End the Year Organized: Your Resources [Episode 182]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:01]:
The end of the school year is upon us. For some of you, you’re only two to three weeks out from, you know, your blissful summer vacation. Others of you, you still got a month or more until you’re gonna even put the countdown on your whiteboard. But regardless, the end is coming in sight, even if it feels still way far off. And so I’m excited no matter where you are to start a new series on the podcast. It’s gonna be three weeks long, all about how to end your year organized. Y’all organization, it is my love language. Okay? My spice rack is alphabetized.

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:42]:
My favorite coffee mug says it’s a beautiful day to make a spreadsheet. My closet is color coded, and it is only filled with clothing that fits into my preapproved color palette, which side note, if you have never gotten a virtual color consult, it is the best money you will ever spend. I did it in 2021, and it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. I have a discount code for the one I used in my show notes. I will link it. You can check it out. You can DM me any on Instagram, and I would love to talk to you about this. I will probably talk your ear off about this because I’m so passionate about it, but I digress.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:18]:
Okay. I tell you all this because I love organization. Like when people ask, what would you do if you weren’t a teacher or now, like if you weren’t a curriculum writer, a podcaster, I literally say that I’d be a professional home organizer. When my best friends call me and ask me to come over and help them clean out their closets, like, nothing brings me more joy. So I am the person to run this podcast series. And honestly, I cannot believe this is the fourth spring season of this podcast, and I have yet to do a series like this. Like, what have I been doing the last four years? Okay. So it is time, teacher friends, and I’m ready to dive in.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:58]:
So we are gonna start this three week series talking about organizing your resources. We are gonna talk digital organization, paper organization, as well as auditing and continual management of your organization system. So let’s get started. This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only forty hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:53]:
Okay. I have to preface this content by saying, like, I’m gonna share what works for me, a highly organized type a person that lives for a system. Okay? This is a system that has served me. If you have a system already going for you, like, you don’t need to throw it all out to do what I do. This episode is really for those of you who feel like maybe you have a system, but it’s not very great or effective, or you don’t have a system at all and it’s mass chaos. You’ve got things on Google Drive. You’ve got things in a filing cabinet. You’re like, what is what? Okay.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:28]:
This is for you. Also, if you do have a system that’s working well, I’ll share a few tips at the end about how to, like, manage it and make sure you sustain that helpful system. But first, we’re gonna talk about the actual organization. I’m gonna share digital organization as well as paper organization. I know a lot of people just commit to one or the other. I have both because I love both. So this is kind of like a choose your own adventure, and you can also do like me and have both systems. And I’ll talk to you about how to manage both of those too.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:00]:
So you’re not like, how do I know what’s digital, what’s not? Okay? Now, the task of doing this, especially the digital organization, because that’s where we’re gonna start. We’re gonna start with digital organization. Is this is such a great thing to do when you’ve got a TV show on in the background or, like, if you wanna do something mindless and kind of dabble in something while your students are working on a review pack independently or working on an end of your project, doing research in groups or whatever. Like, this is a great thing you can kind of be doing, you know, from your demo table upfront and then take a lap and check-in on everybody, then do a little bit more and then take a lap. Okay? So for your digital organization, there are some steps to this process. Okay? The first thing you have to do is pick a location. Are you gonna have everything organized on your hard drive, on Google Drive, on Dropbox, on, you know, Microsoft three sixty five or whatever the new, like, Office lingo is. Like, where is your gonna be your location? Now can you use multiple places? Of course.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:04]:
I use my hard drive and I use Google Drive. I used to use Dropbox until those of you who remember back in 2023 when I was writing the chemistry curriculum, I was following a blog post on the Dropbox help center website about how to do something and somehow Dropbox managed to wipe out my entire hard drive, and the files were not recoverable. And I spent over a month in customer service at Dropbox trying to get these files back, and they didn’t come back ever. And by the grace of God, the only thing that saved me was that I had bought a new laptop two weeks prior. I had my old laptop still, and so I only technically lost two weeks of work, but I could have literally lost my livelihood. So I do not use Dropbox. That is my, that is my story for you. But, you know, again, choose your own adventure.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:55]:
You don’t need to DM me about how, you know, Dropbox saved your life. It ruined mine almost. Okay. But you’re gonna pick a location. Again, I like hard drive and I like Google Drive, but I want you to pick one that’s gonna be like every single thing is gonna be here. Like, this is my home base. For me, that is my hard drive because now I don’t trust the Internet. But I do also use Google Drive.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:17]:
But my home base is hard drive. That’s where gonna be our primary organization system is set. Then we can have other things in other places and I’ll talk to you about how you’re gonna manage that. Okay. So you pick your home base location. Second, you’re gonna make a folder for each subject you teach. And I want you to make fresh folders. Okay.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:34]:
So I want you to have like, go into your documents or go into desktop or whatever and make your fresh folders. Biology, chemistry, anatomy, earth science, whatever. Make your folders one per subject. Then open up that chemistry folder and you’re gonna make subfolders. Again, these are brand new folders. I don’t want you just moving around playing Django with what you already got. We are starting fresh and we’re gonna input everything. Okay? Within each subject, you will have subfolders.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:00]:
Number one, one that’s gonna be labeled old. This is where you’re gonna put old things. Okay? Things you’re no longer using, files you’re no longer using. You’re gonna file them into there. Okay? But right now, we’re just creating the folders. We’re gonna have old. We’re gonna have b o y. That’s beginning of the year.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:16]:
This is where it’ll be things like your syllabi, your orientation sheet, your back to school night, those kinds of things. Then you’ll create a folder for each unit. Unit one, unit two, unit three, unit four, unit five, etcetera. Maybe you don’t wanna number them, maybe you just wanna do them by name, whatever. And then you’ll have a folder that’s EOI, end of year. Or maybe you want an EOC specifically because you teach an EOC course, end of course. Like, it’s gonna be end of course exam specific stuff. Those also may be separate.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:45]:
Maybe end of year is like some different products you do at the end of the year and your final exam stuff. Maybe EOC is specific stuff for the EOC that you’re gonna use all year long related to your EOC where you do different review at different points during the year. Okay? That’s our starting place. You may see that you need more subfolders as you go, but we’re starting with old, BOI, one for each unit, e o y, and maybe an EOC or AP, if you teach an AP exam. Okay. Now I want you to open up one of those unit folders, like unit one biology basics. And I want you to put four subfolders within that one. Okay? Notes, instructional resources, assessments, to try.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:32]:
Okay? Notes, instructional resources, assessments, to try. This to try, that’s for you resource hoarders. You know who you are. You’re the ones who are just constantly snagging stuff off the share drive for the district, off the Facebook group, off the PD you went to where they shared things. Like you’re just gathering, gathering, gathering. You would have been a hunter gatherer back in the eighteenth century. Okay. You would have thrived in that environment.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:59]:
This is, this is, this is who you are. And maybe you’re not, but you still have some other new things. Okay. You need that to try folder. That’s going to go there. Then you’re going to take those four folders and you’re going to copy and paste them. They’re empty right now. You’re going to copy and paste them into each unit so that every single unit has the same foundation.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:16]:
K. We’re setting up the skeleton, the building blocks of this system. Now, here’s the other thing you need. You’re gonna put this in the subject folders that when you open your physics folder, it’s gonna have old BOI, each unit folder, EOI, maybe EOC, and then there’s gonna be a document. And this is your table of contents. Like we said, you got a home base location, this is your home base document or spreadsheet. Maybe you wanna use an Excel spreadsheet if that’s your vibe. Whatever.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:47]:
I like just like a Word doc. Okay? And this is where you’re just gonna put everything that you need to know about where other things are that are not right here. So for example, if you have a couple Google Form tests, you’re gonna put in your table of contents. Like, hey. All these units, there’s a Google Form of the test and you might, like, put the links to them there. Or, hey. I’ve got this saved on this drive or this is in Dropbox and you’re gonna link it. All of those things are here or maybe this is printed out and it’s in my filing cabinet.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:15]:
Anything where you’re, like, not sure exactly where it’s gonna go or you’re afraid you’re gonna lose it, it goes in this, like, table of contents. That is what’s gonna be on that sheet because that’s gonna be so helpful for you. You gotta have one place that’s like your go to source for these kinds of things. Okay? Once you have this skeleton organization system set up, then you’re gonna start sorting your resources. So now you’re gonna pull up a finder window if you’re a Mac person. You’re gonna have a finder window with this beautiful setup we just did. Then you’re gonna have another finder window, which is all the things you already have, and you’re gonna start dragging things where they belong. This is where it’s fun because you’re just gonna start seeing visual progress as you drag things.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:56]:
I highly recommend if you don’t know what something is, you open it up and you look and y’all we’re gonna delete stuff as we go. We’re gonna delete duplicates. Or if it’s like super old oldies. Okay. Like the fifth derivation of your bell ringers. Like, you’re on you’re on version five, we don’t need version one. Go ahead and toss it. We’re gonna keep some oldies in the old folder.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:18]:
But again, we don’t want a gazillion oldies. Okay? If you’re like, I cannot delete a single thing. Okay. Then all those old the older versions go in there. Okay. But that is what you’re gonna do for those folders. You’re gonna start sorting. Again, this is great, like, mindless work while you got a show on or you’re kind of like having students do independent stuff and you’re just doing this a little bit at a time.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:37]:
Okay. So let me review that. You’re picking a home based location. You’re making a folder for each subject you teach. You’re making subfolders. You’re starting a table of contents or like a home based document where you’re gonna have all this information, where you’re gonna know, like, that’s like your where you’re putting all your notes and all your weird file links and all that stuff. And then you’re gonna start sorting. Once you are done sorting, now you choose where you’re gonna back up your files.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:02]:
So now do we wanna back all this up on the iCloud, on Google Drive, on Dropbox if you dare? Do you wanna get, external hard drive that you’re gonna back up on? It’s totally your call, but we’re gonna back it up. And then the seventh thing we’re gonna do is you are gonna go into your phone calendar right now and you’re gonna set a recurring event on it to back up your files once a month. So for example, this is airing on the twelfth. So maybe you’re gonna go in and on the twelfth of every month or you’re gonna say like, I need to back up my files, go ahead and put it in there. It’s gonna give you a little alarm every time it does. The reason we’re doing this is like, will you probably miss a month here or there because sometimes the twelfth is a Sunday and you’re not even on your computer? Yeah. But as long as we’re putting it in, you’re gonna hit it most of the times and then we’ll have more frequent backups. Obviously, there are auto backup options.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:51]:
Again, I have like a thousand right now because I’m so traumatized from my Dropbox wiping of my hard drive. But I’m just trying to give you like some starting places here. Okay? So that’s how we’re gonna organize our digital files. Again, where you do this doesn’t matter. There’s no right or wrong answer, but I have found this to be a very effective way to do it. Now, a little side note here. If you use resources that you got from someone else, like curriculum, for instance, that you bought from It’s On Rocketscience. Hi.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:23]:
That’s me. Then what I would do for you is like in your folder that’s for the unit, like, so for example, your stoichiometry unit folder for chemistry, I already told y’all you would have like a notes and instructional resources and assessments and a to try folder. I would have another folder that’s like INRS, it’s not rocket science, stoichiometry. And that’s where I would put all of my stoichiometry resources that you have gotten from me. Like, so all of my folders where I organize things like your packets, your implementation notes, etcetera, I would put that there. I think it’s nice to have, like, one place where the, like, original files are. And then if you wanna mess with the assessments in your own assessments folder, you do that. That way, at the beginning of the year, I recommend everyone who uses my resources, redownloads them typically early August because at the July, I go through and check all my links and stuff like that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:16]:
That way you can, like, replace the all the files in one place and know, like, okay, this is like the untouched It’s Not Rocket Science original versions or where whoever you got them from. I would have a separate folder for those, from the things that you’ve manipulated and worked with, if that makes sense. Okay. That’s my digital organization system. Now for paper organization, I personally am obsessed with having paper organization. There’s just something to me about, like, tactile organization that just makes me feel I don’t know. It just I feel so much more organized when it’s, like, physical. Okay.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:47]:
So my two recommendations for this is you need binders with dividers and you need a filing cabinet. First, binders with dividers. I like a one inch binder or a 1.5 inch binder, no bigger than that, per unit. So my chemistry curriculum has 10 units. I have 10 binders and they are labeled. If you have any of my curricula, the bundles come with spines and covers that you can, like, put in your little binders so they’re nice and prettily organized. Just like my pictures are, if you look at my resources, like, anywhere on the Internet, you’ll see my pictures of all my binders lined up. You get those.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:24]:
My best friend made those for us for you, but one binder per unit. Within that binder, you’re gonna have dividers. Now the amount of dividers you need is kind of dependent on if you teach CP and honors or how much you’d like to have printed. For me, I tended to have a CP packet printed. I liked like a blank one. An honors packet printed. I liked a blank one. Then I had the packet keys for each if I was teaching both CP and honors of that subject.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:52]:
Then I have, like, an assessments tab where I keep quiz and test keys and tests. And then I had another tab, divider that was, like, any supplemental resources that were printed out. And then my favorite, favorite thing is I get a zipper pouch, a three ring zipper pouch. I’ll link some in the show notes, but you don’t have to grab these specifically, but anything like this that stays at the front of the binder. And I put any laminated station cards, task cards, discovery stations, little game cards, anything like that that we’re reusing year after year, those go in that zipper pouch. So it’s all right there with that one binder. Then typically, when I was in the classroom, I kept all my binders in a locked cabinet except for the one that I was teaching right then. That current unit I kept and that was like my baby.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:44]:
I carried it around like I carried my laptop. It came home with me. Like, it was not just floating around. And but then it’s only one inch, so it’s just so easy to manage. I have a video of this. It’s so old. Like I made it on my phone on Instagram and someone was like, save this. I think I like downloaded it from Instagram stories and then upload it to YouTube years ago.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:04]:
Again, it’s very raw. It’s not really professional at all, but I’m gonna link it in the show notes. If you wanna physically see what this can look like, that will be there in the show notes. That YouTube video is linked. So a binder with dividers, one per unit. For AP Bio, I messed with doing one per semester. And I had like mega binders, like three inch binders for each semester. And it was so many papers.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:29]:
It was so many and it was this just giant honking binder. So I really prefer one per unit if you can swing it. The second thing I like to have is, like I said, a filing cabinet. Typically, that’s like the bare minimum that a school will provide. A teacher is a filing cabinet. You don’t need one per se, but I did like to have one. This is a great place to put student work samples that might be, like, a little bit more bulky that you can save, Or it could be a place where I always locked up my students’ tests. Each student, I made them a folder at the beginning of the year where I put all of their tests.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:00]:
It stayed locked and they could come in at any time during tutoring, before or after school, whenever my hours were and look over old tests with me. That was one way I kept test secure. And then at the end of the summer, before the start of the new school year, my admin gave me permission to then shred the previous test. They always wanted us to keep the test from from the previous school year through the summer, just in case someone came up with some someone’s grade or something like that. Nothing ever did, but that was just and then I was able to shred them before the start of the new year. But that’s a way you can use your filing cabinet. Now, if you put something in your filing cabinet that’s like pertinent, I’m thinking, okay, you teach, you use my biology curriculum and you do the popsicle stick babies lab in the heredity unit, and you have all these little ziplock baggies of your chromosomes. And maybe you wanna put those in your filing cabinet.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:48]:
Okay. Go off. I had little, like, plastic tubs, like shoe bin style tubs. I’ll link those in the show notes too that I had for each lab that I kept these kinds of materials in. But let’s say you wanna put them in your filing cabinet. Anything that’s in your filing cabinet, what I would do is I would take an index card and tape it inside the front of the binder. Sometimes the front of the binder will have like a plastic pouch, so you could tape it to that plastic pouch and just put what’s in the filing cabinet from this unit. So again, this binder becomes your physical printed paper home base.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:20]:
Just like that one document in your digital organization is gonna be your home base there. We have to have one place where we know to always look to know where things are located. Okay. So that’s gonna be put there. Okay. So that’s kind of a summary of how I organize digitally versus printable resources. Now let’s talk about maintaining organization. Because the question I see a lot is like, I have so many great resources, I just can’t find them and or like at the end of the unit, I’ve accumulated all this stuff and I don’t have time to like organize them or, you know, make sure they all go in a certain place or whatever.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:54]:
So here’s my number one tool for you, post it notes. Every time something comes up, you write it on a post it note and you stick it to your paper organization. If you are purely digital, you use those digital sticky notes. You download those and you put it on a digital sticky note. Okay. But I love the physical. My AP bio binder has so many sticky notes on it because I left three quarters into the year for maternity leave when we adopted my oldest. So I like never went back and did all the edits, but all of the notes are still there for the next time I would teach it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:30]:
Like it’s all there. It’s such an easy go to thing that you can grab a post it note at any time and be like, oh, these procedures for this lab need to change. Or here’s some sample data from this past year. Maybe I can refer to it in a future year or, oh, this like practice, Hannah, is terrible. We need more here. We need more reinforcement. Whatever it is, you’re scribbling notes on your post it notes. Or maybe you say like, hey, I changed this in the Word doc, but I need to upload it to the Google Drive.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:57]:
Whatever. You put the stickies and you put it on the physical binder. And then that way, the next time you’re teaching it, if you don’t have time to make the changes at the end of the unit, which is my number one recommendation, go ahead and make the updates while it’s so fresh. You’re gonna do it on the front end of teaching it again, and that’s gonna be where you’re gonna refer to. You’re gonna go through all your notes and make your changes. You can also, if you don’t wanna use digital sticky notes, you can add this to your home based document, your your table of contents, or it maybe it’s a Google doc because that’s really easy to have on access on your phone and then it updates on your computer and your phone and you’re just jotting things down. But you’re gonna have one thing, whether it’s post it notes, a Google doc, that that’s where you put all of your revisions or your ideas or things that need to be updated or placed or whatever. And then the second tool you’re gonna use is some sort of timer or calendar reminder to update.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:47]:
Again, like I said, you’re gonna set a timer on the twelfth of every month or the last day of every month or every thirty days to get organized here. Or maybe it looks like every time you have a PD day built in to your school year, you are gonna set a timer for one hour and go through an update and check on your organization and keep tabs on it. But the bulk of this organization is on the front end. And once you have a good system, it’s so much easier to maintain. Okay. The last few things I’m gonna say about this before I hopefully set you free to go start doing this is this is an excellent time while you’re going ahead and doing this to audit your resources and look for holes, look for weak spots, what needs to be replaced, where do we not have a lot of hands on resources for extended period of time where we need to zhuzh it up. This is a good time to make note of those things. And now go ahead and use your system.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:36]:
Use the post it notes, use your table of contents to jot these things down. Now, if you don’t have the time to make changes now, you can make them later. Another thing you can do is strategize your sequence. Really consider, I love doing this at the end of the year, consider your sequence for your course. Now is the time to change it, to make it make more sense. I have a great episode on this episode 80, where I kind of walk through the questions. I recommend you ask yourself to make sure you’re teaching things in the right order, because that can make all the difference. And then last thing I’ll say about this is if you want to look at specifically auditing your labs, I have a lab audit that’s a part of my free LabsWin limited virtual professional development course.

Rebecca Joyner [00:23:16]:
And I’ll link that in the show notes where you can grab that. Okay. So here’s your take home challenge. Start this process today or at a minimum, put it on your calendar when you were going to do this. Maybe you’re going to do digital organization one day and order all your binders, and then you’ll do your paper organization when all the binders come in or something like that. But I think if you do it between now and next week, you’re gonna feel so accomplished and so productive because next week, we’re gonna talk about the next part two of our in the year organized series. Okay? So stay tuned for that. If you wanna check out that YouTube video I mentioned or I linked some of those zipper pouches, you can find those in the show notes at it’samerocketscienceclassroom dot com slash episode182.

Rebecca Joyner [00:24:00]:
And if you have not left a review for the podcast yet, I would love it if you would leave a five star rating in review, especially if your resources are a digital or paper mess right now. And you’re excited because now you feel like you have a system to use and get going with it, I would love it if you’d love to review. Alright, teacher friends. That wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher friend.