What to Do Before Kids Arrive – Your Back-to-School Prep Checklist
What to Do Before Kids Arrive – Your Back-to-School Prep Checklist
[00:00:00] Welcome to the eight to four teacher where we tackle the habits, routines, and mindset shifts that help teachers leave school at four without guilt. This is a space for teachers who wanna do meaningful work without working around the clock. I'm your host, Barb Flowers, and I believe you can be an amazing teacher and have a life outside of school.
Let's build a teaching life that feels sustainable and fulfilling. Let's make eight to four your new normal.
Welcome to the eight to four teacher. . Today we are talking about what to do before kids arrive. Your back to school prep checklist. Have you ever felt overwhelmed just thinking about all the things you have to do for back to school?
Well, today we're going to fix that because I am going to help you think about what to do. Before kids enter the classroom and all the things you need to get ready for back to school. So this is going to be your checklist to help you get ready. So first, remember that it is nice to have days before the kids come to [00:01:00] prep your room.
Now, I will say this, I'm in Ohio where there's a lot of unions. , I know every state's a little bit different. And people have different contracts where we're at in Ohio, teachers typically get a couple of days to prep their room. , Not a lot of time, but to prep their room before kids come in. Certain states they might have more or less and.
I will say as a teacher, I always went in way earlier than the school year, started to get my room ready and I know a lot of teachers who did that as well when I was a principal, and here's what I have to say about that. I think everybody's different every season of life.
People have different priorities, needs, and I think it depends on you. , As a newer teacher, I started right before the school year, started my first year, and so my second year I went back really early to prepare and have some time to get myself ready.
But I will say that, as you become more experienced, you typically don't need as much time, and it depends on. How much time you're spending making your classroom look cute, what grade you teach, all of those [00:02:00] things. So it all really impacts your back to school prep checklist. But I do want you to think , you're setting the stage during this time, right?
You're setting the stage, but it doesn't have to be perfect. I think so often we spend so much time planning our classrooms to look perfect. , Focusing on the physical space, and we'll talk about that a little bit in a minute. And so I just want you to think about and have a plan on how much time you wanna spend getting your classroom ready and what days you're gonna go back and prep.
Because again, I think it's completely up to you if you wanna be the teacher. When I was a young teacher, I met with my colleague and we'd plan and. Get our rooms ready and have lunch together. Partially it was, we just didn't have kids and we had the summer off and we didn't have other things to do.
Right? And we just were so excited for the school year. But then as we had kids, it all shifted. So again, it depends on your season of life, what you wanna do. The biggest. Thing here is not thinking that you have to be in your classroom for a month before school [00:03:00] starts, and also having a plan. You get to decide the teacher you wanna be.
You get to decide your time, how much time you spend in your classroom. Another thing, I know teachers that live close to the school like to spend a couple hours a day and just do a little bit a day. That's fine too. Like I said, the biggest thing here is you want it to be your choice. You want it to be your systems that you set up.
And how you choose to spend your time. So. I want you to think about that as you're thinking about the back to school prep days and really getting ready. So here's your checklist. Let's get started. Number one, you're going to think about how you're setting up your physical space.
And again, you wanna think about the function over the decor. I have seen some very beautiful classrooms, but we also have to think about how distracting that is for kids. There are so many kids with a DHD now and so many kids that have a hard time staying focused that actually simpler is better.
I come from the elementary world, elementary teachers like things cute. [00:04:00] But one thing I would say is if you keep things simple, it's actually better. , And it saves you time. Not everything has to be printed out in cutesy. You wanna focus on the essentials, have your schedule up, have your expectations up.
Maybe you have a word wall slash sound wall, you know, however you want to organize that. But think about what you want it to look like in a very simple way. Also think about what you want your teacher space to look like. , after probably my first year of teaching, I didn't have a desk and I used my kidney table as my desk.
So then I had to think about where am I gonna put my supplies? Where are my planning things gonna be? How am I going to pull kids back into small group? Think about what your teacher space looks like. How do you wanna organize the kids materials? So think about all those systems and really think about the function of them.
How do you want kids? To go sharpen a pencil. How do you want them to get a Kleenex? How do you want them to put [00:05:00] papers in their mailbox or take papers with them? Again, depending on the grade level you have, think about function over decor. And what I will tell you about decor is keep it as simple as possible because you don't want it to be so distracting for kids.
Also go back to episode 23 of the podcast, season one fixated on classroom aesthetics. Is it essential, and I think this is a good conversation about how much money teachers spend on their classrooms and how much time we spend making it cute.
When is that really what we need to be doing? I don't know. It's a good question. I think it's a good topic. Again, we wanna keep a simple space that's functional and not as distracting for kids. All right. Step two, plan your first week of lessons. And when you're planning focus on routines. So you really wanna prioritize relationship building activities.
Let them share about their summer, let them share about themselves, teach expectations, and you wanna teach them over and over and over. And I will say, [00:06:00] even if you teach older kids, you might not be teaching the expectations as much, but you always wanna make sure that you're teaching clear expectations.
Of what that looks like, because you wanna remember that every teacher has different expectations. I heard this when I did the national writing project. You know, we talked about , this idea that even eighth graders, you expect them to come in and know how to write a paragraph. But every teacher has a different expectation of what writing a paragraph looks like, so you need to teach them what that expectation is.
I know that's a writing expectation, but it's the same thing. You can't assume that they know how to sharpen pencils or what you want them to do if they go to the restroom. You have to think about every little expectation and how you're going to teach that to kids and communicate that to them. Also, in those that first week, you really wanna keep the academic work light.
And build their confidence. So have it be review, have it be things that maybe they did last year, and it's a great time to just assess kids, see where they're at, get to know them. Help build [00:07:00] those routines. And one thing I always did was I used scripts and I have them for elementary students.
I can link 'em in the show notes. But I used scripts for my procedures. How do we enter the class? How do we get materials? How do we turn in work? And I would go over them, over and over and we would just practice them over and over. I'd have kids model the correct way to do it. And the not correct way to do it.
And this just gave them more and more practice. So you really wanna focus on those routines and put those in your lesson plans when you're teaching them. And then step three, create any welcome materials that you need to create. Maybe it's a student packet for me, I always had to create a student and family packet for.
, Open house. We had open house before school started. , Maybe it's a welcome activity, a parent newsletter, an introduction of, you know, you, your classroom expectations and how you're going to communicate with students and parents. Create all those welcome materials and chat. GPT is a great tool. Now I had to do all that by myself and I hated [00:08:00] writing.
So there are so many, , prompts that you could use then to create those welcome materials. But make sure it still sounds like you. And the fourth thing, prepare emergency sub plans. Even at the beginning, have your sub folder ready with the class list in it, the procedures for the sub to know, , maybe a couple activities that the sub could do if you didn't have work ready.
I always used to put review work so it didn't matter what time of the year the sub. Was doing it. It could be from the previous grade level or whatever, but just review work that they could use, contact information, just anything you can think about that you could just have prepared if something happened that you were out.
Now, a lot of the routines I had in my class as an elementary teacher, they did things like read to self and. , Read to partner or writing like they were things that I didn't necessarily need materials. But even now with more explicit instruction and curriculum, you could just even have a teacher in there that they go ask, what lesson would they be on?
[00:09:00] Who could I ask for help? Things like that, because then you can take a day off with no guilt. If you're really sick and you can't prepare sub plans, you have that emergency sub plan ready to go. And then step five, establish a personal routine. So choose a routine that supports sustainability.
And I talked about this in the last podcast episode of really making sure that you have routines and systems in place before the school year starts. And now that you're actually planning that first week,
I encourage you to choose a routine that supports sustainability in being a teacher. Whether that is that on Fridays is a day that you are going to make sure to be out the door by four for me, I loved planning later on Fridays because I met up with friends later. I. So I would stay after, get ready for the week, and I felt really good about that.
But maybe you pick, , Mondays is the day that you wanna stay after or come in a little bit early. Whatever works for you. Again, it's this idea that you're planning it, it becomes your routine, and then you have other days that you make sure you're out the door by [00:10:00] four because you have to pick up kids somewhere or do something after school.
Okay? You choose that routine and make it automatic. From the first day of school and when school starts, so that you're ready to go, and that already is part of your routine. So pick that routine. Start with one. Maybe it's even a routine for planning time. You know that you're gonna do, , copies on a certain day or on a certain day, or planning for the next week already.
Whatever that is, establish one personal routine. So just to recap our five things we're gonna check off before the first day of school. Set up your physical space, focusing on function over decor. Plan your first week of lessons, focusing on routines and building those relationships. Create welcome materials for kids and families, prepare sub emergency plans and establish one personal routine.
Okay, so just remember it's all about systems. It's not about perfection. Here. You wanna think about what can I [00:11:00] do less of and just do better. You wanna keep things simple and focus on being effective, not necessarily doing more. . And if you're still feeling like you need to reset a school starting, remember I still have that promo going.
You can get the burnout breakthrough normally $27 for 50% off with the code podcast. So I will put the link in the show notes or go to barb flowers coaching.com/courses, and you can take that course to reduce stress set boundaries and protect your energy for this upcoming school year.
But remember, you're going to focus on this five step checklist. , And I would appreciate if you shared this episode with a friend. If you're getting ready for the school year, you have a planning partner or somebody who you know needs to hear this, send this episode to them. And I also would appreciate if you left a review.
This is how other people find the podcast. So remember, you've got this. You're gonna be the eight to four teacher and be out the door at four, and I'll see you next time.
