The Infamous Teacher Binder

As a new teacher, and someone who may definitely has a Type A personality, all of my searches across different blogs and Pinterest have lead me to believe that I too need a teacher binder.  However, my Type A personality also told me that I needed to plan, plan, plan before I even started thinking about printing anything!  After days of searching different ideas, looking at templates, and avoiding buying anything until absolutely necessary, I finally had a rough idea of what I wanted to have on me at all times.

Materials:

 - 1" binder (foldable for easy lesson planning)

 - 8 tabbed dividers

 - Pretty cover pages (mine are from Teaching with Simplicity, she has 3 different sets of designs as bundles for FREE)

 - Binder clips

I can't thank Stephanie from Eat. Write. Teach. enough for her very thorough post about her teacher binder (the main inspiration for my binder and creating my own documents that would best suit my needs)!  Check out her posting here!

I organized my binder into the following sections:

 - Calendars

 - Lesson Plans

 - Grade Book

 - Standards

 - Student Data

 - School Data

 - Notes: Staff Meetings & Professional Development

 - Notes: Team & Department Meetings

Calendars

As a first year teacher, I'm all about finding resources that are free and useful.  This 2-page calendar spread from eduDataCoach was perfect!  I binder clipped the current month to the divider tab so that it will always be open when I flip to it.

Lesson Plans

Like Stephanie had suggested in her post, I made my own lesson plan template.  Everything that I used in my college courses and throughout my student teaching never sat right with me.  I needed something that was organized but also flexible.  This section is also binder clipped to keep it open to the current week.

Grade Book

My grade book (also created in Excel) has an Assignments page on the left hand side that numbers out each assignment that correlates to the number on the top of the right hand page.  It also details the assignment name, detail section, date assigned, date turned in, and class averages.  The right hand side looks like a typical grade book with enough room for large class sizes and no need to write the assignment name in squished handwriting!

Standards

In an effort to keep up on data collection, I plan on using the Common Core Checklist (found here) in my standards section as each standard is listed on the checklist. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything that would suit my needs as a secondary ELA teacher; therefore, I made my own through Microsoft Excel!

Student Data

This section will hold my seating charts, a hard copy of my attendance records, and the computer generated listing of student test scores.

School Data

This section of my binder will hold my password log (found here), curriculum maps, school policies, daily schedule, and other administration distributed materials that I may need on a daily basis.

Notes Sections

As you can probably tell by now, I really like to be organized!  So, I divided my "Notes" section into to spots.  One is only for Staff Meetings and Professional Development.  The other is for Team Meetings and Department Meetings.

Well, there you have it!  That is what my teacher binder (aka "Sanity Saver" will look like for my first year of teaching!  I hope you found this helpful and would recommend checking out these other great blogs for other ideas and inspiration!

 - All-in-One Teacher Planner Teaching With Simplicity

 - Made 4 Math Monday #2 Teaching Statistics

 - Teacher Binder Remix Luckeyfrog's Lilypad