Oh, Baby! Creating a Maternity Binder

For the past couple of days I have been talking about how to prepare for maternity leave. I will be leaving for my second maternity leave at the end of September and I am kind of freaking out that it will still be back to school season. As soon as summer began, I dove into creating a maternity binder to help me feel more organized and ready for my leave.

When I sat down to create my binder, I had to think about some things first. This will probably be different for every teacher.

I considered:

-What do I have to do? What does my district and principal require from teachers going on leave. How long do I have to plan for? What do I need to do concerning grades and report cards.

-What do I want to do? Some teachers are comfortable leaving the minimum amount of plans they are required to, this was not me last time. I left plans for my entire six weeks (vs. the two I was required to), because I'm crazy. I'm thinking I might plan for my entire leave again this time, just because we are departmentalizing and I will be responsible for another teacher's reading class,

-What can I count on my team for? My teaching partner is amazing! She teaches math, I teach reading, and we teach our own classes social studies and science. Luckily, I have plans for all my SS/science units from years past, but I know I can count on her to fill in any gaps.

-How do I want to plan? I decided that I would rather leave digital plans than hard copies. I will have all plans from last year organized and accessible to the sub, but I will be using planbook.com as the primary way I plan. I just got into planbook and I love it! You can attach documents, links, and pictures. I love that my sub, teaching partner, and I can all access the plans and that it will be a living document throughout my leave.

-What do I want to include in my maternity leave binder? Here are some things I settled on:

• Morning and Afternoon Routines
• Other Class Procedures and Routines
• Class Job descriptions and how it works
• Bus List
• Push-In/Pull-Out List
• Daily Schedule/Encore Schedule
• Homework Calendars
• Pre-made monthly newsletter
• Spelling Lists
• Emergency Procedures
• Parent Contact Info
• Where to find things in my room
• Where to put things in my room
• Pacing Guides/Unit Test Schedule
• How to do Guided Reading/Math

I ended up making the binder into an editable PowerPoint file that I posted in my TPT Store.

Check it out if you're interested.

***4TH OF JULY SALE*** UPDATE: My entire store is on sale for July 4th and 5th! ***

I hope this series about prepping for leave helped calm at least one teacher's nerves. I would love to hear tips and tricks from your maternity leave, please comment below.

---Preparing Students and Firming Routines
---Organizing Your Room for a Sub