This is part 12 of 13 things to do before the first day of school.

Awwwee, the first week of school. The students are optimistic and bright eyed, while the long days take a toll on the teachers. What better way to survive the first week than to plan ahead?

This is straight forward for many teachers, who probably have the first few weeks planned out. But, do you have EVERYTHING ready to go? (

Materials

Try to get all of the materials ready, including all of the copying that you will need done. If you’re a one to one school, this includes online activities. You want to minimize your prep time, giving you more time to face the situations that pop up during the first week. 

Checklists

You remember the checklists, don’t you? Now’s your chance to put the checklist into practice. Create a daily checklist, aligned with the tasks involved in your daily schedule. If your schedule varies too much from day to day, you may need to make a specific checklist for each day, or add at the bottom of your daily checklist the tasks for each specific day. 

A checklist also gives you a reason to reflect on the school day, and attempt to reduce or combine the number of tasks you do. Every minute you save adds up to 3 hours a year of time saved (based on a 180 day school year). For example, how many times do you check your mailbox at the office? Can that be reduced? 

Other ideas

I have a friend who works in a corporate setting. To give himself uninterrupted time to work, he’ll schedule a conference room every so often as a meeting with himself. Now, I don’t know of a district where that would be possible, but what if we flip the idea. Set a time during the week where you are available for meetings, and let others know to use that time if they need to meet with you. If it won’t work in your district, think about other ways you can do meetings.  

A lot of stress is not due to the scheduling of  meetings, but of the possibility of having meetings scheduled. If you can minimize scheduled meetings, you’ll have more time for your classroom. 

What do you do to prepare for your classroom?