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STRATEGY
Set Up Your File Cabinet
You will need to set up a filing system for the paperwork you will deal with each day.
If you have a system in place before the term begins, you will save yourself much frustration and time later.
Setting up a file cabinet is not a difficult task, but it does require planning and effort.
- Once you have a file cabinet, clean it out and lubricate any stuck drawers.
- Go searching or shopping for file folders.
Begin your search by letting it be known that you can use any folders that anyone in your building is about to toss out.
- If your school has alotted money for you to spend on supplies, be sure to spend some of it for materials for your file cabinet.
Purchase hanging file frames and hanging file folders for as many drawers as your budget permits.
In addition to hanging files, you will need folders, labels, and permanent markers.
- Set aside one file drawer for student business.
Here you will keep documentation, student information, progress reports, report cards, copies of parent correspondence, and other paperwork related to students.
You should be able to lock this drawer in order to protect confidential records.
- Set aside another file drawer for general business.
Here you will store your folder with information for substitutes, detention forms, and other general paperwork such as memos from the office.
- In the other drawers, file material such as unit plans, handouts, tests, and paperwork related to your curriculum in alphabetical order.
- After you have completed the basic steps in setting up your file system, the following refinements will make your system much more efficient and easy to use:
- Label the front of each drawer in large, bold letters so that you can tell at a glance what is inside.
- Neatness counts! File material according to subject, in alphabetical order. Make a special effort to maintain orderly files.
- Label everything.
If you can color-code your labels, it will be even easier to find what you need quickly.
Even if you cannot color-code the entire file, use a colored dot on the tab to help you group like files together.
- Stagger the tabbed labels on hanging files and the file folders within them so that you can see what is in the file drawer at a glance.
- Do not stuff a file drawer so full that it is almost impossible to move files around.
Excerpted from Section Four, "Organize Your Way to a Great Beginning," of The First-Year Teacher's Survival Guide, by Julia G. Thompson. Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Thank you, Julia G. Thompson and Jossey Bass, for contributing this month's strategies!
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