15 Ways to Be a Better Teacher

5. Partner With Parents

Many parents want to be involved in their children's education. They want the best for their kids, and your students probably respect their parents more than any other authority figure. That makes parents a powerful ally in guiding students toward academic success. After all, student success is the goal teachers, parents and students all share. 

Send notes home with students or email their parents or guardians to share your commitment to your students and your expectations of them. This can help you establish an open, honest relationship. Use technology to share student progress updates and meet with them in person when possible. Through good communication, teachers and parents can work together to help students overcome learning and behavioral challenges.

6. Decide What Kind of Teacher You Want to Be

To reach any goal, you need to identify the direction you want to go. You need to know what kind of teacher you want to be before you can become that teacher. 

List the traits and behaviors of an ideal instructor — these are what you'll want to emulate. You'll likely find that many things on your list are strengths you already have. Now is a great time to acknowledge what you already do well and want to reinforce. 

While this step can be more difficult, you should also list the negative traits and behaviors you want to avoid. You might find you have some of these characteristics, too. While seeing your faults can be uncomfortable, it's part of the growth process to recognize what you want to change and plan to achieve those changes.

Even the best teachers have things they'd like to change about their teaching. The important part is acknowledging the difference between where you are and where you want to be so you can take steps to improve.

7. Build Understanding One Layer at a Time

Picture each concept you aim to teach as a house. Instead of dropping the whole structure on your students, build it up for them from a foundational level and invite them to walk around inside. The ADEPT method is one way to achieve this gradual layering of understanding. It has five steps: 

1. Analogy: Illustrate the concept by comparing it to something they already understand.
2. Diagram: Give them a visual representation. This could be a drawing, video, prop or model.
3. Example: Create an interactive experience for the students to encounter the concept in the real world.
4. Plain English: Describe the concept or idea in simple, everyday words in the language of instruction.
5. Technical definition: Discuss the higher-level details in the formal terms students need to know for assessment.

8. Practice Empathy

While maintaining professional boundaries, learn what you can about your students as individuals and about their circumstances, hopes and hurts. Give them an understanding and compassionate space to share when they need it. Sometimes, getting to know your students is the best way to become more patient with them. 

Empathy also helps you to understand and adapt to student needs. Children come to your class with diverse personalities, strengths, weaknesses and backgrounds. Approaching them with empathy need not involve compromising academic and behavioral standards, but it can help you find ways to give each student the support they need to meet those standards.

9. Take Advantage of Technology

As technology advances, aim to stay on top of new developments and find creative ways to enhance learning. Bringing technology into the learning experience can make your teaching more effective and efficient while preparing students for today's workplaces. Opportunities to leverage technology as a teacher include:

• Adaptive learning: Artificial intelligence (AI) enables adaptive learning programs that evaluate a student's abilities and present content at an appropriate level for them.
• Educational apps: Apps and games on various devices can create an immersive learning experience. The best educational apps use sound pedagogical principles like spaced repetition. 
• Data analysis: AI-driven analytics can quickly process large quantities of student data and highlight patterns for you to consider. For example, an analytics program can detect when students make similar mistakes across multiple assessments so you can address these weaknesses through your teaching.

6 Tips for Staying Organized

If there's one word that could perfectly sum up what it means to be a teacher, it might be "unpredictable." A teacher's job changes frequently — sometimes even from one hour to the next. The key to managing many of the changes, responsibilities and challenges is a little organization. 

Life — especially when you're a teacher — will always throw the unexpected at you. When you are organized, you are much better equipped to confidently head off in this new direction. Organization in the things you can control helps you cope with the disorganization you will always encounter in your job. You can't predict what shenanigans your students will get up to today, but if you can predict exactly where you left that file of graded papers, you're off to a good start.

Organization means doing things like color-coding notes and folders with neatly labeled sticky tabs. It means storing things in correctly labeled cubbies. And it means having a to-do list, so you never forget a meeting or a task again. This type of organization is crucial to both your mental health and career success. The benefits of being a more organized teacher include:

• Saving time: Imagine if every time you needed to find a specific paper or note, you had to spend five minutes looking for it. Five minutes might not sound like much, but if you need to find 10 papers throughout the day, you could waste almost an hour. If everything is right where it should be, you're suddenly ahead of schedule.
• Reducing stress: Effective organization and time management reduce the risk of falling behind, keeping unnecessary stress at bay. This supports better mental health and productivity. 
• Protecting balance: Long after the students have gone home, teachers are often still at school — grading papers, planning lessons and preparing materials for next week's classes. Good organizational habits can improve your efficiency in these tasks, protecting more of your relaxation time at home.
• Setting an example: Organization in the classroom is also about setting a good example for your students. A teacher's desk organization makes a statement about the person you are, the classroom you run and the behavior you expect. While you can't control how organized your students choose to be, you can send them a message about what you expect. 

If you want to become a better teacher, becoming a more organized teacher is an excellent place to start.

1. Stick to One Organization System

Now that we've covered why organization is important, it's time to get practical with teacher organization ideas. The first step to becoming a more organized teacher is committing to a single, consolidated system.

Many times, we feel the urge to start organizing and cleaning, but we aren't systematic enough about it. We create one to-do list on paper, another on our phone and still another on our computer. Or, we make one box of random junk in the kitchen, another in the basement and a third in the bedroom. Nothing is ever where it's supposed to be because our "organizing system" is almost more disorganized than having no system at all. 

Time to step back and do some real planning. Make one to-do list and stick with it. Decide what format is best for you. If the motions of writing something down help you remember it better, try a physical list. If you value portability and the ease of having your list with you at all times, put it on your phone. Or, if you like the ease of editing, writing, copying and pasting that comes with a real keyboard, put the list on your computer. Cloud-based apps can help you create a master to-do list that you can edit on any device.

Any format is fine if it works for you. Do you like to have a place where you put random items you don't know what else to do with? Consolidate your stashes into one. This way, when something goes missing and you want to look for it, you just have one place to check. 

Whether you need to organize information, documents or objects, you can carry the idea of having one single system throughout your entire organizational scheme. Simplify and consolidate, and you'll find organization becomes much more convenient and easier to maintain.

2. Use a Different Folder for Every Day of the Month

Everyone feels intimidated when looking at the mound of work they have to do in a single month. One of the most effective ways to make it feel less intimidating and more manageable is to break it down by day. Even if you have 300 things to do every month, that's only about 10 things every day. And looking at 10 things is way more manageable than staring at a mountain of 300 things every day.

To make this system work, consider setting up a filing cabinet and filling it with 31 folders, all labeled according to which day of the month they represent. Then, use these folders to store worksheets, templates, copies of tests, prepared materials and anything else you'll need on that particular day. This way, everything is where it should be when you need it. 

You can also use this filing system to file things other than student materials. Assuming the filing cabinet is private and only you can access it, why not also store things like bills, upcoming events and reminders to yourself on the day they're relevant? You can even make to-do lists ahead of time to file on their respective days. It might even be something as simple as scribbling a sticky note to yourself and dropping it into the relevant day's file.

3. Color-Code Your Students' Files

Color-coding is one of the best visual aids there is. At the beginning of the year, pick a color for every student in your classroom. If you have a large classroom, you may need to use different shades to represent different students. After all, lime green and dark forest green are easy enough to distinguish. 

Label each colored folder with the student's name. Then, for the rest of the year, file all the student's work and information in this colored folder. Most likely, you'll end up needing multiple folders, but every time you see a sky-blue folder, you'll know at a glance what student it belongs to.

4. Talk to Your Students About Organization

Of course, no matter how much effort you put into organizing your classroom and workspace, it's difficult to make headway if the kids aren't on board. That's why it helps to involve your students in your organizational efforts.

At the beginning of the year, talk about the importance of organization and how it relates to time management, stress and mental health. Ask them if they have any ideas about how they'd like to organize the classroom. The final decision will be yours, but asking students for input is helpful. They're much more likely to participate and help keep the room clean if it feels like it was their idea, or at least if it's something they agreed to.

5. Stay on Top of Cleaning and Organization

We've all been there. It's only Tuesday, but your desk and teaching space are already a mess. You don't have time to worry about it, so you tell yourself you'll clean up by the end of the week. But every day, your space gets messier and messier, and you feel yourself falling further behind and getting more panicked and stressed. 

As much as it might be a struggle at the time, it's always best to stay on top of your organization. Don't set something aside, saying, "I'll file that later." You won't want to later. File it now. The more things you set aside with promises to take care of it "later," the more these things will pile up, and the less you'll want to take care of them. The simplest method to organization is to just do it as you go along. Consider applying the two-minute rule — if you need to do something that will take less than two minutes, do it immediately. You'll be less stressed and more productive for it.

If you already have a major backlog, recovering from it will take time. We recommend blocking out an afternoon or even an entire day. Use this time to clean up the clutter, sort through your papers and files, and put things where they belong.

If it's been a long time since you've had any kind of organization, we recommend taking it slowly. Trying to introduce a whirlwind of changes into your routine can feel overwhelming and difficult to sustain. Instead, try changing a few things at a time. Maybe your first step is putting your desk supplies in neat containers and giving each student a dedicated file folder. Once you get used to these few changes and they become habitual, introduce a few more. Little by little, take steps to become an organized teacher.

6. Invest in Organizational Supplies

Nothing makes you feel the organizational spirit more than investing in items to help you maintain order. And let's face it, it's tough to get organized without the right equipment. If you're ready to level up your organizational powers, start with containers, labels and a good planner.

Think Inside the Boxes

Head to your local store and pick out some organizers. As you shop, think about what will be most helpful to you. You might want to color-code them based on what you'll be using them for. Or, you might want to be wary of what size containers you buy, given the space you have to work with. Whatever you choose, you'll be much more eager to start using it if it's attractive, fun and something you picked out yourself. Buy something that inspires you to get organized.

Labels Are Your Friends

When it comes to organizing, there's nothing better than a big, easy-to-read label. These labels will also help you remember what's inside every box and file without having to open it to see. It's also good for the students. They'll be less likely to make a mess as they search for supplies if everything they need is in clearly labeled containers.

What About Day Planners?

Many teachers love day planners and don't know how they'd get through their day without one. This may or may not be the case for you, but the only way to discover what works is to try. 

If you've never tried a planner of any kind, now might be a good time to pick one out and try it. Use a planner for a few weeks or months and see how you like it. It can be an excellent way to keep track of your engagements and to-do items for the week. Some planners also give you enough room to record notes, reflect on your teaching and set goals.

If day planners aren't your thing, you could try other tools and methods, like:

• Keeping a desk calendar. 
• Sticking Post-Its to your desk — one for each day of the week — and writing your tasks on them. 
• Listing the upcoming days in a document or notetaking app and filling them in with all the tasks you need to do.

It's not about having the fanciest or the prettiest method. The most important thing is finding a method that works for you.

Prepare Your Students for Success With Success by Design

To become a better and more organized teacher, you need a game plan. The right planner could be the secret to unlocking the next level of teaching success.

If you're looking to purchase a planner, check out Success by Design's unique and beautiful planners. Here at Success by Design, we know success doesn't happen by accident. You plan for it. That's why we design all our planners with your organizational needs in mind. We offer a variety of styles and designs, so everyone is sure to find something they like. 

As you grow in your organizational skills, you'll want to help your students become more organized, too. Organization and planning are essential skills for students to learn, and maintaining a school planner is one of the best ways for young scholars to develop organizational skills. Success by Design provides high-quality, purposefully designed planners to help pupils organize, track and achieve their goals. We also offer customization and bulk pricing for schools.

Browse our selection of planners for teachers and students today. You can also contact our friendly team for answers to any questions about our products.