It seems like every fall I pick through all the teacher's sections at all the office stores, search Etsy and all the teacher online sites to no avail. So many of these planners are made for K-12, and so many include pages and sections I don't need like seating charts, class records, and too many subject areas. Finally, I just hacked this together with a file folder from the dollar bin at Target, tab dividers from the clearance section at Office Depot, and very basic hand-made printables tailored for my schedule in a simple Word doc. I brought in the pages to Office Depot and had it spiral bound with clear plastic front and back. Perfect!
Here are all the details:
This cover is a file folder. I love the print and the weight is perfect for the cover, so I just cut it down to size. Then I printed out a label and stuck it right on.
Inside the cover, I pressed on a nice little clear envelope sleeve gifted from my officemate and now I have a perfect place to throw in my favorite pens, tabs and fun sticky notes.
Until at least the fifth week, I can never remember my schedule (Which building? Which room? What time?) So I put my schedule as the first page along with those pesky codes and numbers that I need to fill out forms.
I do use my phone calendar for appointments and meetings, but it's nice to have paper calendar in one place for ease and important dates (school holidays anyone?) and deadlines. I just found this one-month in a two-page view on Pinterest and printed it out for free.
It's nice to see the whole academic year on one page, so I threw in the official college calendars as well.
The lesson plan pages are the meat of this organizer for me. This is where every other teacher's lesson planner I have seen has failed for me. As a full-time college teacher I have three classes, spread out over different days, as well as lab hours and meetings. A very, very simple Word doc chart in a weekly format on a two-page spread lets me see exactly what's happening. I tailored it to my classes and threw in a To-Do column as well. If I had thought about it, I would have also preprinted the weeks and dates.
To avoid having a completely different notebook (or scraps of paper?!), I added in a notes section so that at meetings everything is in one place.
I wouldn't want to lose this, so on the back cover (same file folder) I added in a return to office location.
Matching mini-bucket for my pens? That's just icing on the cake.
Lesson Learned: Sometimes you just have to make it yourself! I'm off to lesson plan now!
