Drowning in Sticky Notes? Get Your Music Teacher Life Organized

That Cute Planner I Bought...Still Empty - Here's What Actually Works - 2 27 25 12.19 PM

Today's episode is brought to you by the Happy Music Teacher Academy, the ultimate online community where elementary music teachers build confidence, sharpen their teaching skills, and collaborate with like-minded educators. Join us for expert-led professional development, creative lesson ideas, and the support you need to thrive. Ready to elevate your music classroom? Head to thehappymusicteacher.com forward slash academy and unlock your full potential today. So, you know that cute little planner that you bought? I know, maybe I'm the only one, but every time I buy a planner, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna use this one. This is so exciting. I can't wait to use it. And you know what? Here's what happens. It ends up still empty. Let me show you what I mean. I've got this cute little planner. Isn't it adorable? I even put some tabs in it, and there is some stuff in there, but like, it's mostly still empty. Look. Like, just nothing in there except like at the very back, right? There's that. Here's another cute planner I bought. Oh my gosh, isn't it adorable? So cute. But you know what? Completely empty. There is nothing in it at all. Talk about a waste of money. Then I tried notepads. Completely empty. They don't work for me. Then I tried, I made my own really, really cute little, um, then I tried, I made my own really cute little to-do list. Look. Completely empty. Nothing in it. Then I've tried sticky notes.

They don't work either. Guess what? Nothing worked for me until I found a system that actually worked for me. So here's the deal. When you are trying to organize, we are busy. Music teachers are so busy. And you need a way to keep your music teaching life organized. Because guess what? If you're not organized, you're going to miss stuff. You're going to be that person, like me, who your assistant principal is going to call and be like, hey, um, did you know that there was school today? Your choir is waiting outside the door. That happened on President's Day. And I was like, holy guacamole. Seriously? We have school? Now, this was when I first moved to Alabama. And in Florida, when I taught there, at least in South Florida, we never had school on President's Day. Did I bother to look at a calendar? No, I did not bother to look at a calendar. Did I bother to check with anybody? No, I did not do that either. Guess what I did? I stayed home. I slept in. I was woken up by the assistant principal saying, uh, hello, your students are waiting for you. That was a disaster. And that kind of stuff happened to me all the time. How about those deadlines that you have? Like, Ms. Shorey, because when I was working in the school system, it was Ms. Shorey. Ms. Shorey, I'm getting an email, right?

We have not received your certificates for this PD, that PD, because now the cool thing about PD sessions, at least in Alabama, is they teach a lot of them online. So I, I missed the deadlines all the time. So today we're going to talk about how to keep your music teaching life organized. What strategies actually work? And, you know, it is a challenge because we have lesson plans to write. We have lesson plans to keep organized. We have all of these dates that have to be in our, not in our heads, because guess what, if you try to remember it, you're not going to. You have too much to remember. It's not because you are not very smart, because we know you are.

It's not because you're not organized, because you're trying to be organized, right? And maybe you really aren't organized, because I know for me, I was not organized in my early teacher life. And then I got to be more organized. But guess what that took? That took an actual strategy. It took managing my calendar and doing things to help myself stay organized and make sure that my schedule is right where it was. Because otherwise, guess what? You're going to be missing things. I know there were times where I was supposed to be somewhere for my kiddos, or I was supposed to, you know, be in a situation where like maybe I was teaching a guitar lesson or, oh my gosh, I can't tell you how many times I missed my kid's violin lesson because I forgot. And if it was a case where like I was doing something on a certain day of the week, that really helped. But otherwise, it was not pretty. So here's what you need to do.

I am going to give you five steps to help you stay organized so that you don't miss things, so that you feel more in control, so that you are less stressed.

 Number one, organize your lesson plans and your materials. This is a big deal. You need to create a system. So some people are paper planners and some people are digital planners. I tend to be more of a digital planner. And I am going to actually show you if you are not hearing this, if you are not listening to this, if you are not watching this on YouTube, I'm going to give you some screenshots so that you can see this. But let me show you my, so I am going to show you, this is my Google Drive. And you will see that I have everything organized into folders. And then some of these folders are by color. I should have more by color, but here I've got lesson plans. And these are storybook lesson plans that are not mine that I wanted to use. Hispanic heritage, here's some video game music lesson plans, all the things. And again, I will send, I will put some screenshots for those of you who are listening on in the podcast. So you can see that I have my Google Drive very well organized. And I would love to be able to talk you through this, but I'm not going to do that today. So that is the way that I like to organize my lesson plans. So however you like to organize your lesson plans, you need to have a strategy in place, you need to have a system.

So if you're going to do, let's say a paper and pencil, a binder system that is a good way to do things. You can use something called Trello. Trello is another great way, you probably know about Trello. Trello is another great way to organize things. So, and it's a digital way to organize things. I will do some links in the show notes. So whatever way you do it, you need to have a system in place. Then I like to do some batch planning. So I like to plan my lessons in units or themes. And when I'm using lesson plans for my little’s, I like to plan around the themes that like my pre-K and my kindergarten are doing. It's like such an easy way. And usually if you've got pre-K, they're doing the same themes, like maybe they might be doing a farm theme or probably February they're doing penguins or whatever. And then I've got some storybook lessons that I use, and I try to plan by a theme. With my bigger kids, we go by the music skills that we're learning. So the elements of music.

And if you do not have a curriculum guide that you're using, make sure that you go to thehappymusicteacher.com forward slash curriculum to download our musical maps that we created inside the Happy Music Teacher Academy this past summer. So do your planning in batches. Don't plan every day or every week. Plan by unit. Plan by themes. Get it all together into one plan. Use templates. If you have a go-to lesson plan template that you can use, it makes planning so much easier. So that is how I work. I do a digital planner using my Google Drive. You could use Trello, which is another type of digital planner. You could use Click Up. You could use a physical binder. So maybe you have an entire binder full of your lesson plan. So lots and lots of ways to do that. And I find a binder to be unwieldy, and I love to plan digitally. But if you are not a digital planner, you do you. Just make sure you have a system.

 Next thing you want to do is you want to batch plan. So you want to plan your lessons in units rather than themes, rather than week by week. You want to make sure. So I love to do themes for my littles, especially like kindergarten, pre-k, even first grade. They have themes that they're working in. So, you know, they're doing fall in September, October. They're doing Native American heritage in November. And obviously they're going to do holiday things in December, winter things in January, penguins in February, that sort of thing. So if you get with your kindergarten or your pre-k or your first grade team and ask them what themes they're going to do, that is a great way to plan because then you've got it like a structure in place. Then I pull in my storybooks. I try to figure out what storybooks I can use that work. And then we will plan. I do all of my planning for my music class from kindergarten, pre-k all the way through to fifth grade in units. So we start out with meter or steady beat, and then we go into melody, etc. So I plan my units by the elements of music. If you do not have a system already in place, a curriculum map to follow, you can download the one that we created in the Happy Music Teacher Academy this past summer. You can go to the happymusicteacher.com forward slash curriculum and you'll be able to download the curriculum map. It goes K through five and it has unit plans.

The whole deal, it is gold. Then you want to use some templates. So you want to keep a go-to lesson plan template so that you can streamline your planning. So what do I mean by that? So if you go to Canva and search lesson plan template, you will see, now those are my designs, let's do Canva templates. You're going to see, look at all these different kinds of templates that they have in Canva. And you don't have to use Canva, but I find it to be really easy. Then you can customize it and you can add in, let's say, you know, whatever you want to. So you've got your objective, you've got all this good stuff in there. Again, I am going to link in the show notes. If you are not seeing this in, again, I'm going to have some screenshots for those of you who are in listening to this on. Again, I'm going to have some screenshots if you're listening to the podcast and you're not on YouTube. So you want a template of some sort. You want a way to stay organized and to be able to input everything right inside. Then you want to file by the concept or you want to file however it is that you are using your filing system. So for example, you want to organize materials by skill, rhythm, melody, movement, not just by grade level, because guess what? Sometimes your fourth grade class may be at a point where you need to use a movement activity that, and maybe they love it too, that you could use with first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, the whole deal. So file things by concept. So that is organizing your lesson plans and your material.

The next thing you want to do is you want to manage your calendar and your schedule. So I like to use time blocking for lesson planning, for grading if you have grading, for your admin work, and the way that I do that is right here on my phone. And again, I will give you a screenshot, but you can see that I've got everything blocked, okay? So it gives me all the things, and notice how I have different colors, and then down there I've got my guitar lessons, and then within here I have alerts scheduled. So it alerts me when it's time to leave. It alerts me 30 minutes before, all that good stuff, and down here I can put in some notes so that I remember what I'm doing from day to day. So block scheduling is, and again I will, I will have some, so that is a fantastic way to keep track of things. You can use your Google calendar or if you have a certain kind of other planner, maybe you've got your Apple calendar or whatever kind of calendar, I believe wholeheartedly in a digital calendar because you can set all those reminders and alarms and everything else.

So when I go into my school year at the beginning of the year, and it's not too late to do this, I will look through the entire school calendar. I take a photo of the school calendar that I keep as a favorite in my photos, in my phone, and then I go through and I put in every single holiday, every single teacher planning day, all the things. Yes, it takes some time, but it is going to help you like you wouldn't believe because you're not going to miss some of those deadlines. Then at the beginning of the year, you know, that pre-planning week or so, I like to make sure that I put in those deadlines as well with an alarm, with an alert to tell me, hey, and I'll alert myself like two days before and then day of so that I don't forget because I'm too busy. I've got too much going on. When you are doing prep for rehearsals and performances, you want to keep a checklist for your concert planning to stay ahead. If you do not have a checklist, reach out to Bethany Main. In fact, I will link in the show notes to some resources from her because we just finished that whole choir workshop and that was some amazing stuff. If you did not catch that workshop, all you need to do is go to, if you didn't catch that choir workshop, all you need to go to do is go to thehappymusicteacher.com forward slash chorus and there is a way to get all three rounds of that chorus workshop. So it's really, really important to make sure that, so it's really, really important to have a checklist for everything that's going on with your concert planning so you've got all that going on. You also want to include some personal time.

So a few weeks ago, we did our hundredth episode of the podcast and if you did not get a chance to hear that one, that one is an audio only. If you did not get a chance to hear that one, you definitely want to check it out. It is episode 100 and one of the tips that was, it was a hundred tips for music teachers and one of the tips was to make sure and schedule in some breaks and some self-care. One of my members from the academy, Caitlin, was talking about how she always at least takes five to ten minutes during her lunch to just relax, do a little reading, and wind down because she's got a very intense schedule. Now, I'm going to recommend you actually take an entire lunch, like 20 to 30 minutes, however much time you have, leave your classroom, sit down, sit down, and actually take a break. But you do you there.

 Number three, keeping up with those staff meetings and those school responsibilities. First of all, you need to prioritize what matters. If there are meetings and duties that impact your teaching, I know that yes, there are so many meetings and so many of them don't apply to us. But you need to make sure, this is part of your duty as a teacher, make sure that you, God bless America, make sure that you prioritize that. Make sure that you have those in your calendar. If you have duty for a week, like bus duty or something like that, make sure that's in your calendar. Make sure that you have an alert set on your phone so you don't forget because I can't tell you how many times I get on the loudspeaker, Ms. Shorey, you're supposed to be at bus duty. So, you know, it happens. You want to take some notes. You want to have a dedicated notebook or a Google Doc or someplace that you put the school policies, those key dates, all the to-dos, and you want to automate whenever it's possible. So I have some email templates that I use for my parent communication or I did use for my parent communication, my classroom reminders, all that good stuff. So if you create, and you don't have to do it like another step, but if you create some email templates for, you know, how you contact your choir parents and how, you know, certain things that you know you're going to do every year and you have them in there as a template, boy, is that going to make things a lot easier.

 Number four, stay on top of the technology. So you need those digital tools, the Google Classroom, Notion, Trello, Click Up, any of those places where you can keep your lessons. If you are still keeping your lessons in the gigantic binder, I recommend try and do something digital, okay? Tech for Engagement. There are so many amazing resources out there. I am not telling you to have somebody else teach your lessons because we don't want to do that. I was in a conversation with somebody while I was at TMEA a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about how, you know, we don't want music teachers phoning it in. We don't want them, like, going on to Quaver and just, like, letting Quaver take over their whole lesson, because guess what? Then anybody can go and press the button and teach music. But what you do want to do is use those resources that are out there. Use Quaver. Use Chrome Music Lab. Use Flip grid for some interactive. Use Music Play Online, a very affordable option. If you don't know about it yet, a very affordable option. And make sure that you store everything in a Google Drive or a Dropbox or wherever so that you don't lose those materials.

 Number five. Number five. Here are three simple habits that are going to help you stay organized long-term. Do an end-of-the-day reset or an end-of-the-week reset if you can't do an end-of-the-day reset. Spend five minutes tidying up your classroom, reviewing the plan for the next day or the next week. Just give yourself a little time. Take those notes on those students or that class who you really need to, you know, work in some new activities for whatever the case may be. Use weekly check-ins. Review your schedule. Adjust where you need to. Make sure you know what is going on every week. I like to spend about 10 minutes on my Sunday night just looking to see what meetings I have coming up that week and what things are going on that week, all that good stuff. Yes, it takes a couple minutes, but in the long run, it's going to save you time. And use routines. Have a plan in place.

I know it takes a little extra time, but have a plan in place for lesson planning, for copying your materials, for organizing your supplies, for organizing your calendar. So let us go back and do a quick review. Number one, organize your lesson plans and your materials. Create a system, whether it's digital, paper, whatever you're doing. Use templates. File by concept. Do some batch planning? Number two, manage your calendar and your schedule. I like to use that time blocking. If that's not going to work for you, find a way. If you have a right in your calendar kind of way to do it, or you want to use like a big calendar on the wall, whatever you do, make sure that you block your time. You sync everything up. I think digital is a good way to go. Make sure you've got some checklists for your concert planning. Stay ahead of schedule so you're not scrambling at the last minute, and make sure to include some personal time for breaks and self-care. You have to do that. Number three, keep up with those staff meetings and the school responsibilities. Make sure you have all of that on your calendar.

Number four, stay on top of the technology. Use those digital tools. If you need help with that, reach out to me, Jeanette at thehappymusicteacher.com. I am happy to help. Use some tech for engagement, YouTube, Quaver, and Music Play Online, all of the good technology that's out there. Back everything up. And number five, use simple habits to stay organized long term. Do that end of the day reset. Do a weekly check-in, like on a Sunday is a good time to do that. Use some routines. Have a set plan in place for everything. So I encourage you, don't try everything this week. What you want to do in order to create habits, you want to do one teeny tiny little thing this week. So try, pick one of the strategies I talked about and start doing just a little bit of it, whatever it happens to be. And then I would love for you to share your best organization tips in the comments. Go on social media. I am the happy music teacher on Facebook, on Instagrams, on TikTok and share your best organizational tips. What do you do that keeps you organized and something that actually works?