Over the past several months during my student teaching, my room has become a conglomeration of papers upon papers upon papers. Not only was I not able to see my floor (it might be a black hole!), but it was difficult to maneuver through my room just to get to my desk! I know, I know, terrible, right? I was afraid to throw anything away during my student teaching for fear of needing something later or forgetting that I hadn't passed back something, etc. Now that I have officially finished student teaching (submitted all my grades, said goodbye to my students and my MT), I decided to tackle the mountain of papers on my floor.
It's amazing how much stuff we, as English teachers, collect. Perhaps this relates to teachers in other subject areas as well. I had extra handouts, student sample work, student artifacts, scantron tests, worksheets, packets, etc. all sitting around my floor just begging to be recycled. It was difficult throwing things away, even when the year was over! I still had that feeling of "perhaps I'll need this..." even though I'm completely done. That's not to say I threw everything away. I kept one original copy of everything I ever gave to my students and filed them in folders with appropriate titles (i.e. worksheets for Lord of the Flies went into a folder with Lord of the Flies written on the top, worksheets for miscellaneous activities like learning comma rules went into another folder). Granted, I have nowhere to put those folders at the moment (my bookcases are exploding with books, my filing cabinet is full of art, stories, classwork from UCI, etc.) but at least they're all nice and organized.
A fellow student teacher at my school site and I discussed the importance of being organized and tidy. Towards the end of the school year, it became exceedingly apparent to me just how organized one needs to be. I had two piles on my floor that consisted of things I needed to grade for both of my classes. In those piles, I had paperclips attached to specific assignments so I could differentiate one assignment from another. Other piles around my room consisted of UCI schoolwork, old worksheets, new worksheets, etc. I feel I wasn't as organized as I wanted to be (though I never lost a students' work the whole year!), but I feel that part of the reason I wasn't as organized is because I didn't have my own classroom (let alone my own space in the classroom). I hope to be better organized when I get my own room. After all, I'll have filing cabinets, a desk, (hopefully), etc. in the room that I can use for the multitudinous papers I'll be making and handing out.
Maybe I should start using colored paper....
As an end note, paperclips are the new love of my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment