I need. I have tried so many things and nothing has worked for me. Maybe I'm asking for too much. Maybe I'm trying to make it too complicated. Maybe I just need to relax and not stress so much. But I'm a control freak and need to know what I'm going to be doing. The worst thing in the world for me is running around right before a class trying to get things ready. So I need to have a system that prevents that from happening.
I will keep you posted on my search for the perfect organization system. If this one works out, I will post it here so I can save it for posterity.
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