Hey Friends! 💜 Exciting news! 🎉

Each Tuesday I am going to be posting a teacher tip to help you stay organized, accountable, and maybe even teach you something new!

Today's teacher tip is simple and oh so effective! ✔️

Raise your hand if you have ever agreed to something or were told something and you said to yourself, "I don't need to put that on my calendar, I'll remember." ...Only to have forgotten and ended up having to scramble to fit it in or make it work? 🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️

Yeah. Same. 🙈

I have been there way too many times to count!

(Plus, that is also how I ended up at the dentist a day early... whoops!)

Whether you're into a good old fashion paper calendar or a digital calendar, make it a habit to start using it! Currently, I use both. We have a calendar on our fridge that we put important things such as weddings and appointments, but I also use a Google Calendar to stay organized with my meetings for work, when bills are due, and every other random thing I know I am going to forget (such as canceling a free trial before I get charged, haha. Yes I am the queen of signing up for freebies!)

Although I think paper calendars are great, I am a true believer in digital calendars. For me, my favorite part about Google Calendar is that it is shareable! When my husband and I were first dating, he was (and still is) always asking me when various events were happening, which mornings I had to be at school early for meetings, when I was going out of town, etc. Yes, I love him to pieces, but there are only so many times you can remind someone that you have to be at work early every.single.Thursday.no.matter.what. So instead, anytime he would ask me about when something was, I would say, “Did you check the Google Calendar?” “Feel free to check the Google Calendar.” Was my husband annoyed that I always made him look it up before telling him? F O R S U R E. Did he eventually start checking the Google Calendar before asking? You betch’ya!

Another reason I love digital calendars is that they are with you wherever you go. For me, when I go to the dentist, the hygienist always schedules out my next two or three appointments. The biggest reason she does this is that she knows that as a teacher, I can’t just leave in the middle of the day for an appointment, so she likes to give me priority over dates and times. Whenever we do this, I always open up my Google Calendar. Being able to visually see the dates and commitments I have already signed up for, helps me choose a better date instead of having to call and reschedule. We all know those busy times of the school year; back to school, conferences, homecoming week, music performances, and so on. By looking at my calendar I can easily eliminate dates that I know won’t work and pick something that hopefully will.

The biggest reason I love digital calendars though is because you can set them to give you notifications of events and you can even decide when you would like to be notified. I think we can all agree that we have forgotten about a last-minute IEP or staff meeting, but at least if it is on a digital calendar, you will have a better chance of remembering because you will get a notification. Whereas, unless your paper calendar is magic, you will not be receiving a text alert about your events whether you wrote them down or not.

So my point is, whether you think an item is insignificant or “that you won’t forget,” take the extra 10 seconds to add it to your calendar. Not only will you feel more organized and prepared, but you will also have a better chance of not forgetting even those little things, such as, when the next season of your favorite show on Netflix is being released. We all know those are dates we definitely do not want to make prior commitments for.

If you have any questions about using a digital calendar, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram! I would love to chat and help you in any way that I can!

Happy planning!

-Kayla

Teacher Tip Tuesday #1 Put it on Your Calendar!