Monday, September 22, 2008

I've figured it out ...

... apparently the only way for me to get a semi-cleaned desk is to stay until 7:00pm on a school night!

Most of my things are finally unpacked from the big move over the summer, but I still have a few boxes of "things to be filed" boxes looming under my desk.

My desk gets very messy very quickly. The amount of paperwork that I have to keep up with on a daily basis is INSANE! My kids turn in anywhere from 25-200 papers to me a day. To keep up with the grading of those papers is impossible and to find a place to put them is almost harder. It can take anywhere from 10-30 minutes to grade one set of papers (one assignment = 25 papers for my whole class). You do the math for how long it will take to get all caught up on a week of grading! Some days, I just spend the first 10 minutes of my day looking at my desk and trying to figure out where to start to get it organized.

Well, last week, I'd had enough. I got it organized ... at least for the time being.

Lookie! I can see the top of my desk. Let's see how long it will last.

My "corner". Still a bit of a mess, but it's coming together. Do you like my 2 windows?

I now have 3 organizing systems for papers. The trays on the left are for specific lesson plans for each day of the week. The middle one is for papers that I have already copied for certain lessons, but I don't know when I'll get to them. The files on the right are papers to grade, sorted by subject. The stack of papers right there is just one of about 5 stacks of "to be filed" papers!

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would think that your building is loaded with ideas from other teachers about how they handle their paper overload. Surely you talk in the lounge ...

Bets said...

One of our biggest idea for too many papers is to put them in File 13.

For those of you that aren't 4th grade teachers at my school ... File 13 = the trash can! :)

Kathryn said...

Looks nice. Do you think you could come organize my scrapbook area next?

Bets said...

Kat! You're on! I'd organize someone else's stuff any day! And craft stuff, no less?!?!? I'm on my way right now! :)

I hear you have quite the scrapbooking stash. If only I scrapbooked, I'd come to Crop-a-Ganza with you two ladies!

RachelC said...

Betsy, our desks have so much in common! Every time I come up with a filing system, I forget how it works. In order to keep my class moving, I just keep getting stuff out until I have a huge mess at the end of the day. I'm very jealous of your clean desk right now.

I also have issues with the amount of time it takes to grade each set of papers. I'm constantly wondering how everyone else keeps up.

Bets said...

Rach, don't be jealous! I'm pretty sure that lunchtime was the approximate time that I could no longer see the top of my desk and my piles were falling off the edge!
Why do I even try?