How To Simplify Teaching By Getting Organized
Are you an elementary teacher struggling to keep yourself or your classroom organized?
Are you looking for ways to reduce your teacher workload or simplify your work life?
Both are possible when you master four key areas. Let me show you how. Over the next few weeks, I’ll teach you ways to reduce your teacher workload and save time all by getting organized.
Each week I’ll provide a short task for you to complete that will start the process of getting organized and staying organized all year long.
Ready? Let’s get started!
I've always been an organizer.
At home and at work, I could never function well until the space around me was uncluttered and organized. I live by the mantra, "Everything has a place and everything in its place." In fact, before starting work today, I completely reorganized my work area. New bins for sorting papers, holding books, and even a little mini colander for holding sticky notes and flags.
I realize not everyone comes hard-wired this way and for some, living in organized chaos is much more comfortable. However, I'm firmly convinced that the job of teaching can be much more manageable if organization is incorporated into each aspect of your daily routine.
It will take some grunt work at the beginning and will force you to question "what's always been done," but I promise it will be worth it in the end.
For years, I struggled to find balance between all that was demanded of me as a teacher and having some semblance of a personal life.
Being a perfectionist, everything I did had to be "just so" and I was never satisfied with "good enough." That way of living nearly led to burn out after just a few short years of teaching.
After all, we weren't meant to work 70 hour weeks and go days at a time without decent rest.
I knew something had to give, but I wasn't willing to give up my process for fear of being left with less than my best.
I spent several weeks in reflection - examining my daily and weekly routines, taking notes on what I felt was most important about different aspects of my job, and scribbling ideas of what could change.
When something worked well, I made a note and when I realized a routine I loved wasn't best for my students, I made another note.
I spoke to a respected colleague and a fabulous mentor who gave advice about what worked well in their classrooms and then thought of ways those ideas could be used in my own.
And most importantly, I implemented changes that transformed my way of life.
I can't promise that organizing your teaching life will make the job of teaching easy. Nothing can do that. Instead, I will say that organizing can make your job easier - simpler.
Over the next few weeks, I'll focus on several areas in which organization can transform your practice. I’ll explain to you why each area is important, how it can transform your work life, and then give you a short task to start the process.
My hope is that you will work through each step with me examining your old routine and making a new one. I challenge you not to wait until you “have time”. Instead, let’s begin now. Start now while you’re inspired to make a change and while you have a virtual partner to help you through it.
How To Be An Organized Teacher: Step One
As teachers, we're inundated by lists of things to cover, things to do, and roles we're supposed to be. It seems there is never enough time to get it all done and we fail to be everything to everybody, although we often try.
If we're going to work towards being an organized teacher with the goal of simplifying our workloads, we first have to determine what really matters - what’s really important.
Deciding importance will guide all of your decisions as an educator - what you teach, how you teach, the teaching resources you use, and how you spend your time.
Dropping what doesn’t work not only simplifies your workload, but also improves your performance as an educator.
Your first response may be, "It's all important." But, I guarantee that there are things we do out of habit that really aren't all that important - or even necessary.
If you take the time to step back and reflect on all the things you do in a typical day, week, unit, and year, I'm sure you can come up with a list of things that can be removed from your routine.
It's time to purge anything that isn't purposeful, necessary, or leads to success for you and your students.
Today’s task asks you to spend some time reflecting on what currently works and what doesn’t. You can find worksheets in The Treasury. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, you can sign up for free here.
Looking for more help?
If you feel like these posts are a great start to making positive changes, but find yourself needing more support to follow through - you’re not alone. Blog posts are a great tool for identifying key problem areas and then providing simple solutions, but they can’t walk you through a step-by-step process to get the work done.
Fortunately, I have the solution that can.
I created Organized Just So™ just for teachers like you who are searching for a way to get organized and stay organized for good.
And it’s not just about getting all your “stuff” organized, but managing your time and reducing your workload too.
It’s about creating and implementing systems that make your job easier, so you work less and have more time for what matters most to you. Click here to learn more.
Click the image below to save these ideas for later…
