3 Ways to Prepare Your Classes for the First Weeks of School

Hi, it’s me – Emily! I am so excited to be writing my first blog post right at the beginning of the new school year. Are we EXCITED to be back? Bittersweet for me as I do like my routine… but this means I will no longer be at home with my 3 little ones.

As I started to prepare for this school year, this one feels different. I am starting my 15th year teaching Family and Consumer Sciences and I feel like my cruise control is on! Each year before the students arrive, I have the same routine to ready myself for the semester. I mainly focus on organizing my course content and allocate a few hours of classroom set-up. I find that it leaves me less stressed for the school year and prepares me for limited “after hours” work those first few weeks with students.

Here are THREE tips to implement before students arrive that make my life easier during those first, STRESSFUL weeks:

1. Create a rough outline of the topics/units you are covering within each class. This will give you an estimate as to how many weeks you can spend on each topic/unit and give you a nice start on each class. I ALWAYS over-plan and give myself optional two extra topics to cover in the event that teach faster than expected.

2. PLAN, plan, and then plan some more! I like to have at least 2 weeks planned for each class I am teaching. That includes copies made, online classroom updated, etc. With that being said, I am in my 15th year teaching and it took me a while to get to this point. In my first few years teaching, I would aim for about 1 week planned per class.

3. Set your classroom up BUT don’t spend all your prep time doing so. Leave some things undone and let the students help you with your decor. First week activities can easily double as your classroom decor and create a cool aesthetic. My personal favorite is to create bulletin boards that I don’t need to swap out each season or semester. My most recent bulletin board includes a “Recipe of the Month” area and little clothespins where I hang photos I take around the classroom and in the labs. This is an extremely LOW maintenance board that I can keep up year-round!

Note: My first few years of teaching, I followed the same beginning of the year routine and quickly learned that I had to start readying myself prior to our first professional development days. While I was putting in time before my contract hours began, I felt it was best for me and my stress levels. My time equated to only a couple of full days before our first teacher inservice.