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The Top Things That Teacher Should Do to Prepare for Going Back to School

I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It’s getting around time for back-to-school. Put your teacher hat on. Get your smile on, and let’s get ready. The following are things that we want to make sure that we do before we head back to school.

Identify Goals

First, sit down, take a moment, and do a goals list. Figure out the things that you want to accomplish for this school year. Decide what is important to you and make these things nonnegotiable. Two examples of this could be to:

1.) Leave work on time each evening.

2.) Be sure to eat lunch.

Setting personal work goals will ensure that you stay focused. When things get tough or time gets crunched, these goals will help to remind you of what is important.

Write down your goals.

It has been shown that writing down your goals will help you accomplish them faster.

Read over these goals daily. This will serve as a reminder of what you decided was important. Of course, you can tweak these as the year goes on. But, they will help to lay the foundation for a successful year.

Create Positive Affirmations

If you believe in the power of affirmations, now is the time to decide on yours. Decide what you are believe for this school term. Write these down the same way that you wrote down your goals. Read them out loud to yourself each day. My suggestion is to do this in the mirror each morning before you head off to work . This will help you start your day off on a positive note.

Lesson Plan Now

It’s still summer. I know. However, you should go ahead and begin to plan out your year. If you are returning to your school, then chances are good that you already have a template for doing your lesson plans. Begin creating those plans as soon as possible. This will help to save you some time later.

First, start by deciding on what your objectives will be for each month. I’m suggesting monthly objectives because as you begin teaching your students, your objectives will probably change to fit their needs. By doing it monthly instead of weekly, you will have more room to maneuver. Also, your district may use a pacing guide that outlines what you are to teach and when.

If you’re really detailed, you might want to decide on your objectives you will be focusing on for each week. This will help to keep you focused and give you direction for your year.

If you are using themes, now is the perfect time to gather all of the materials that you will need. Popular back-to-school themes are apples, farm living, watermelons, and even beach.

Next, decide on the material you will use. You can then plug that information into your lesson plan template.

Key take-away: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Back-to-School Tips for Teachers

Create a Schedule for Yourself

One of the most effective ways to manage time is to create a schedule for yourself. This isn’t just a work schedule. This is a schedule of your household chores and your work-related duties.

Separate home from work by carefully budgeting your time. Unless your job pays you to be on call, only work your contracted hours. Leave those papers on your desk. Go home on time. Don’t use your weekends and holidays to catch up on school work. Plan to go to work a few minutes earlier or stay a little later one day a week and catch up on any work that needs completing. But, don’t drag those papers home!

Your job is NOT your life. You may be passionate about teaching. However, you are more than just a teacher. Your family and friends need you too. And, never sacrifice your health for your job.

I can remember working with a lady who almost never missed work. She was there every day. She came early. She stayed late. She had reached retirement aged, but she kept chugging along. Then, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her cancer could have easily been prevented by having a minor surgical procedure. But, she had missed her doctor’s appointments because she didn’t want to miss work. The lady ended up dying for a treatable form of cancer simply because she choice her job over her health.

Schedule time for you. Set aside time that is family time. Make this a priority.

Put Support Systems in Place

Find a support system so that you don’t burnout. I know that it’s the first of school, but when the crunch gets going, it can become frustrating. That’s the reason you need to already have your support systems in place. Know what it will take for you to decompress each day. Know where you can go if you need help and who you can talk to.

Things you can do to help relieve stress are:

Start a gratitude journal/personal journal.
Have a decompression routine.
Find a teacher, buddy. This should be someone that you can lean on. This person should also hold you accountable for sticking to your goals.

Woman writing her thoughts and ideas in gratitude journal

Classroom Norms

Harry Wong and Rosemary T. Wong wrote the famous The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher. This book emphasized the importance of establishing a routine starting the first few days of school. So, you want to start the school year out by establishing your norms. To determine the best norms for your classroom, work backwards. Stop. Think about what you want most. Then, begin to implement those things.

Begin with the End in Mind. This is one of the 7 habits from Sean Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Begin to think about what you want your class to look like. Think about what procedures you want to be your norm. Questions to ask yourself are:

How do I want my students to enter and exit my room?
Where do I want my students to put their homework?
Where should their bookbags and other supplies go?
How should my centers rotate?
What procedure will we use for going to lunch?
What procedure will we use for going to the restroom?

Adjust Your Bedtime

Slowly begin to adjust your bedtime schedule. Stop watching all that Netflix and Hulu and go to bed! Start backing your bedtime back by 10 to 20 minutes each night a week or two before school officially resumes. This can be a little hard especially with it being summer break. However, go ahead and start. Start now so that your school bedtime schedule won’t be such a shock to your system when school starts.

Declutter

Begin to declutter. Purge your teacher desk and drawer. Go through those old papers and remove them. Hold on to resources that you will need for the upcoming school year, but those old notes and memos need to find their way to the trash can. The days when we had to try to hold on to each copy for fear of not getting another set are gone. We now live in the digital age. Most files can be placed on a flash drive or uploaded to Google Classroom or to your Cloud storage. Hence, there are no excuses for clutter. By decluttering, you are remove unnecessary items and making room for some new items.

Decluttering will also help you to better concentrate. Clutter is chaos. And, it’s hard to think in the mist of chaos. Not only is it a distraction for you, but it is also a distraction for your students.

Start arranging your classroom

Choose a design that will help to maximize space and help you facilitate an easy flow of instruction. There are books like The Organized Teacher to help give you some ideas on how you should arrange your room.

Check Your Class Roster

If you happen to already have your school roster, go ahead, and check it. See who your students are. By checking your roster, you can begin to formulate your plans for individualized instruction. If your students are students that were returning to the same school or building, ask your students’ former teachers about them. Questions should include:

How does this child learn best?
What are his strengths?
What are his weaknesses?
What are some things that or she is interested in?
What is his learning style?

Of course, you are going to do your interest inventory. But, you can start by checking with your fellow teachers. However, don’t allow another teacher’s bad experience to color your opinion of a child that you haven’t met yet.

Check their CU folder. See if there’s anything pertinent in there, like allergies, family dynamics, legal guardians, etc. Check their contact information sheet. A week before school starts, you might want to begin contacting your parents. Some teachers like to wait until Parent-Teacher night. Some teachers do it a little early.

My suggestion is go ahead and reach out to your parents. If you have their email addresses, send them an email, and ask them to respond. This way you can see if you have the right email address. You might want to go ahead and give your parents a call. If you do, introduce yourself very briefly. This shouldn’t be more than 2 sentences letting them know who you are. This is a quick way to check to see if you have the correct phone numbers for your students. And, if something is incorrect, your parents can begin making corrections.

Check Your District Policies

Most school districts go over the employee handbook the first days of school for teachers. However, it is a good idea for you to do some checking of your own. If you are new at a school, make sure that you receive a handbook or that you know how to access one. If you are returning to your school, still check because things can change from year to year.

Find out if something new is happened.
Find out about the dress code.
Find out about the social media policy. You might just be surprised at what some districts’ social media policies are. So, make sure you to protect yourself.

As back to school approaches, begin to get yourself prepared mentally and physically. Start planning now and getting your systems in place so that you can have a good and productive new school year.

Books mentioned:

The First Days of School: How to be an Effective Teacher

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People