Teacher Binder

I have seen a lot of things about teacher binders on Pinterest, but most of what I found was for elementary teachers and not that useful/practical at the secondary level. So I decided to take the good parts of these and add my own flavor to a Teacher binder.

The first thing I did was take some of the fabric from the bulletin boards in my "fire room" (the room i got moved to in another building after the fire in our main building...man was that a PITA) and cover an old binder I took from what the previous teacher left me.

Then, I filled the front folder pocket with cute notes my students gave me last year that make me smile.

I also included this little bookmark I got at a conference on reading strategies. I really like it and plan to make copies of it for my students to use as a quick reference for when the are told to use a critical reading strategy.

In the front of the binder I put a pencil bag filled with a few pens, pencils, markers, highlighters, eraser, whiteout, etc. This way I'll have everything I need when I got meetings or conferences.

Then, the very first thing I have in my binder is a sheet I made with my school's bell schedule(s) for next year (we are trying a new schedule and M/F, W, Tu/Th are all different schedules!). I also put my class schedule for A days and B days on this page so I don't forget what's next.

On the back of my schedule page I have my district's calendar of important dates such as PD days, holidays, parent-teacher conferences, etc. This way I always have it on hand because we inevitably need to know these dates at meetings and nobody seems to be 100% sure of them.

The next thing I have in the binder before the tabs still is a calendar I can write on to plan my units, lessons, tests, and quizzes. It's blank right now because I was waiting for my school's BeyondTextbooks curriculum map to come out.

Currently my first tab is filled only with sheet protectors since it's the middle of summer and I don't know who my students will be come fall. It is for seating charts and class lists. I keep these things sheet protectors so that I can quickly (in about 5 seconds) scan the room and mark if a seat is empty and thus the student absent. I train my students to know if they are not in their seat when I take attendance, they will be marked absent (I had a few students during my student teaching try to switch seats so there was still someone in their chair, but I caught on quick and took an extra second to check the faces in those seats). I can then later plug in the attendance to whatever program my school uses later when I get a chance.

This is where the similarities between what I've seen on Pinterest and my binder end. I don't find it reasonable to have special notes about every student or things like that with close to 200 students, so I don't do it.

I teach three classes, two of which are more or less the same content, just at different levels. I also teach Advanced Placement Chemistry. I found last year that I would get a lot of reference materials for this class, put them in a folder, and then forget what I did with it. So for this year, I created a tab in my binder for these things and titled it AP CHEM References. I keep things like information on the AP Course Audit, my annotated copy of the AP objectives (I had to do my own critical reading exercise to understand most of these!), AP calculator policies, extra copies of different AP style PES graphs because these are nearly impossible to find online, the how to get student scores information, the science practices, and notes on the labs I plan to do this year. Basically everything I needed to complete the audit, inform my students about the exam and track my last year's students' progress.

I then did the same thing for my general chemistry course, but much less intense. Here I put my list of academic vocabulary words that I will use as a part of my daily warm-ups to help my students build their vocabulary (something I found to be lacking in many students last year and caused a bit of a headache when I put "big words" in my instructions). I also put a copy of my polyatomic ion chart and flip book here and a few example problems for empirical and molecular formula problems (if I try to make these up off the top of my head I always end up with crazy ridiculous molecules).

Then I put in some of the lessons I tried last year with reflections written on them. This way I can refer to them quickly to see if I would do it again and if so, what changes would I make, if any.

The last tab I have is for my own notes. Here I keep notes I've written from meetings and extra paper. I also have a copy of Flinn's Suggested Storage System and a map I made after I organized my chemical store room. I also have a collection of student exemplars in here. The final thing I keep here is the organization system I have for my lab drawers.

 This is my binder. Feel free to take any of these ideas and make them work for you!