Seven Hour Setup

Last summer I had major surgery at the end of July, and I had some pretty significant restrictions. In order to get my classroom set up for the beginning of the year, I had one work day prior to surgery to get ready. Needless to say I was a little panicked about the whole situation.

As I listened to the Chalk Full of Life podcast (unfortunately no longer running), I was intrigued by an idea I heard. Stop planning to do lists and starting planning your time. The basic premise is that you block out the time you want to spend doing something, and at the end of that time, whether you are finished or not, you move on to the next task.

At a loss as to how I was going to set up my classroom in just one day, I figured this was as good of a strategy as any and decided to give it a try. Much to my delight, it worked! I was able to finish everything that was available to me in one day.

One year later I decided to try it again, this time with all of the regular distractions of "back to school week" and lots of people in the building.  Surprisingly, it worked for me again.

Because I found so much success with it, I thought I would share my plan with you. You can find the document here, and I've shared some notes and explanations below.

• Hour 1 - I still have my own personal space. While I don't sit at my desk very often, it's my place where I start and end each day. It's also where I hold individual conferences. The kids also love sitting at or under my desk for independent work, so this has become an important spot in the room.
• Hour 2 - We're required to take most items down or put most items away for summer cleaning. This may not be something you need to do, so this could be a spot where you'll save some time.
• Hour 3 - We place our beginning of the year supply order in May for delivery over the summer. We are extremely lucky to have almost all of our supplies available, so it takes some time to unpack and organize the materials. 
• Hour 4 - This hour bleeds together with Hour 3. Often times as I'm unpacking supplies I'm also starting to pass out student materials, so the two hours mix together.
• Hour 5 - I have a creation station in my classroom with foldable bins holding toilet paper tubes, my scrap paper, colored cellophane, straws, acorns..... all kinds of materials. While my students help clean this up at the end of the year, I like to go through the bins to make sure everything is usable.
• Hour 6 / 7 - You'll see this starts with, "Finish anything that wasn't finished in any other hour," and that's pretty much how I completed my tasks today. I'm mostly concerned with getting the physical room setup completed, so if I need to push off the copies and tech tasks I'm okay with that.
• And the most important part: I put a very polite sign on my door that read, "Welcome back - would love to say hello. Please stop back and say hi when my door is open." People were very respectful of my wishes, and it definitely helped me get a lot done.

Obviously, my classroom is very different from every other room, so I know you'll have to make changes to this plan to fit your classroom. It's my hope that you'll find this to be some help as you are setting up your classroom so that you can reduce some beginning of the year stress.