Kia ora. My name is Andrea and I've been teaching for about 17 years. I teach in the junior school. This year I am teaching Year 3/4.
I have tutored many beginning teachers over the years and love to see them grow and flourish.
So let's start flourishing!
But first, we need to survive the first week, no strike that... The week before school starts!
So here is the first post in a series about Surviving the Week BEFORE School.
Setting up your classroom
I have moved classes more times than I can count, so I've certainly learnt from my mistakes and wasted summer holidays. If someone videoed me using a time lapse camera when I first set out classrooms, I would flit like a fly around the room with little purpose, little productivity and left a wake of chaos, counters and unfinished jobs behind me.
This year I looked at my classroom through different lenses each day I went into 'titivate'.
1. The Big Picture: Big bulky furniture first. I shifted the big stuff. Some of it had baskets and boxes piled on top, but I wasn't looking at that. I just started building the rough layout. I walked around to check there weren't any choke points or narrow pathways and settled on that.
2. The Sorting: My granny always said, a place for everything and everything in its place. There needs to be a place to put all those maths games, reading boxes, felts, fraction pieces, dice..... I got every box, tote tray and container I could find and made sure everything was in a labelled box or bag. I kept a pile of bits and pieces that were in the wrong place and just waited until I had finished before herding them back into the right place.
Anything I found that did not belong in my room I put in the cloak bay to deal with later.
3. The Cleaning: As wonderful as cleaners are, at this stage I cleaned every surface and desk and spent some time dusting. Every day I went in, I through all the windows and doors opened. I bought a lovely vanilla diffuser to go my desk and another air freshener too.
4. The Paper War: No, unfortunately, I am far from going paperless at this stage. So I began thinking about how I needed to organise my desk so that is was ready to receive all those notes, newsletters, assessments booklets, lists and miscellaneous sundry. To do this I actually needed space. Curriculum documents and reference books didn't really need to be right at my fingertips so I moved those to another shelf and left space. I have space on my bookshelf, my desk is quite empty, my little filing drawer is empty ready to receive and I have a four tiered paper tray. They are empty. If I fill these now with things I think are important, as sure as eggs I will have another pile of stuff and nowhere to put it all. Hence, the breathing space for now.
5. The Blank Canvas: So now the walls were my next focus, a few posters, banners, whakatauki and pictures placed around. Not too much. I spend the first week with the children creating visual work so they have their own work up within the first few days of school.
Tips and tricks to work smarter, not harder
-Work on the classroom while at school. Anything that can be taken home or worked on the computer, write a to-do list. If you are going to school to set up the classroom, stay on task and work on setting up rather than spending hours on the computer in an unfinished room.
-Don't reinvent the wheel. Find resources ready made on Teachers Pay Teachers and other websites. You might end up with something that is not quite how you want it. But it's another check on your to-do list. It can be changed later.
-Make a to-do list. Keep track of everything that needs doing by writing it down. If you are a super to-do lister you could have different categories, or three lists, Priority, To Be Done Within a Month and Bonus Tasks- that would be nice, but life as we know it won't end if it doesn't get done.
