It’s easy to feel stressed and overwhelmed as you’re juggling everything in your teaching and home life. It’s a lot to handle and might feel like you need to clone yourself somedays to get everything done. I get it, and have been there and done that. So, I want to share these organization tips for teachers that have worked so well for me. In this blog post, you’ll see two sections, one for your school life and one for the home side of things. Oh yeah, and listen to episode 190 of The Elementary Music Teacher podcast, where I go into all of this more.
Organizing Your School Life
There are several ways to keep your life at school a bit more organized. Of course, everyone has different personalities, so organization will look a bit different depending on that factor alone. But, the main goal is to come up with some kind of system that works for you. Make it easy on yourself to stick with your system you set up, and eventually it will become a routine.
Keep Lesson Planning Simple
The first organization tip for teachers is to keep lesson planning simple. You’re constantly learning new ideas and saving them on Instagram, receiving them at workshops, or putting them into a folder to view later. But, having so much to teach can be a good thing, but it can definitely cause you to feel the stress in a big way. It’s okay to keep it simple. This means, you can teach the same song to different grade levels, repeat programs from a previous school year, or even use the same lesson plans you used before. Start backwards with your scope and sequence, then think about assessment, what standards you want to cover, and then finally move into the lesson planning part of things.
Have Folders and Systems
One thing to help you keep things simple is to organize your teacher life with folders. Whether you’re teaching in person or virtually, folders will be a life saver. These might be folders right from your bookmarks tab on your computer, in your Google drive, or physical folders and binders. With these folders, organize lessons by grade level, standards you want to teach, or specific activities you can easily pull from. With your systems in place, you’ll be able to easily find what you’re needing when you lesson plan. Create multiple folders with different categories and your future self will thank you.
Schedule Out Programs
One thing that sounds so simple, yet is super effective for organizing your teacher life, is to schedule out your programs ahead of time. This is something that you can do at the end of the school year. Pull out a calendar, sit down with your principal, and mark dates on the calendar for the next school year. When you do this early, you’ll be able to find the music you’re needing over the summer. Then, just like with lesson planning, you’ll be able to do some backwards planning. You’ll have the dates down, know what theme the program is around, and can layer in all of the other elements. On the calendar, you’ll also be able to mark down what needs to be done each week leading up to the program, so once it’s performance time, you’re ready to go!
Have a Plan for Assessment
Assessing your students in the music room obviously looks different from the way a general classroom teacher assesses their students. But, having a plan is the goal here. Once you’ve looked at the standards you want to teach each 9 weeks, start brainstorming ways you’ll assess those standards. It will be a mixture of informal and formal assessment, and will look different from music teacher to music teacher. Open a Google doc and begin brainstorming ideas for individual, partner, small group, and whole class instruction. Also, if you’re wanting to create exit tickets, for example, as assessments to use, create a template in Canva and just easily edit this all school year long.
Organizing Your Home Life
What season of life you’re in will play a part in how you organize your home life. I taught elementary music when I was single and living with roommates, then while I was married, and then as a mom. All of the seasons were hard in their own way, but I knew staying organized at home, would help me while I was teaching. When you get home, you want to relax and unwind, and you completely deserve to. But, there’s always some kind of errand, chore, or task that needs to get done at home, and there always will be. But, with some organization tips and systems in place, you’ll begin to get that self care you’re needing.
Put Everything on your Calendar⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Everything goes on my calendar. In fact, my husband and I share a Google calendar, although he doesn’t always look at it, but that’s a blog post for another day. But honestly, whether it’s big things or little things, it goes on the calendar. For example, I have “vacuum the house”, “podcast interview”, and “son’s basketball practice” as just a few examples of what’s on my calendar this week. When you put tasks down in written form, then you won’t forget to do them. Also, a calendar helps so much for you to be able to find those open pockets of time to do chores or to do something fun!
Meal and Grocery Plan
One thing I began doing that helped me stay organized, was to meal plan each week. Open your calendar and look at what you or your family has going on for the week. If you have somewhere to be at dinner time, this will probably be a night to plan an easy meal, or it’s a fast food night. On the weekend, if you have plans with family or friends, jot that down as well. Then, begin filling in the rest of the week with what meals you’ll eat, and put down what you need in order to make that dinner. On the grocery list, after you put down what you need to make your dinners, begin filling it with other groceries you need for the week. Then, choose a day to go into the store or plan a grocery pickup.
Laundry Hacks
Laundry is my arch nemesis. Once my family grew it just becomes more and more clothes to wash (obviously). A hack that works great though, is washing one load of laundry a day. This isn’t too overwhelming at all and is easy to keep up with. Put the load in the washer in the morning, dry the load in the afternoon, and then fold and put away before bed. If you don’t want to do laundry every day, then set aside 3 times a week to do it. How you keep up with laundry is up to you, but remembering to create a system for yourself that works is the goal.
What are organizational tips that work well for you? Tell me about it in the comments below or share your thoughts on social media as you share this post. I’d love for you to share this post or any of the resources on my website with a friend or colleague who you know NEEDS to see it too.
P.S. Are you feeling frustrated or stuck as an elementary music teacher? Check out these free resources to help you teach elementary music with confidence!
Also…I wrote a book called “Make A Note: What You Really Need To Know About Teaching Elementary Music” to help music teachers move forward in your teaching career. You can get your copy here.
