Operation Organization: Preventing Desk Disasters

Organization is the key to keeping your head above water during the school year. Its especially important for special education teachers. There are really three separate areas that need to be organized: legal documents and files, completed work and assigned work. How you handle the case files is often dictated by your school district. So, lets take a look at the last two areas--assigned work and completed work.

ASSIGNED WORK

I've gone through many storage variations for student work to be completed. Since I teach in a multi-age, multi-grade program with students who have varying ability levels (12-month-old developmental level to around 3rd grade developmental/academic level) , rarely is any student doing the same work as his or her classmates. This means a lot of advanced planning and individualizing has to be done.

To keep this mass of individual work organized, I get one hanging file folder for each student and put all of the folders in a plastic crate. The crate is kept in a centralized location. Into the folders goes the assigned work. I copy worksheets or assignments on a similar topic and staple them into a workbook. The kids work through the workbooks in their file folders a page or two at a day. The workbooks may last two weeks or up to the entire quarter. They are not meant to be completed at the end of each week. Doing the workbook system saves time in the long run because I don't have to scramble to come up with assignments for each student every single day.

What Didn't Work: In the past I've tried giving each student a notebook with dividers for each subject. Every weekend I would end up at school copying work for the following week and putting them into the notebooks. This got old really fast.

I also tried passing out assignments on a daily basis. This worked ok until I got more than a few students in my class. No matter how many students I had, the papers tended to be stuffed into desks and lockers or mysteriously disappear. In the end it was too much extra work.

The crate system has more benefits than drawbacks. Some of the best things about it are the incidental skills the kids get to practice--skills like choice making and being responsible.

COMPLETED WORK

Just thinking about this makes me tired! I used to have piles of corrected student work all over my desk just because I was afraid I'd end up without enough work samples for the state portfolio assessment that's due in the Spring. I'd save everything until Spring. That amounts to A LOT of paper. Even with trying to get to it every month, I still had too much piled on my desk.

Despite good intentions, I never quite got to picking work to include in the portfolio until at least the middle of the year. I made sure I had the data, but the way in which I went about it was a headache. I decided to do it right--pick days, in advance, on which to collect data for the portfolios. I then keep only that set of work samples. Everything else gets sent home and my desk is clear.

To do this you will need one 3" binder and 2-pocket folders (one folder for each student). The folders go into the binder. After you collect the data on your data days, just put the work into the right folder and save it. At the end of the year, transfer all of the work into individual binders that will be sent to the state for evaluation. Simple.

What's my solution for making sure work gets home every day? It's really basic.

You will need one heavy duty clip magnet for each student. Make sure to get the strong magnets. Put each student's name on a clip and hang the clips on the whiteboard.

Draw a vertical line about a yard from the end of the white board. At the top write "Work To Go Home". Put the clips in this area. They are the only things that should be in that area.

When work is finished and corrected, it goes on the appropriate clip. I have my students take responsibility for hanging things on their clips. They learn to locate their own names, and read the names of other classmates. Squeezing the clip is also a good OT exercise. At the end of the day, it's the students' responsibility to get the work off the clips and into the backpacks.

The magnetic clips have been a real success in my room. It's one of the few organizational strategies that has stood the test of time.

There's really no one organizational strategy that works for all teachers. You can do some experimenting and tailoring to fit your needs whether it be one of my suggestions, using cubby boxes, bookshelves or something entirely different. Whatever strategy you decide on, it will definitely be worth spending time to use it--if it works for you.