Organized or Not?
Posted by Kim Murphy on 08 Sep 2009 | Posted in: Classroom Management, Organization and Supplies, Teachers and Teaching
As I look about my office, I notice a lot of piles. There are piles of folders, piles of ideas, and piles of miscellaneous things that need to be sorted into other piles. I’m sure some of my coworkers are horrified at my haphazard organizational system. It isn’t that I don’t want to have everything in its place; I really do! However, my brain doesn’t seem to function that way.
The one time I always had everything organized and as neat as a pin was at the beginning of the school year. Of course, my organized room would slowly disintegrate into my more typical piling method. Do you consider yourself well organized? Are you consistently neat and tidy or do you lean a bit more toward my method of organization? Do you feel that your home and classroom are both organized or does one suffer? Drop me a line and let me know!
Your slightly disorganized blog host,
Kim
Congratulations to Rhonda Brown of Messiah Lutheran Preschool in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is the winner of a copy of one of the books from our Mix & Match Games series.
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63 Responses to “Organized or Not?”
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More Comments Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 » Show All Comments
This yr I am sharing a room with another teacher. It’s tough keeping things organized when we are sharing everything!
I LOVE the ideas of colored folders. I am definitely going to invest in some of those!
Any suggestions for organizational items for small areas? Our space for our own items are limited.
Thanks!
I was a very organized person until I had to move last year, WHILE I had students in my room for instruction, so another teacher could move into my room! I teach sp. ed. K-5 so I have SO much and now it is truly a mess! BUT I will get it back in order by daily cleaning a section. Right now I have a hard time finding & keeping what I need! This motivates me to keep cleaning!
Last year was my first year teaching 5K. I inherited my room from a 21 year 5K veteran teacher (who I student taught under). When she moved rooms, she left me everything (after she threw out 52 bags of accumulated things from her “use what you can reach” office)!
I am a very organized, “everything has a place” person. There was so much in the office still that I didn’t even know what was in there! Near the end of the year, a very reliable and helpful parent volunteer spent 3 whole school days in my office. She organized all the shelves, filing cabinets (3), and closets. It now looks clean and organized!
I have a filing cabinet organized by A-Z activities, Themes for the year, Holidays, and all curriculum areas. This helps me find things quickly. It’s a lot of work, but it helps eliminate stress and extra work.
I found keeping things in tubs and being purposeful on getting things back where they belong has helped me not feel so disorganized. It does take a lot of work. Once I slip-up it seems to make me feel more behind than I really am!
I never get totally organized. I look around at other teacher’s classroom with envy. I hope that it will come together for me one day.
I am most like the girls who have different piles and am able to find it if it is in that pile. When I straighten up, I can’t find a thing. I start out the year and then start my piles. I have learned in 27 years of teaching that you could spend 24 hours at the school and never get all of your work done. You must have time with your family. Have a wonderful year everyone!
I wish I was more organized! Every year I feel like I get better in one aspect but then fall back in another. When I first got into teaching, the constant disorganization drove me nuts!
I’ve come to decide that part of being “organized” is being ok when things are un-organized!
I am all about the organized chaos!! But it’s what works for me. I have a little sign at home in my kitchen that reads “I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.” Totally me to a “T”.
After 20 years of teaching I am a bit more organized. The first few years things were piled every where. Now i know where things go. Can I find things right away not always but 80 per cent of the time yes.
I have a system like Marie’s. But both the file cabinet and the theme boxes are set up monthly, Sept to May. And they are color coded. I was thinking of adding books to the boxes as Marie does, but there are so many I read at different times of the year. I just added more shelf space and seperated the books by month, season and themes. We’ll see how this works. I also use clear plastic wall file holders similar to Shannon, but labeled them ‘this week’ and ‘next week’. My plan is the keep these updated and continue filing the ‘last week’ away in the monthly color coded file, and not piling up on top of the file cabinet. I have been forcing myself to toss the extra paper clutter in the recylcing bin!
i have piles everywhere. i spent this last summer, putting everything into a rented storage shed with the idea i’d organize it. Well I have 3 feet of files that i worked on for a few day before reportign for duty. Otherwise, the shed is a huge piled mess, even extended my rental contract as I refuse to bring this chaos back into my house or classroom until its orgainzed. Even with many things left behind in the shed, fiels haven’t made it to work yet, I still have piles all around my bookcase and desk, but not nearly the size they use to be. i agree with an earlier post..PreK keeps everything because we may need it for a future project.
I’ve had some training in personalities and quirks that different people have. One method of categorizing people is how they organize…there are two basic groups–Pilers and Filers! Kim, sounds like you’re a piler. I am a filer, and I am slightly OCD about my unit folders. I keep my units by subject in the order that I teach them. I also have my different subjects color-coordinated. By the end of one day, my desk gets pretty messy, so I usually put it all in a pile and put those things away before I leave. That way my desk (and classroom in general!) are ready for the next day, no hassle.