Meet the Teacher or “Back to School Night” is an incredible opportunity for teachers to establish positive relationships with students and their families which will set them up for success for a great school year.
The problem I always ran into as a teacher was how to keep everything organized so that I could present myself in a professional manner to parents.
Every time I turned around, I felt like I was given another form that parents needed to fill out or something else I was supposed to be sent home.
From office paperwork, Free and Reduced Lunch forms, PTO sign ups and not to mention all of the things specific to MY classroom that I wanted to send home, I simply had to find a way to keep it all straight!
In this post, I'll go over the super easy (and cute) system of a Meet the Teacher folder that I used to keep everything organized!
What is a Meet the Teacher Folder?
If your school is anything like mine, you send home way TOO MANY papers home on Meet the Teacher night for parents to sign and return to school.
To manage the paperwork, I started using a Meet the Teacher folder to help parents identify what needed to be filled out that night, what could be returned on Monday and what information could be left at home.
To do this for your own classroom, you will first have to brainstorm what categories of labels you will need.
I used three categories:
- Complete Tonight
- Complete and Return on Monday (the 1st Day of School)
- Leave at Home
To brainstorm what resources you need in your folder, there are two categories of materials that you need to think about:
- Information to Provide to Parents/Families
- Information to Collect from Parents/Families
Within these two categories, begin making a list of things that your school/front office will be providing and collecting.
Then, make your own list of things that you plan to provide/collect from families on Meet the Teacher Night.
Once you have fully brainstormed your list, you are ready to make your categories for Meet the Teacher labels.
I highly suggest sticking to 2-3 categories if at all possible, just to keep things simple for families.
Logistics Note about the Meet the Teacher Folder:
For items that had to be “Completed Tonight”, I paper clipped the label to those forms and had them sitting on the students desk with a pen ready. For the other items, I had them on the left or right side of the folder, with the labels taped on. Another tip: things to be “left” at home should be on the “LEFT” side of the folder!
Meet The Teacher - Contact Magnet
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Meet the Teacher - Class Party Sign Ups
If you are a classroom teacher, another piece of information that you might consider collecting from parents at Meet the Teacher night is their interest in helping with Class Parties or being a “Room Mom”. (If your school doesn't do this, just keep scrolling).
At my school, the room parent is the guardian angel that organizes ALL class parties! (Seriously, they earn their wings!) I use this form to collect the information that I need, and the information that the room parent will need from parents who want to supply food and favors for the class parties.
Meet the Teacher - Transportation Tags
The campus I work at it 1st-3rd grades. Students are not allowed to walk to and from campus, so we only have two modes of transportation: car pick up or bus rider.
At the beginning of every year, I make a tag and attach it to my students backpacks. I've tried several different things in the past.
This year, I chose to go with a simpler design that allows for more flexibility. I will put the student's name at the top, then write their mode of transportation in the blank space. I needed more flexibility because there are now three different porches a student can be picked up on and I want to be able to right their porch number, etc.
I used a dry erase in the example, but I plan to use a sharpie (which can still be erased with a Magic Eraser). I'm still trying to decide if I want them to hang vertically or horizontally from backpacks.
More Back to School Favorites:
