Hey, hey! Today I am launching a new blog series for back-to-school. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post about some of the hardest parts of back-to-school and how I have learned to manage them over the years. This blog series is meant especially for brand-new teachers (or teachers who are new to the primary world), but I also hope that it might be helpful to veterans who might pick up a tip or two!
Today I am posting about pre-planning and the MOST important things to accomplish before the first day of school. Before my very first year of teaching, I was dismayed to learn that I would not have much time at all in my classroom to actually get things ready for the kids on the first day of school. My pre-planning days were filled with meetings. Moreover, as a brand new teacher I was walking into a space that was not spic and span/clean and tidy. On top of that, I had to spend the week before pre-planning in new teacher orientation. Perhaps most challenging of all, I didn't know what to prioritize when it came to setting up my room. It was a very hard way to begin teaching and I've since learned that unfortunately this is the norm! Since then, I have lived through many "first days" of school as well as pre-planning periods. I have a clear idea now of what's most important. Here is my top 5 "must-dos" for pre-planning:
1.) Go in as soon as possible to set up your furniture. You can do it in just an hour or two if you are really focused. If you can, take a strong buddy who will help you. (If you do enlist help, though, make sure it's someone who will truly help and not hinder you at this step in the process!) Take cleaning spray and Clorox Wipes to get the worst of the grime off your chairs and desks/tables. DO NOT GET SIDETRACKED. Getting the furniture arranged is this biggest physical obstacle of getting a room set up. Chances are, everything is all pushed to one side of the room for cleaning and the tables may be stacked on top of one another.
PS: If you do not have a strong buddy to help you, make good friends with your custodian and their hand truck. Ask your custodian what his/her favorite snacks are. Bring them treats. Tell them thank you! Do not try to flip tables or move really heavy things on your own. You do not want to hurt yourself. I am speaking from experience...I broke my big toe moving tables my first year. It hurt a LOT (seriously, on par with childbirth) and teaching the first 6 weeks with a boot on my foot was not the best start to my teaching career.
If you absolutely, positively cannot get in the building early...setting up furniture is your FIRST priority when you can get into your classroom to work for a block of uninterrupted time.
2.) Hook up the technology, put paper or fabric and border on your bulletin boards, and hang the posters or displays you absolutely must have. A clean, neat, and organized classroom is your goal. Do not lose sight of that! I know you have probably seen classrooms on Instagram and Pinterest that look like something out of a catalog. They are amazing and I love looking at them, too! But do not get caught up in the trap of thinking that your classroom also has to be decorated to the max to be ready for the first day of school. Your students need a clean, neat, organized, and safe space to learn. Their classroom will be magical because YOU are there...not because every square inch of wall space is covered with cute stuff from the teacher supply store. Many of the classrooms you see on social media are the product of hours and hours and many times years of work. Once you have a clean and neat room, stop! It's time to move on to prepping for the first days/weeks of school. You can always come back and work on more projects later if you have the time.
The things that I put on the wall to start with are alphabet posters, numbers 0-20, shapes, and schoolwide behavior expectations. I also make sure my learning target display is ready to go and I have the word wall empty with just the alphabet headers.
3.) Make your copies for the first couple of days of school...the entire first week if you can. This is not a requirement, but I usually print my tried-and-true activities for the first couple of days before I even go back to work. (I have a Brother laser printer that prints class sets of things very cheaply and quickly.)
If you are new to your grade level, this is the time to ask the veteran teachers for copies of what they plan to do the first few days of school. They should be happy to share! Also, I wrote a blog post a few years ago with visual plans for the first week of school. Although my schedule changes every year, I still use some of these same printables! You can check out that post here.
4.) Set up your room for Open House/Meet The Teacher night if your school hosts one prior to school starting. I will do a separate post about how to plan for supplies that night. Early in pre-planning, ask veteran teachers what the school's expectations are for Open House/Meet The Teacher. My current school requires that we have a slideshow, extra copies of our supply lists, and emergency cards laid out for parents. I give my new students a treat or goody of some kind, too (like Play-Doh).
5.) Last, I work on my classroom library. Every summer I take books home to re-organize or repair. During pre-planning, I add these books back to the collection. The books that I left at school are already organized because I take time at the end of the year to make sure the books are in their right location. When I leave for the summer, I wrap the bookcase up in bulletin board paper and tape the paper down securely on all sides. That way, when I get back all I have to do is unwrap the paper! The shelves just need a quick wipe-down and the library is pretty much all set to go.
So, there you have it. These are my top 5 "must-dos" during pre-planning. I usually make it through this list with time to spare, so then I move on to projects that are less pressing (or have time to deal with whatever curveball has been thrown my way). Now let me tack on a few things that I DON'T DO during pre-planning:
1.) I don't label everything with kids' names. Class lists change all the way through the first week of school. It is a waste of time to put their names on things if they don't show.
2.) I don't cover every square inch of wall space. My walls are blank except for the things I mentioned above. I want to have space for kids' work as well as anchor charts that we create together.
3.) I don't stay late. I try to work only my contracted hours! It is an exhausting time and there will be days after school starts when I have to stay late. This means I can't waste time when I am at work, though.
4.) I don't worry about the reputations of the kids on my roster. When well-meaning teachers want to tell me "what I need to know" about the students they had last year I listen, but take it in with a grain of salt. For one thing, there's no guarantee those kids are going to show up this year. They may have moved or changed schools. For another thing, kids grow and change over the summer and every classroom vibe is different. Sometimes kids who struggled the year before mature up over the summer...sometimes they weren't in with the right combination of personalities the previous year. And every single year that I have been teaching I've gotten a student at some point in the year who no one warned me about but whose challenges gave me a run for my money! So...there's no point in worrying about the kids and their reputations until you have them in front of you and know what you are dealing with.
5.) I don't skip lunch. We are usually given an hour to go out to eat and I will always take advantage of that time. Since we eat with our classes the first 10 days it will be a while before I get a nice quiet lunch again, and going out is such a treat. Even if we just go down the street to Wendy's, that's a change of pace from what it will be like for most of the year!
If you have any pre-planning tips, please share them. I'd love to hear!
