One of our favourite things to do is to have a look through our TPTC Planner Inspiration Facebook group (you can join it here!) and seeing all the amazing things you’ve done with your planners. So since the new school year is coming up soon, I asked to take a peek inside your planners and see how you’ve got them ready and set up for the new term! There were so many amazing photos, I wish I could share them all, but for this post I’ve collected a few of my favourite ways to set up a teacher planner for a new school year…
Set up a swatch page
The only thing as exciting as planners to a stationery lover is PENS. We know lots of you use a range of pens in your planner, whether you’re artistic and like to illustrate your weekly spreads or whether you just like to brighten things up by writing with different colours and colour coding. We love this idea to turn one of the pages into a pen swatch page, where you have a little sample of each of your pens so you can easily see their true colour, as it’s not always clear just by looking at the pen. Then you can always take a look at your pen swatch page and pick the one that suits what you’re doing. This TPTC group member used one of her August weekly pages for her pen test, since it’s during the school holidays, but you can use any page you won’t use or one of the note pages for your pen swatches.
Lay out your schedule
Anything you can do ahead of time means that you’ll save time during term and just be able to dive in and use your planner, and actually laying out your schedule is a great timesaver. We love how this TPTC group member has marked out what she’s doing and when, which class she’s with, and even colour coded her classes to she can easily see at a glance what her day is like. This is such a great starting point – when she begins the week, she can quickly see what her timetable looks like and use that as a basis for adding any other tasks and things she needs to do that week, whether they get added to the timetable or popped onto the To Do list.
Add a positive vibe
Of course, we’re all about positivity here at The POSITIVE Teacher Company! So we love this idea to decorate each monthly spread with a positive quote or affirmation. We’re big believers that little things like pretty stationery, positive quotes, and fun décor can really help get you through a period of heavy workload. This group member also has a month that says ‘don’t forget to practice self care’ which is another great reminder to have, especially when things get busy. Use Pinterest to look for quotes and affirmations that resonate with you – what are you going to want to hear when you need a boost? Pop it in a prominent spot in your planner and you’ll thank yourself later!
Use all the stickers
There are so many great planner stickers out there; we make our own range, you can get some lovely ones on Etsy, and lots of you make your own! We know many of you have a Cricut or similar to make your own stickers, but it’s also easy to make stickers yourself if you don’t have one of those machines. Especially simple square or rectangle stickers, just print onto sticker paper and cut out with scissors. We always love seeing the creative ways you use stickers to organise your tasks and schedule. We love that this TPTC group member has different stickers for each class, so she can really quickly plan out what’s happening and when by just popping the right sticker into the right period box. There are also stickers for meetings and different tasks like break duty which are super helpful!
November spread by Nina Lucas
Decorate the whole thing!
We know lots of you enjoy decorating your planner – of course, the planner is designed to be a helpful day to day tool, but there’s no reason why you can’t also enjoy it and even use it as a creative outlet. We love seeing how many of you spend your time off during the summer decorating the planner, and some of you even decorate the entire thing ready to use! This is great if you want to decorate your planner but you won’t have time during the term. A great way to generate ideas to decorate the whole thing is to use themes. You can use our themed plan with me packs, or use the time of year for inspiration. We love these planner pages with their autumnal and Valentines themes! We'd love to see yours too - click here to join our TPTC Planner Inspiration Facebook group!
