Going into this year my biggest goal for myself has been to improve my organization. Let me tell you, this planner has CHANGED THE GAME. We are only two weeks into the school year, but I already feel so much more organized and sane. Without further ado, I introduce, the teachers' BuJo. BuJo is pronounced "Boo Joe" and is shorthand for bullet journal. You may or may not already be familiar with bullet journals in their typical, life planner, form. I tried keeping one in college, and was not very good at keeping up with it. When I decided to try one to organize the chaos that is teaching however, my life was changed.
Basically, a bullet journal is a planner you create yourself, customized to your specific needs. For the most part, it is a series of lists and "trackers". For information on the official bullet journal system, look here. There are outlines for different symbols to use to represent tasks scheduled, completed, moved, among other things. There are parts of the traditional system I use, and parts I have chosen to discard. The whole purpose of a BuJo is to make it work for you!
Dot journals and grid journals are both popular with those who bullet journal. I am personally a fan of dot notebooks. These come in a wide range of styles, sizes, and prices, but I love my 8 1/2" x 11" notebook for less than $5 here. Grids help map out spreads easily by counting how many rows or columns you need for each section of your spread. When discussing BuJos, a "spread" is a page, or series of pages used to track one subject. I hope a look at the spreads I use will inspire you to create some of your own! For more ideas and support using the bullet journal system, join the Facebook group Teachers Who Bullet Journal.
Confidential information has been blurred out.
This is the cover page of my bullet journal. I highly recommend adding an "If lost" note, whether you choose to use an address, phone number, or what have you. If this is something that you decide to use, you do not want to lose it. It has EVERYTHING. I chose to go with a militaristic approach to the look of my BuJo, but many people add quotes, drawings, stickers, stamps, anything that makes you smile when you look at it.
A class list is essential. (YES I only have 15 students so far and I am knocking on ALL the wood)
The future log is a quick glance at several months to see important things coming up, as you typically do not create the full calendar spread for each month (you will see mine for August later in this post) until the month before it is coming up. For example, I wouldn't create large calendar spreads for the whole year at one time. I would make my August spread in July, my September spread in August, etc. As you can see, there is not much space for each day. Therefore, this spread is just for marking important events. I just copied the district school year calendar into mine. This spread continues onto the following pages, so that I have the whole year in one place. Also, a very important thing to accept when bullet journaling: you WILL mess up (notice Labor Day). It is okay! If you are afraid of making mistakes, you will never use your journal.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with ClassDojo. Whether or not you use ClassDojo, I guarantee you have some kind of behavior management system. In my class, students must earn 25 dojo points to earn a prize. I work with kindergarteners, so they cannot subtract their current total from 25 to see how many they still need. Therefore I keep track of how many more dojos they need at the beginning of every day to earn a prize. It takes about 30 seconds at the beginning of our day for me to tell each student how many dojos they need. This way they know exactly how many they need, and encourages them to work toward that goal. At the end of each day we check to see which students earned the necessary points to earn a prize. A check mark indicates that the student earned a prize on that day. At the end of the spread (about a month long) I tally up how many prize opportunities each student has earned. This way if a student is lagging behind I can notice the trend and look into it. The blue highlighter indicates that the student was absent that day.
As you can see, I still need to fill in the birthday spread. The getting home spread is incredibly important so that I know where each student is going! Many teachers have this displayed in their room. When a child is unaccounted for however, I can tell whoever where exactly I sent the student without having to run back to my room. Students who go different places on different days are on sticky notes so they can easily be moved from one mode of transportation to another.
I put all of my meeting notes in one place. You may want to make different spreads for faculty meetings, team meetings, committee meetings, etc. Whatever works for you!
This is my spread for the month of August. There are many different ways to set up your monthly spread, but this is my favorite so far!
The never-ending to do list.....
I don't know about you, but we have about 1,000 passwords. Even though I try to to make them all similar, every account has its own password parameters so they all end up being different and I cannot remember them all. Most of them are saved into my computer at this point, but as I have to reset each one, the new passwords go here. Additionally, our school requires that we make at least one positive parent contact within the first two weeks of school. This is a simple way for me to keep track of who I have already talked to, and who I need to contact. The right half of this sheet is open for the next thing I need to track for each student.
Last but certainly not least, is this wonderful spread that dramatically aids in my preparedness for the week. After my plans for the week are done, I look through my plan book and write down every thing that needs to be printed, copied, or made. After this is complete, I look through these lists and see if any of these things should be laminated. This way, when everything on the list is crossed off, I know I'm ready for the week!
I hope this post has inspired you start your own bullet journal, or at least come up with an organizational system of your own!
Happy teaching!