5 Things you can do at the End of the Year to Make your Back to School Life Easier

Chelsea Jordan
Jun 7, 2023
4 min read

WE MADE IT! It's the end of the year! We educated, we loved, we counseled, we gave out lots of band aides, and tied lots of shoes! So...... we're #teachertired. But! there are some things you can build into your end of the year check out to make your life easier come August (or September?). There's nothing quite like end of the year teacher tired.... except back to school teacher tired!

PURGE, PURGE, PURGE.

This one IS MY FAVORITE. I am not that teacher that holds on to a quarter full bag of stickers for that one project we did that one time that we might do again when the pendulum swings back. I feel like classrooms in general are not equipped storage wise as well as they should be. And because of this at the end of the year I go through alllllllll the cabinets and drawers and It's like Christmas for my students. YOU GET A HIGHLIGHTER, YOU GET THESE SMELLY STICKERS, YOU GET THIS ONE LEFT OVER WRITING JOURNAL! And they LOVE it. Things still go to a good home, they get loved and used, and my classroom is purged. I also do this to the walls. Anything that I know that was not purposeful I take down to really rethink for the next year. This year it was my wall space for circle maps on my ELA wall. It looks nice when admin walks in, they can see al the circle maps we've been working on for phonics and writing but my students and I NEVER went back to reference them and they are huge. So... bye! PURGE. The reason that this is so helpful to my back to school self is because I always forget, without a doubt, how much STUFF comes at back to school. All the grade level duplicating? BOOM delivered, every single student consumable? Find a spot for it! And it all converges at once. Having purged at the end of they year makes my stress level go down because I immediately have spots for ALL. THE. THINGS. yay.

Label and Organize your Storage.

Ok this sounds like a no brainer. And it is? But I know so many people that don't do it. In fact my little sister just moved to her new school in her new classroom and the teacher before her just... left everything. She's having to go through it because all of it is just everywhere and not labeled. NOW THIS DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO BE TYPE A! I am type A 1/2. I have a type A heart but now that I am a Mom I lean towards B and it hurts a little. But... every year I know exactly where ALL of my Kindergarten centers are for each month because one year I took the time to label so I can immediately pull them out again when we come back, and ALL of my walls are neatly packed away in their own bin since we normally have to take our walls down. My Math Wall all goes in the Math Wall bin and if I had bulletin letters up too, they go in a ziplock into the bin with everything else. My bulletin bins I got from Costco! And my center bins are from Target and Amazon. No big surprise there. I think I've gotten all of these my first two years teaching, and 8 years later they are still golden. Sterilite is the bee's knees.

Clean the things.

I hate this one but it always saves me. The things I want to last and save money on I take home to scrub. This normally includes my table baskets, turn it in tubs, scissors, sterilite drawers, etc. When you teach Kindergarten you have to be prepared for some casualties. You are the baseline for them learning how to be in school (a lot of the time anyway) so that means they are learning how to properly use things, and how to be a big kid. And learning is messy. Therefore sometimes you need to scrub crayon markings off your things. But that's normal, at least for Kindergarten. You don't want to start the year off with a fresh class with last years doodles on your things.

Photograph

Ok I learned the hard way with this one. I had some rockstar years where I was STOKED about my room layout and the functionality of what I did worked so well. I specifically remember thinking, "Oh man this is great surely I would NEVER forget exactly how I did X, Y, Z!" Nope, nope, nope! After summer break you forget your computer password, there's no way you'll remember exactly how you had things set up. So shocker, I only remembered the gist. Just take a photo at the end of the year and do yourself a favor.

Decorate a bit NOW.

Alright this one is hit or miss, and I can already feel the daggers you're giving but I did it last year and this year and I was very grateful so I'm throwing it out there. I knew that I was so over some of my classroom decor/posters by the end of the year and wanted a specific this or that. So, I went ahead and made the change before school got out. Last year I redid my SEL and Writing wall decor/posters. This year I did my alphabet and my number posters and I'm really grateful I did because then as soon as I go back to school I was excited to already have something done and it made me immediately happy to look at. The biggest thing with this is your summer school situation. Be aware of what is happening at your school site before you waste your time. For example, one year we had special education pre-k summer school in our wing and they were down aides. The teacher just didn't have the capacity and so I came back in August to my borders re-decorated (lol its funny now that it's done). I'd be a dumb-dumb to put something brand new and precious up that year when I knew that we were having summer school and I knew someone would be using my room. But now this year I'm so excited because my alphabet and number posters are already up and won't have to worry about it come Fall.