As a teacher, I already accepted the fact that I belong to the thread of professionals who keep and store important documents. With my years in the teaching profession, I realized one funny yet very important thing – teachers are the keepers of papers as teaching extremely involves paperwork!
I know the very intriguing question in your mind right now is, “How do I organize important school files?
The Key Element
Staying organized as a teacher is critical to maintaining a successful and effective classroom. A key element of this process is arranging critical school files to ensure quick access to important information whenever it is required.
An organized file management system may save you time and decrease unneeded stress whether dealing with lesson plans, student records, assessment data, or administrative paperwork. In this article, we will look at seven sure-fire best practices for keeping a well-organized and easily accessible school file system.
I believe every teacher has his or her own system of organizing files. Nevertheless, I am very glad to share my own solutions for keeping track of my stored files. I find these clever tips really amazing.
Push through creative styles of organizing school files so you can be a more productive and effective teacher. You will have more time for lesson preparation if the hard copies of your files are kept securely and organized. Keep them where they should be for easy access and tracking.
With your strong organizational skills, you can spark more balance in the learning environment. Always remember that being disorganized is a tint to your effectiveness as a teacher and a scar to your confidence.
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How do I organize important school files?
The thought of organizing important school files shouldn’t be a pain. With our highly demanding roles as teachers, time is of the essence. Therefore, we should maintain organization in the classroom or in our home office to quickly find files that we need.
Through your efficient organizational skills, you incredibly save time for other important tasks. Just imagine the time wasted if you dig documents for hours just looking for the anecdotal record of your students.
Let’s build momentum in the classroom by organizing students’ files and important documents efficiently. Consequently, you have to read more and take advantage of these pep talks on organizing school files.
1. Categorize files accordingly
How do I organize important school files? I made a conscious effort of categorizing worksheets, letters to parents, students’ anecdotal records, test papers, etc. In other words, I compartmentalized.
Personally, to make it much easier for me to locate files, I categorize those files accordingly. I am quite specific about to which strand the files belong.
I don’t want to panic every time there’s a file that needs to be handed to the school admin instantly. For this reason, I separate the files under curriculum, classroom management, student development, and professional development.
2. Label everything clearly
Get your files organized with label makers. You can label your file folders neatly. This was mentioned in my post about the best use of label makers for teachers.
Use labels, tabs, or colored folders to help you quickly identify what is inside each file folder. This will save you time and frustration when trying to locate specific items
Also, when your file organizers are properly marked, you can pull them out easily which makes you save countless hours. Another option is to design your own labels using your laptop or desktop computer, print the page and there you go!
You can customize your designs by adding borders, graphics, and images, and by using your desired font style. Then print your creative labels and paste them neatly into the file folders.
Labeling is likewise a very helpful trick in keeping your important documents neatly filed. You have a modern feel if your workspace or classroom is clean, neat, and organized.
It’s true that developing a filing system frees you from clutter, longer hours of digging up, and exhausting moments. This can reduce stress in the classroom which in turn keeps you in a good mood to facilitate learning.
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3. Designate a certain area for your files
Store your files in the right place. You need to designate the right spot in the classroom where you can have easy access to those documents even though your students are performing their tasks.
Essentially, you can locate the needed files if you are certain where you placed those. Personally, I am using a filing cabinet for school files like school registers, students’ academic records, class cards, anecdotal records, test papers, activity sheets, and supplementary learning materials.
Although I am also saving my references and activity sheets in a flash drive, it helps me a lot in keeping the hard copies of my materials. How does it help me save money and time? Instead of printing these materials over and over again, I keep them nicely in the filing cabinet. It saves me from buying printer ink again and again!
4. Arrange files accordingly
Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash
After securing your school files in folders, organizers, or expendables, how are you going to arrange them on the shelves or cabinets? How do you categorize your folders? Will it be by school year, subject area, types of files, or by their level of importance?
Arranging your files takes time and hard work for it to be really effective and sensible. Don’t arrange folders as if those were not needed anymore and that they have to be in there forever!
I mean the ones that are always checked upon like lesson plans, worksheets, class records, and score sheets should not be set at the bottom especially if you are arranging folders vertically.
Nevertheless, on my end, I am arranging folders, anecdotal, and conference notebooks horizontally. I need a wider space which is why I usually do the cleaning of unwanted files at the beginning of each year to best accommodate the new ones.
Arranging files by properly categorizing them helps me sustain my filing cabinet. That is why, when I am to be transferred to another classroom, I intentionally request a bigger filing cabinet because I know I will be needing a spacious one.
As to the best categorizing technique, go back to tip #1 in the list.
5. Toss files from yesteryear
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Why are you hoarding those papers and handouts? Do you think those are still useful for your present class? If those handouts are 2 or 3 years old in your file cabinet, then those are the ugly elements that need to be discarded gracefully. Don’t wait for cockroaches to do it for you!
Funny enough, but it’s very real for some teachers out there who regret throwing away files from a long time ago. (Actually, I was like this before.) I just laugh every time I remember how I’m still keeping the essays of my students who are already professionals for the time being.
Well, if you can recycle them, if you’re blessed with creativity and technique, then you’ve got to do it. Remember, you will be collecting more this year and next year. It will be an unending battle of paper hoarding as long as you’re still in the teaching profession.
By now, as I de-clutter and arrange my things in the classroom at the beginning of the year, I sort out old handouts from the new ones. I toss the ones that are not aligned with the curriculum and keep those that are still helpful in my teaching instructions.
In my first 5 years in teaching, I refused to throw away activity sheets thinking that I might still need them. However, I noticed that the pile increased, and folders got bulky so they slipped out of my crowded cabinet. Only then that I realized that I was a hoarder of papers not realizing that I accumulated a lot of them for years!
Make the decision now of clearing away things that you don’t need anymore. No one likes to stay in a very disorganized classroom. At length, the concentration of your students will be affected. That can be terrible.
So, I made a decision right away! I should not be keeping things that I don’t need anymore! Hence, I discarded old activity sheets, handouts, and students’ outputs from a long time ago! But essentially, I still save files that are still valuable like student enrollment and academic records.
6. Stick to your organizational goals
Stay away from the habit of keeping files in folders because an evaluation is fast approaching or visitors are coming to your classroom. Maintain your systematic ideas. It’s hard to do but just take note of how convenient it is if you’re locating files if they are nicely arranged and neatly labeled.
Don’t arrange and re-arrange the files just for the sake of something. You need to enhance the mindset of organization and filing systems in the classroom or in your home office.
Just be consistent and persistent in your organizing schemes. Don’t procrastinate because when things get piled up, they will drain your energy and enthusiasm.
Organizing your students’ files, correspondence, memos, and personal files and keeping them orderly should be made a constructive habit. You are making them easy to find and manage, thus you’ll always have peace of mind that everything of importance is just a hand away.
7. Create a filing system that works for you
If you’re like most people, your filing system is probably a mess. Papers are stuffed into manila folders and crammed into file cabinets, with no rhyme or reason to the way they’re organized. This can make it difficult to find what you need when you need it.
There is no one right way to organize school files. Some people prefer to sort by subject, while others prefer to sort by date or project.
Find a system that works for you and stick with it. The important thing is that you are able to find what you need quickly and easily.
8. Utilize digital file management tools
Utilize digital file management tools and embrace technology. Cloud storage options such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox may be quite useful for instructors.
They enable cooperation with peers, provide automated backups to prevent data loss and provide quick access to files from any device with an internet connection.
Interestingly, collaboration capabilities are common in digital file management applications, allowing us to share materials and work with our fellow educators. In a centralized digital platform, we may collaborate on lesson plans, share teaching ideas, and share best practices.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Start by decluttering your files. Go through all of your papers and get rid of anything that you don’t need. This will make it easier to organize the rest of your papers.
- Create a system for labeling your files. This will make it easier to find what you’re looking for later on. You can use color coding, alphabetical order, or any other system that makes sense to you.
- Sort your papers into categories. This will help you keep similar papers together and make them easier to find later on. Common categories include bills, school papers, work papers, and personal papers.
Conclusion
File organization for teachers shouldn’t be overwhelming. Although the digital world allows you to save files on your computer, you still can’t deny the abundance of physical files and papers on your table. Don’t lie to yourself that you’ve been collecting files year after year.
You should be decisive enough to win the battle against paper hoarding. Start the school year right by cleaning your filing cabinets to welcome new files for the current year.
A piece of friendly advice: Creating an accessible structure for your filing cabinet helps you get through each day with a boost of self-esteem.
Organizing important school files should become second nature to you as a teacher. You can share your valuable input too! Just shoot me your best practices in the comment section below.
