How to Stay Organized as a New Teacher

I was 22, fresh out of college and freshly married. They handed me the keys to not one but 2 high school art rooms, that were all mine!!! Along with the keys, came a stack of class rosters, revealing that I was going to be teaching, jewelry/metals, darkroom photography, digital photography, sculpture, and foundations of art. The day would start in room 117, 2nd period I would head to room 302, 3rd period to room 117, and back and forth I went, all day, every day.

Dear Lord, how was I going to keep myself organized, make sure that I knew what in the world I was teaching, and be sure that I was in the right classroom. Because it would have been far to easy to teach the same thing every Monday, nope, this was a 6 day cycle, and just to keep me on my toes, we also had study hall, and it ran on some insane other schedule, that was more like an 8 day cycle, that I”m not even going to attempt to explain.

At the start of each day , I needed to know what cycle day it was ( day 3), and what resource it was ( 4a), to figure out what classes I was teaching, what room I was teaching them in, and when in the world I got to each lunch ( because that wasn’t the same time everyday either)

I know , those of you that are doing Art on a cart, still kind of hate me, because … TWO ROOMS.

Below I’m sharing how I came up with everything book, that saved my life, and is still my go to tool for….. EVERYTHING.