Mission #6: Organization strategies. Yeah, I need that

When I started this first year of teaching I knew there was going to be a lot of things happening, lots of tasks to complete and a need for organization.  I already had strategies that were successful during college and past work experience.  I knew I could always go to http://www.khanacademy.org/ to brush up on a particular math subject or do a general Google search for different ideas.  At the start of the year I spent a little bit of time working on how I would organize things during the year and felt alright about it.

Given I plan to continue teaching math beyond my two years with Teach For America, there's definitely a lot of resources this year that I'm working to organize for future years.  This mission helped me explore different organizational options for math lessons and resources that I'm going to be sure to utilize in the future.

One website I learned about in this lesson is LiveBinders, a website that allows users to store information in the same way a person would store documents in a three-ring binder.  I only wish we had the technology at my school for students to be able to use LiveBinders instead of three-ring binders...if we could scan student work along with the assigments, file them in different tabs and then essentially have a website portfolio for each student of their work.  Maybe next year, but at the very least this will be an effective tool that I can use to organize all the math resources I find and have them ready for future use.

Also, in looking through a PowerPoint presentation on organization, I found a screen shot of how a teacher organized her lessons on her computer to be helpful.

 

One of the projects I have for Christmas vacation is to put files on Dropbox like Tina did here.  I have a similar filing system as Tina, with folders for each unit and documents in each unit, though I also have my documents numbered in order.  I'm hoping at the end of the year to be able to put up all my lessons online for future TFA first year math teachers and any math teacher to utilize in the future.

I'm thankful for this mission getting me to think about organizing.  I'm certain this will help me with staying on top of things during the remainder of the year and being prepared for future years too!