Planners

I am a planner freak. I believe that it has to do with the fact that I always feel so unorganized and that by having a planner, I get some semblance of organization.  I have also found that being a teacher requires a level of organization I just do not possess naturally. Therefore, a planner is essential to my maintaining my sanity. Over the years, I have used a lot of different planners in a lot of different ways.


I used Passion Planners for about 3 years. I used one for my personal planner and one for a school planner. The Passion Planner is great but very limited. I spent a lot of time each week altering the layout to fit my needs both at home and at school.

Loved this planner, mainly the outside. But I used it an entire year and it worked well for me.

I used a Purple Trail planner for both school and home.   I really liked this planner and it took much less altering than the Passion Planner did every week. But it still wasn't quite right.

Also, these are large, very thick and a little awkward to carry around.

I've even used bullet journals. These are pretty amazing as you make them what you want. I used a bullet journal to orchestrate our move from Hawaii. It kept me on track and made sure I didn't forget anything. These are awesome. But for school, they just don't work. I have been using one at home for the past couple of weeks and I may continue to use one at home, but school is out.

This is not mine, mine never look this good :)


I've used some others too. Some I've made myself or altered from other teachers, some I've just picked up at Target or Staples. But none of them have been quite right. Every one had something missing that I just could not get over.

One planner that I have heard about for years is the Happy Planner. I'm not really sure exactly why I resisted it so strenuously, but I did. I never really gave them a good hard look when at Micheal's. I would just kind of skim right over them looking for stickers or washi tape. But the other day there was a conversation about planners on one of my teacher pages. A number of them mentioned the Happy Planner. Many mentioned ones I had already used but the ones talking about the Happy Planner really loved them. So I thought I would give it a try. I happened to go to Micheal's today and they were all 40% off so that was a nice bonus too.

I got this one:

It's large, 9" x 11" ish, which I like. It is also very colorful and I'm going to make a nice sticker for the front with my name on it. Should be cute.

There are a couple of things I really, really like about this planner already.  The first being how customizable it is. Notice those disks on the side....they allow me to add or remove anything that has holes like that. How awesome is that? I can also purchase a hole punch and add anything I want to. Love that.

The next thing I like is the monthly layouts at the beginning of the month. I love how the weekends are greyed out and there is a side for notes, etc. This will allow me to lay out the month, what is happening, things I need to be aware of, etc. I like this even though most planners have this.

I like the weekly layouts. They are horizontal when I'm used to vertical, but I think it will work well. I like how the day is broken into 7 boxes. I only have 4 periods in a day, but that leaves room for to-do lists, things to remember, before/after school, etc. I'm not sure exactly how I will be using them yet, but I will definitely figure it out. I may just label them from left to right: before school, 1st period, 2nd period, lunch/citizenship, 3rd period, 4th period, after school. That will use all 7 boxes and it will fit into the 40 workweek club lists. But I'm not sure yet and I'm not going to rush into anything. 

Then they have these checklists. I love this. I'm not sure exactly how I will use them yet, but I know that I will use them. Maybe for attendance. Maybe for grades. I'm not sure but I know they will be incredibly useful. I actually bought an extra pack of these and note pages so I may use them for both. I was thinking of highlighting for attendance and then putting grades for assignments. That would allow me to see at a glance if they were there for a specific assignment. That could be very helpful. I could use one color highlighter on time, another for tardy. Actually, I was just looking at them and I might be able to use the left side for attendance and the right side for grades. Hmmm...I will definitely have to figure that out. There are spaces for 38 students so I will be able to fit one class on a page. That leaves me some real possibilities. 

I also love this page at the beginning of every month. It allows me room to set priorities for the month and have specific goals for that month. it also has a place for student birthdays, but I will probably not use that area. I can cover it with some pretty washi and put a sticker there or something. I don't know. 

There are also a number of pockets for storing things and some note pages at the back. I did watch a video where the teacher had put a note page at the beginning of each month and I thought that was a great idea, so I copied it. I'm really eager to get this truly set up but I don't want to rush into things. I want to spend some time thinking about it and working out exactly what I want to do with it. 

So this is the beginning. I will update as this evolves and I begin to figure out how I want to use it.