Teacher Binder: Getting Started

Being a new teacher can be a bit overwhelming, especially as a teacher in a Christian school. Christian school teachers are often tasked with teaching multiple courses to smaller groups of students, whereas public school teachers often teach a single course to multiple groups of students. We both have plenty of prep and challenges, but the unique aspect of Christian school teaching is managing a whole variety of courses, without duplication.

On that first day of employment at my Christian school, I walked away with five courses worth of teacher's edition books, test answer keys, quiz answer keys, and student activity book keys for each of the courses. Oh, and interactive editions of my textbooks, PDF copies of my textbooks, discs of coordinated art, graphs, maps, and images, and and an armload of software. I don't know if that is normal, but it was beyond overwhelming. I was also expected to create some sort student handout for each lesson, a powerpoint for each lesson, as well as rewrite most of the tests as they didn't fit with our time constraints. We are officially referring to armloads of materials. I was just trying to figure out how to carry all of these materials around with me each day. You know what I am talking about, right?

My students all know that I like owls.
I wonder how they figured that out?

What I ended creating was a teacher binder for myself. I bought a cute 2" binder at Target and a
sturdy set of 8-tab dividers with pockets. This lovely little binder is my life. I simply carry one test-unit's worth of materials for each class around with me. This usually allows me to see what's coming up and not take mountains of materials home each night.

To get started on my teacher's binder, I took the 8-tab dividers and established the most important materials that I would need. Then I labelled the tabs according to my needs.

1. Lesson Plans (usually one to two weeks worth)
2. School documents (my schedule, student list, locker assignments, lunch menu, phone lists, and other often used school docx) 
3. Master documents (reproducible documents that I use in all of my classes, like current event forms, missing work forms, report requirements, etc)
4. Class 1
5. Class 2
6. Class 3
7. Class 4
8. Class 5... in order of teaching schedule

Already this is clearly an important binder. Because of the details, I will explain what I include in each class tab (#4-8) at a later date. For now, find yourself a binder and get working!