Preparing for a New School Year

Are you rested yet? If not, enjoy the last few weeks of summer. The new school year is almost upon us, which means it is time for curriculum and classroom preparation. If you want a few tips to shake the dust off, here are four suggestions to prepare you and your students for 2016.

Welcome Your Students

If you want to excite students before they arrive on the first day, consider creating a unique message for them. Whether it is a web page, podcast, postcard, phone message, or a combination of new and old media, prepare a message to excite your students. Look at your outreach as an opportunity to excite students and get them “psyched up” for the new school year.

Prepare Your Classroom

The school year often requires new classroom supplies. Create a list of everything you need, and get in advance as many of the items as possible from the school and the district. Consider maintaining a list together for additional supplies you might need throughout the year. August is a good time to develop procedures, create your hall passes, and address other administrative items. If you need additional suggestions, here is a quick checklist.

Connect with Others

Connecting with other teachers and peers brings value to your teaching experience. It is a way for you to share ideas, learn from others, and build camaraderie or even a support system. You may want to network within your peer groups inside the school and district, or private teacher social networks online. You can find private social networks and groups in a wide variety of places, including Edmodo, Edutopia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many others.

Student Management Preparation

One way to get ahead of your workload for this school year is to prepare yourself to manage grading and interaction with your students. Some teachers work in small classrooms with a dozen or less students. Others may teach as many as 150 or more students through the course of a week. Make sure that when classes begin, you are not playing catch up. Build excel sheets and other workflow mechanisms (some school districts have access to Google Classroom, Blackboard, or other tools), including places to access files (Google Drive or DropBox). These tools, as well as numerous others, can help you and your students stay on track and organized.

What other suggestions would you add to the list of preparations?