A little Monday Motivation for you all. The topic: organization. Interpret this however you want. As an elementary art teacher, I find organization to be a crucial part of my effectiveness in the classroom. I mean this in various aspects of the word: organization of the physical classroom space (including materials), the structure of lessons, collection of artworks… the list goes on. Below are a few ideas for educators, specifically in an art setting.
To-go containers work really well for crayons and other assorted materials. We were once told that the mice in our school building had a tendency to eat crayons… hence the sealed bins. For easy distribution and cleanup, I have separate containers of commonly-used materials readily available.
I have collected a number of visual resources over the years. I keep them in a file cabinet in separate file folders, organized alphabetically. It’s a quick and easy way to find images for students as an alternative to looking something up on the computer.
Each class is split into 5 long tables (classes that are larger than 25 students are split between 6 tables, but thankfully we don’t have any classes larger than that this year!) Each class has its own set of colored folders that correspond with the table colors. Although it was pretty time-consuming to make them initially, I laminated them, and I reuse them each year. I put a piece of masking tape with the teachers’ names on each, so I can change them each year if necessary.
Lastly, here are some ‘art teacher hacks’ as they may be called. I’m sure these ideas can be used in other ways too!
How do you get organized?