Well the ball is really rolling now. The staff is back at school officially next Thursday and our students follow on Sept. 4. With my new role as department coordinator I'll be at school every day from now until the first day of classes. The excitement is definetly growing, but so is the list of things to do.
I think its safe to say that we won't be completely unpacked come day one, but we expected that. I've gotten both of my classrooms as setup as I'm able to and now I'm just busy planning and organizing. There have been a few bumps in the road. Today I found out that my fashions studies room will not be outfitted with a projector. I guess the decision was made that I didn't need one...I'm not so sure about the logic behind that since I do have to present "notes" at the start of the semester. I'm also not sure if the additional machines and equipment were ordered for fashion studies. When we did the class sizes in June we planned for 24 students in fashion studies with the understanding that I would have four new machines in addition to the 20 I already have. It doesn't look like that happened so I'm hoping this will be rectified quickly so each of my students has a sewing machine.
It's also been interesting because our school was not built with air conditioning (this is a new government thing I guess). Our building has air circulation but do to construction in our drama theatre they haven't been able to turn it on upstairs because of a circuit overload (they are fixing this right now).So this means that right now our upstairs labs are swealtering (~27 degrees celcius). It's like working in a sauna (maybe it'll help me lose some weight lol). Hopefully its fixed soon so we're not dying on the first day of classes.
My time today was spent sending emails and talking to admin trying to figure out where items are and when other things are arriving.
Needless to say its been hectic but things are happening and we'll be ready to teach day one regardless of weather or not we're "ready".
Monday, 20 August 2012
Friday, 3 August 2012
My Teacher Binder
I promised you a post on my teacher binder and here it is.
This year I decided to treat myself and purchased three Martha Stewart binders from Staples. I'm a bit of a stationary nut and I love the line. The green one is my "teacher" binder, the brown is for coordinator stuff and the little one is for my yearbook stuff.
To start with I have six copies of semester calendars, one for each class I teach. I like to have a quick view of what's planned as I find it helps keep me on track. Of course each has a small tab with the class name on it. This means that it looks a little crazy but I find the tabs make it easier to quickly find the class I need. My semester calendars are right at the front of my binder and not behind any divider.
My first divider is for daily lesson plans (you can download the template I made here). Within that each class had its own section (again marked with a small tab). When I designed my lesson template I made sure to put in a section to list things I need to photocopy. In the past I've just kept notes on random sheets of paper, but as you can imagine its not organized and loose paper tends to disappear.
After that is Marks and then Attendance. Each has its own divider since I like to keep these separate, again for easy location and reference. The templates for both of these are the same for obvious reasons, but again each class is separated with a small tab.
Finally comes the less fun stuff, Emergency Procedures (I think that one's self explanatory), General Policies, Other (this is where I keep the other general information we get in our start of the year packet), and Notes (for taking notes at staff and parent meetings).I also have loose-leaf at the back of my binder along with a zippered pocket for keeping small things.
So that's my binder, I'm excited to see if the templates and layout work for me this year and I will more than likely modify it as time goes on. If you do anything differently with your teacher "binder", even if its not a binder, I would be interested to hear about it.
As promised the other templates I created are available for download below.
Calendar
Marks & Attendance
This year I decided to treat myself and purchased three Martha Stewart binders from Staples. I'm a bit of a stationary nut and I love the line. The green one is my "teacher" binder, the brown is for coordinator stuff and the little one is for my yearbook stuff.
My first divider is for daily lesson plans (you can download the template I made here). Within that each class had its own section (again marked with a small tab). When I designed my lesson template I made sure to put in a section to list things I need to photocopy. In the past I've just kept notes on random sheets of paper, but as you can imagine its not organized and loose paper tends to disappear.
After that is Marks and then Attendance. Each has its own divider since I like to keep these separate, again for easy location and reference. The templates for both of these are the same for obvious reasons, but again each class is separated with a small tab.
Finally comes the less fun stuff, Emergency Procedures (I think that one's self explanatory), General Policies, Other (this is where I keep the other general information we get in our start of the year packet), and Notes (for taking notes at staff and parent meetings).I also have loose-leaf at the back of my binder along with a zippered pocket for keeping small things.
So that's my binder, I'm excited to see if the templates and layout work for me this year and I will more than likely modify it as time goes on. If you do anything differently with your teacher "binder", even if its not a binder, I would be interested to hear about it.
As promised the other templates I created are available for download below.
Calendar
Marks & Attendance
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