Totally Terrific in Texas: Teacher Planner/Binder

Every summer I purchase a planner for the upcoming school year. Okay, it's not actually a planner. It's more of a calendar. This calendar is one of the many things I carry home nightly in my teacher bag. My teacher friends know that bag....the one that weighs a ton and sometimes doesn't even get opened once it arrives home. In addition to the lovely calendar I just described, I always have a binder filled with basically all my important teacher forms...attendance, grades, RTI info., student info., planning pgs, etc. In an age of everything going digital, I still manage to keep hard copies of everything. Maybe it's my own distrust of those clouds that are supposed to keep all of our important documentation safe in digital land, or it could be the fact that anytime I desperately need a form, the internet just happens to be down!

This summer, I decided that it was time to get organized and eliminate some of the unnecessary things I carry in that teacher bag. I didn't want to carry both a binder and separate calendar any longer. This only added more bulk to my already heavy bag. I did consider purchasing one of those beautiful planners that are perfectly bound together with everything included. I tried one many years ago when I first started teaching. It was gorgeous, but I ended up not using the lesson plan part because our campus is required to have ours digital. That left a large portion of my planner unused. I also found that I really needed the ability to add and remove pages to meet my own classroom needs. Instead of purchasing a planner, I decided to go the route of a printable binder. I started by searching my computer for all the important planning forms I've created over the years. In my search, I found quite the assortment of forms with different borders, clip art, fonts, etc. I decided to stream line all the most important pages and that ~~little~~ giant project turned into a digital teacher planner.

I wanted to share the planner with all of my teacher friends. It has a simple design with just a splash of color. Several of the pages are editable. You can check out the pics below to see if it's something you could use in your own classroom. I'm going to include LOTS of pictures to give you a good sense of what is included.