Before you head out the door and lock up that classroom for a few weeks of well deserved rejuvenation, schedule a day to take inventory of your supplies and make a list of what you could use for next year. You may even have some eager students who would love to spend an afternoon helping you sort materials and create a wish list. This can be a fun opportunity for you to mentally and physically de-clutter while involving your students!

Take Inventory: In less than an hour you can quickly run through the materials in your class (or have a student do this) to make a list of the supplies you have in stock. Lab teachers – you may need a little more time to catalogue your lab equipment, but I promise the investment will be worthwhile! Once you have a list, have your student helper transfer the information onto an electronic document for use next year. Check out this template for quick and easy organization.  See last weeks’ “Purge and Plan” for more detailed ideas!

“I Need”: Create your “I Need” list first. This list would include supplies necessary for your class to function next year. You may need more paper, scissors, pens or pencils, glue sticks, etc. Think of this as your bare essentials to allow students to complete tasks in your classroom.

“I Want”: Now it is time to capture down your fun wish list! What would you love to have, that would enhance your learning environment? The list can include small, consumable products such as magazines and craft supplies, AV resources such as DVD series, equipment or projectors, or maybe even large equipment such as desks, file cabinets, or bookshelves.  Prioritize your “I Want” list and brainstorm possible ways to acquire these resources.

“I Could Part With”: Take inventory of what you have and quickly list any equipment, materials, or resources you do not use and could part with. This will help you use your space efficiently, and these items may become great bargaining pieces to trade for something on your want list!

Share: Share your list with your students, and email out to staff or post in the staff room at school. Who knows, maybe a teacher across campus has a bookshelf they would like to trade for that extra file cabinet you have. Or maybe a parent has the past 10 years worth of National Geographic magazines and would love to donate them to your class!

Ask anyone what is the greatest challenge our nation is facing right now, and money woes will be a common response. Students today are bombarded with words like “Recession” “Foreclosure” “Bankruptcy” and “Bail-out”. Many students have felt the frustration of our tumultuous financial times close to home, with parents losing jobs and families losing homes. What can we do as teachers to help our students combat these challenges in the future? We can teach financial responsibility. We would be hard pressed to find a more relevant issue for students right now. Sound financial management practices can empower students to go to college without leaving four years later in debt, establish good credit, avoid dangerous money traps, buy a car, buy a home…the list is endless!

Regardless of the content area you teach, you can weave in financial management concepts to teach students an important life skill. Take budgeting for example. I taught all of my freshmen and sophomores how to create a budget. But when I introduced the lesson the first day, most students had no idea what a budget even was! I realized that if I didn’t teach it, students may never learn how to manage their finances. If you teach English, have students select a character from a novel and create a budget for that character given their employment, time period, and way of life. If you teach mechanics, drafting, or auto-shop, students can create a practical budget for a class project. Teach science? Have students create a budget for all classes to complete a fun new lab with several lab supplies. Don’t leave financial management solely to the math teachers! We must infuse these valuable lessons in our curriculum if we want to mold financially responsible young men and women!

“Money Math , Lessons for Life” (2008,The Curators of the University of Missouri) is a practical set of lesson plans made possible by the US Department of Treasury and other sponsors. Titles like “The Secret to Becoming a Millionaire” and “Wallpaper Woes” invite students to learn and apply responsible money management practices in a practical setting.  The four lessons provided would be easy to integrate into your classroom while giving your students tools that are desperately needed in our nation right now! Your students may even be able to take these lessons home to help educate parents on sound financial practices. Take a few minutes to check out this FREE RESOURCE, and take time to teach your students why money matters.

We strive to build leadership in our students. Regardless of our content areas, we hope that students will leave our class having developed leadership skills which will help them in the real world. There are great strategies and techniques for instilling specific leadership in students, but let’s back up and take a look at the big picture. You can instill leadership in your students simply by setting clear and high expectations.

We set more expectations than we may realize. General behavior, performance on class assignments, how students treat each other, arriving to class on time, and responsibility for missed work are just a few. We set expectations by what we allow in our classroom. Regardless of what we have posted, our actions speak the loudest!

So make your expectations clear and set the bar high. As we approach the end of the year, it is likely that you may not have reviewed expectations since August! Take a few minutes to revisit your expectations, clarify those that you may not have previously enforced, and make copies of specific expectations for students to keep in their binder.

Reality Check - How do your students view your expectations? What do they think you expect them? Ask. Take 5 minutes at the end of class today and ask students to jot down on a piece of paper the top 3 expectations you have of them. Collect these and find out what expectations your students have a clear expectation of, and what expectations you might need to clarify!