Organizing

Organizing is more than half the battle in my classroom/life.

I can't do any planning in my classroom until I've organized. Yesterday I redid name tags, changed the seating, redid the table point chart, and laid out the reading group materials before I started my lesson plans for the week. I could have worked for another 3 or 4 hours, though there would have been diminishing returns.

An organized room is calming and I do a lot of preplanning in my head as I move desks and clean whiteboards. On the other hand maybe it's an avoidance strategy.

Compared to many of my colleagues' rooms mine is stark. I like a little white space on my walls. I feel overwhelmed by too many art projects, posters, and lists. On the other hand I worry that visitors may think I don't do as much as the other teachers. After all they only know what they see.

We have administrators from the district office observing us now. They want to see the standards and strategies we are working on posted in the room. I haven't figured out how to do that so my students actually benefit from it.