Organize This! Calendar Edition

"Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of." --Charles Richards

The next part of my teacher planner that I am updating is my calendar. Or rather, I should say calendars. For organized planning, I have to have several calendars: the academic year calendar, which shows all of the holidays, teacher work days, end of reporting periods, early release days, etc; the year-at-a-glance, where I do a quick overview of what my plans for each class will be during each month; the monthly calendar, where I plan out the basic lesson schedule for the month (and make a student version that I hand out each month); and the weekly calendar, where I do more in-depth scheduling and plan for the next week.

As most districts do, my school district publishes an academic calendar at the beginning of each year. It is nice to have this, but my school is on an A/B alternating block schedule that differs from many schools in the district, so the district calendar does not give me quite enough information. As always, I have made my own:

I am a huge fan of color-coding, so I have assigned colors to each of the different events that I would like to track. Although the district calendar goes through July, I don't work during the summer (not at the school building, anyway), so I have used the space where July would go as a convenient place for the key.

The different colors for A and B days are probably the most helpful part for me. I can see with a quick glance whether each calendar day is an A or B day, which really helps me when trying to plan appointments and conferences because my planning periods are different on each day.

My Year-at-a-Glance and monthly calendars are simple grids that allow me to do some long-range planning:

                                            

I also created a two-page spread for each week that allows me to be more detailed and leaves space for planning.

I made copies of all of these, hole-punched them, and put them in my teacher binder. As of now I have my calendars, lesson planning, standards, attendance, and parent contact sections of my binder set up and ready for the school year. All that I have left to do is make accommodations sheets and my binder will be ready for the 2015-2016 school year.