How To Start the School Year off Right for Teachers
The school year is quickly approaching and it is time to start thinking about how you are going to set yourself up for success. In this blog post, we will discuss how to start the school year off right for teachers. We will cover a range of topics, from setting your classroom up for success to developing relationships with students. We hope that this information will help you get the school year off to a great start!
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How to start the school year off right for teachers #1 Getting your classroom set up for success.
The number one thing that you need to do to start off on the right foot happens before kids even step foot in your classroom. You need to set up your space for success. This means taking the time to organize your materials, plan out your lesson plans, and create a schedule that you can stick to.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start small. Just focus on getting one area of your classroom set up at a time. Once you see how easy that section was you will be more likely to continue with the setup. For instance, maybe you pick to organize your center materials first. I know for me this would be one of the biggest organization jobs that I have in the classroom because there are a lot of manipulatives and learning toys that go into centers.
I would suggest having specific bins for every type of learning tool that will be used in centers. I use the photo boxes from Michaels to organize task cards. You could even use these little photo boxes to make every student their own personal set of math manipulatives. This way when it comes to math center time each student can grab one box instead of taking out a bunch of manipulatives.
Another place that you might think of organizing in your classroom is your classroom library. It is so important to have an easily accessible, well-organized classroom library. This doesn’t mean that every book needs to be in its perfect spot (because let’s be honest, kids will never put them back that way anyway), but you should at least have a system for where students can grab books and know where to. You can also create a system for you that will help you organize the books throughout the year when they get a little chaotic. This may be a colored sticker and box system or an alphabetical system or something else.
The last place that I would make sure to get organized in all my papers that will be a part of the year. I am a huge fan of having everything in one spot. I have a paper organizing multi-tier tray that is solely for my school papers. This way when I’m looking for something I know exactly where it will be. If you don’t have a lot of storage space, an accordion file would also work perfectly! I have also seen teachers use their rainbow carts as file systems. Make sure that when you are organizing your papers you also make a sub folder it will make your life much easier down the road.
How to start the school year off right for teachers #2 Create Systems
The next thing that is going the help you start the school year off right is to create systems that will keep you sane throughout the year when the going gets tough. This could include things like what you do when an administrator checks in on you. How should you treat different behaviors? How are you going to handle grading for your students? How will you communicate with your students’ parents? How are students going to turn in their work?
You need systems for everything because when things get hectic, which they always do, you will be happy that you have a plan to fall back on. If you don’t have systems in place it will be easy for things to start falling through the cracks. You also are more likely to procrastinate or think that you can do something later. When later comes then you are annoyed that you didn’t do it sooner. Systems just make tasks that you dread or that normally fall through the cracks feel very easy and doable.
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How to start the school year off right for teachers # 3 Establish a daily self-care routine
As teachers our jobs are hard. I know that it is easy to just pour so much of yourself into your job that you don’t really even have anything left for yourself. Also, let’s face it we need more than just self-care Sunday like we only need to take care of ourselves one day a week. We need to be taking care of ourselves every day. It is important to have a daily self-care routine that you can do each day to help you feel your best.
Self-care looks different for everyone but some ideas for things that you could include in your daily routine are:
-take a break when you feel overwhelmed. This could involve some breathing techniques or meditation. Potentially just taking a step back and sitting down.
-Exercise before work or after work. Moving your body is not only healthy but it helps you focus better throughout the day and gives you more motivation.
-Do something at night that you enjoy doing whether that is reading a book, watching tv, or just hanging out with your family.
-Make sure that you are eating breakfast each morning.
-Make sure to include some time for yourself in your daily routine even if it is just ten minutes.
If you do these this will help you feel better daily which is going to make sure that you don’t burn out and are running on fumes by the time that you get to the end of the week and the end of the school year.
How to start the school year off right for teachers # 4 Set boundaries
One thing that is important to do as a teacher is to set boundaries with your students, co-workers, co-teachers, and just people in your everyday life. You need to establish these boundaries because you cannot do everything even if you want to. You are not just a teacher and your personal time is valuable. You need to make sure that you are taking care of yourself so that you can be the best teacher possible.
Some ideas for boundaries that you could set are:
-I will not work more than X number of hours a week.
-I will not answer emails/phone calls after X time at night or on the weekends.
-I will not work outside of my contracted hours.
-I will only teach one club this year.
-I will not bring grading home with me and everything will be done at school during my contract hours.
-I will not take on more students than can comfortably fit in a class and if a class gets too big students need to be moved around or more teachers need to be hired
-My prep period is mine for prep and I will not sub for other teachers during my prep.
Granted there are going to be many cases where these boundaries might be hard to keep, but don’t try to make it a normal occurrence and make sure that your administration understands and respect your boundaries. I think so many of the problems that we have with teachers leaving the classroom are their boundaries not being respected.
How to start the school year off right for teachers #5 Establish Relationships
Teachers, this one is for you and your students. Relationships and having good relationships with your students is the most valuable thing that you will do as a teacher. It is so important to get to know your students and for them to get to know you. When you have a good relationship with your students they are more likely to want to please you, do their best work, and feel comfortable coming to you when they need help.
There are many ways that you can build relationships with your students but some of my favorites for the beginning of the school year are about me activities and journals. These can tell you so much about a student and you can use that information to establish closer relationships throughout the school year.
I have some amazing back-to-school journals in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I just created a free set that will get you through the first week of school. It is free and will have students writing about 5 different topics. I have to admit also that my favorite thing about it is that it is cactus themed and it has cactus puns on each page. I am a sucker for a good pun so this product definitely made me chuckle inside.
I also have another back-to-school journal pages product that will give you writing prompts every day for the first month of school. This is great because it will give you a chance to get to know your students and for them to share things about themselves that they might not feel comfortable sharing on the first day of school. If you would like a sample of this longer product you can sign up for my email list to get it for free. To sign up for my email list click on the image below.
If you are interested in either of these products or just want to check out my store in general you can click here.
How to start the year off right for students #6 Introducing yourself to parents
One thing that you have to do as a teacher at the beginning of the year is to introduce yourself to parents. This can be a little bit daunting because you want to make sure that you are making a good impression and that you are coming across as the professional that you are.
The best way to introduce yourself to parents is to send home a welcome letter or email. In this letter, you want to include your contact information, what grade level you will be teaching, what your educational philosophy is, and anything else that you think would be important for parents to know. You also want to let them know how they can contact you and when the best time to do so would be. This will allow you to introduce yourselves to parents right away and before back-to-school nights or parent-teacher conferences.
What are some of your tips for starting the school year off right? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.
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