Any teachers out there?

[bubbleepink]

Hello all of the teachers out there!

I am teaching grade 1 and I am having a really hard time keeping up with the organization of my class this year. It is causing me stress, lack of sleep and the financial part of it is that I always think that I need more stuff for this classroom, when I DON'T but I keep buying stuff or finding stuff around the school that "I can use" but never do.

So, I am looking for help! I need to stop spending money on things for the room and get all of the junk OUT! I hoard books because our library is really crappy, and if I find a book I think I will use I take it into my room and keep it there, but don't use it! I have library books from the public library coming out my ears - but they will all be gone this weekend.

In my 5 drawer file cabinet I have class sets of assignments/worksheets that I have been trying to use when appropriate and toss when I don't find them useful.

My counters are overflowing with stuff and it seems that the more I try to clean it up the more stuff gets put on these counters!

Any advice on how you organize would help and benefit me greatly.

[bubbleepink]

LOL! You would think so wouldn't you? I try to dispose of things at home rather quickly. If a shirt doesn't fit me when I put it on I put it in the salvation army bin right away. Counter tops are cleared of small appliances when not in use etc. Most things have a home in my home and if they don't there is a temporary "home" pile that I go through weekly.

[bubbleepink]

Yes, you are right. I am thinking that I should just go through the file cabinet and start throwing things away. Maybe keep one copy of everything, but it seems like such a waste to me.

But if I start to clear that out I may have room for the copies I am currently making...

Step 1: Clear out the language arts drawer of the file cabinet.

[bubbleepink]

No. I don't want to being school clutter home. I don't have a place to store it here.

[qofcc]

My first advise would be to be careful where you use apostrophies

I'm not a teacher, but I remember a teacher saying that he organized all of his tests/worksheets on the computer and just printed out copies as needed. This allowed him to re-arrange the order of the questions to make it harder for kids to cheat or to add/delete items when he thought of something better.

Maybe instead of hording books/materials, you could create a master document with web links to articles or books that you might want to use?

[Deleted]

apostrophies

Or even apostrophes.

Hi Bubblee

As you know from the International WIRR thread I have been bouncing around with different teaching jobs and age groups. At this point I'm down to only MS / HS tutoring, college, and Adult Ed. (For me, the older the better LOL, but I hope you can use my suggestions.)

I have three suggestions.

- Large Ring Binders
I keep EVERYTHING in large ring binders. If there's something I don't use but I think I will / should, I keep only two copies of it. (One to stay in the binder, and one to go, ie be photocopied).

Stuff that I use regularly, I may have more copies of.

I had too many different binders (I had one per job and you know how many jobs I started out with LOL) so I have condensed them over time. I hope to get rid of one more now that I am more focused on the older students. I use dividers for different subjects and / or age groups.

- Amazon (or ebay)
When I first started at my first business school nearly two years ago I bought a TON of books, mostly used, but plenty new. As I have gained in experience I realize some of them are carp, or some of them I'll never use again. Sometimes I photocopy a few pages, then I sell them on amazon. I use that money to buy books I DO want (always used if I can get them in good condition). It also cleared out half a shelf since I still do my work in a niche in the living room.

- Your students are your friends! I don't do this with my students because they are older, but when my kids were little, we were all asked to either lend or donate a book to the classroom library every year. The teacher was very diligent about keeping track. She inserted a sticker with the school year and the child's name, and the book either came home with the child at the end of the year, or didn't (depending on whether the parents said the book was a donation or a loan). But that meant that every classroom library grew by 20 or 30 books per year. I don't know how many books were lent and how many were donated though. We always donated ours but that meant we didn't give our kids' favorite books.

This was in addition to the school library.

Hope this helps!

ETA: For all my jobs, I have everything on my laptop as well. But alas no computer is immortal, so I like to keep hard copies too.

[thyme4change]

My first advise would be to be careful where you use apostrophies

I concur - no wonder kids can't learn this stuff - their teachers don't understand it either!

[qofcc]

I concur - no wonder kids can't learn this stuff - their teachers don't understand it either!

My 11th grade English teacher told us that if we hadn't learned spelling by 11th grade, we weren't going going to learn it from him because he wasn't good at it either. Computers are the wave of the future and you'll have spell check. Let's focus on reading comprehension.

[swamp]

I'm glad someone else picked up on the apostrophe issue. It is making me stabby.

And, I'm one of those evil parents that if I got a note home from the teacher with a misplaced apostrophe similar to the thread title, I'd send the note back corrected in red ink. But I'm a bitch.

[thyme4change]

Computers are the wave of the future and you'll have spell check. Let's focus on reading comprehension.

Yes - but she didn't spell anything wrong.

[Saving4Norway]

Oh Geeze-Louise. A good lady is asking for a little advice and all some of you have are grammar criticisms? There's a reason "If you can't say anything nice..." is such a well-known phrase.

bubblee - This is my 20th year in teaching. I know exactly what you mean. Even though the mounds of worksheets aren't perhaps in your current curriculum you see that they have value as teaching tools. I get that. Here are a couple of things I've done before. I still have 2, 4-drawer filing cabinets but I've gotten a lot better.

For a while I taught math and I strongly encouraged kids to use scratch paper. With 150 students we went through a TON of scratch paper. So, I went thru a drawer or two of the old copies I didn't use any more and removed about half of each set to put in the scratch paper bin. (So if there were roughly 100 copies I'd take 50 of them.)

Another thing I'd do is I'd keep enough for one class set of copies (in my case that's about 35) and put them in the scratch paper bin or recycle them if they're two-sided. That way if a group of kids finished something early they had a little something they could do, or if a group of kids were struggling and needed a review worksheet to practice I'd have one.

Another option is to save a set that could be the equivalent of one day's worth of teaching and deem it the Emergency Substitute Plans. Take a few minutes to write out the directions for each set of worksheets in case they aren't obvious enough and ta-daaaa - emergency plans.

When it comes to physical items, other than paperwork, can you work together with other grade 1 teachers and compile seldom-used items? For example, add your extra ___whatever___ to another teacher's collection of the same then when you need to use them you can borrow them back? Each teacher would have twice as many to use when needed and they'd be the one to store it.

Or, I've seen teachers use the rolling carts made for crafts/scrapbooking that have lots (9?) little drawers. If you have the floor space you can keep it near your desk, or perhaps remove the wheels and set it on the counter.

I know education budgets are at their all-time tightest and everything seems valuable but you will need to organize and purge. Have you ever been over to the "Organize..." WIR thread? Go check it out. The accountability might be helpful. Best of luck my dear.

[zibazinski]

Any new teachers this year? They are never paid dick and they always need stuff. Pass it on.

[bubbleepink]

Very quick - thanks for all the help! I was able to donate some of the stuff to the kinders and some to grade 2! I did keep some of the class sets for extra work pages and some for scrap. With that said I still managed to get rid of 2 paper boxes full of stuff! I feel quite motivated to keep going this week!

[Saving4Norway]

Good job, Bubblee!! Karma to you for not only asking for advice but also following through!

[bubbleepink]

I was also able to clear off my desk which had accumulated everything under the sun! More to do tomorrow!

[Deleted]

K to you Bubblee for all that hard work!

Why don't you join us on the "decluttering" thread?! Norway is our "fairy godmother" lol, and I'm on there too. Sometimes I post house projects, and sometimes school projects, so you'd be very welcome there!

ETA: Bubblee I sent you a PM

[speechchick71]

qofcc..have to laugh at your criticism of the use of the apostrophe but give a piece of "advise" (a verb) instead of "advice" (noun). If I could give you a piece of advice, I'd advise you to learn the difference. Please learn the difference between "loose" and "lose" as well: I would hate for your clothes to become "lose" as you "loose" weight (yes, I see things like that all the time).

[suziq38]

I luv it.

[Deleted]

I think the OP came for help not to have her spelling corrected. My warning is that one cannot talk about teachers on message boards because it often turns into a bash fest. I hope that isn't the case here but seems like it has already begun.

My point: You can only work with what you have. If your school district, on whom we spend about$6-7K per pupil on isn't going to provide you with adequate library, storage and so forth, then there isn't much you can do. Use what you have and make the best of what you have. And, occasionally bring something from home if you like, but it isn't up to you to fund the entire classroom needs on a teacher's salary.
As for clutter, keep in mind that a cluttered room is very distracting, especially kids with learning disabilities or ADD. Less is more. Kids need to be able to breathe and not feel like they are in a room full of clutter. It would help them and you to relax and in the long run less of that material would result in a better education.

[suziq38]

I notice that when I am typing what I want to say on a message board, I make errors. We all do from time to time.
Big deal.
So what if we are teachers and we are not perfect.
Certain people think we should be. That we should be held to a higher standard.
Maybe.

When I make errors, I am not proud, but I realize that it happens.
So what.

[Deleted]

Blogging is communication. Texting and blogging are not legal documents but a way to communicate involving short hand and other accepted means of communicating. If i type idk or ttyl to my friends, they know exactly what i am saying. The point of language is communicating effectively and not whether some i is dotted in the right place. For some documents, that does matter, for this it does not. If you can't tell the difference, then maybe you need to take a step back.

[Deleted]

I have some good friends who are teachers and i really cannot stand the teacher bashing that is see on boards. My friends work hard and are great teachers. And, in no way would i ever want to do their jobs. I have a lot of respect for what they do.

[Deleted]

Could be. But to stand in front of and deal with kids and teens all day. NO THANK YOU! And, for those who think it is such an "easy" job, well, go back to school and get your educator credentials and go do likewise.

[Deleted]

I just think we need to respect other people's jobs in general. If parents are disrespectful of the teacher's job and authority , then the kids will act in kind. And, yeah, sometimes the teachers are wrong, not nice, or whatever. That is STILL a good lesson for my kid. He had a teacher he couldn't stand last year. I was like "so sad, too bad", in life you are going to be dealing with all kinds of people including bosses, coworkers, etc that you might not like and yeah, everything isn't fair so now "deal with it". Anyway, that was MY parenting approach! lol

[suziq38]

Apr 15, 2012 8:46:48 GMT -5 @shooby said:

I just think we need to respect other people's jobs in general. If parents are disrespectful of the teacher's job and authority , then the kids will act in kind. And, yeah, sometimes the teachers are wrong, not nice, or whatever. That is STILL a good lesson for my kid. He had a teacher he couldn't stand last year. I was like "so sad, too bad", in life you are going to be dealing with all kinds of people including bosses, coworkers, etc that you might not like and yeah, everything isn't fair so now "deal with it". Anyway, that was MY parenting approach! lol

I did the same with my kids.
90% of the time, they exaggerated the incident anyway.
When I pretended to be horrified at the story that was told, I offered to go talk to the teacher. If I found out that the reality was different, when I got home, he would have gotten double the punishment for embarrassing me.
He always admitted that it didn't happen quite that way.

"Do you know when your teenager is lying???"
"When his/her lips are moving."
And our two children were considered the well-behaved ones, LOL.