I recently had the opportunity to peek inside my 6th grader’s locker. Holy disaster! He agreed to take everything home and let me evaluate the situation. Once home, I found six notebooks that had been barely used, with back covers torn in half or completely off, spiral binding in tatters. The folders were being used well for some classes, not at all for others. I quickly realized that the school’s recommendation to use one notebook and one folder per class was not working for him. I helped him weed through papers. We tossed a bunch and stored another chunk at home in an “old school papers” folder to hang onto until the end of the quarter. We pulled out the few notebook pages that were important and set those aside.
A new system was formed: One 2″ binder, separated by slash-pocket dividers labeled by subject, inserted into the binder in the order of his day. Necessary handouts were put into the corresponding divider pocket. (We stuck with his old color coding system such as green for science, red for math.) Behind each divider, we added the keeper note pages from his old notebooks into the 3-ring binder and added small stacks of loose-leaf paper to each section for future note-taking.
In the end, this is what we created: Everything he needs for his entire day, in one binder. (We ended up keeping just one folder for his Spanish class, because that teacher gives lots of handouts that wouldn’t fit in the pocket divider.)
He’s giving it a try starting tomorrow. I’m crossing my fingers that this system is a better fit for him. We will be doing a weekly peek to toss unnecessary papers to keep the binder a manageable size.
If you have kids struggling with disorganization, it’s worth your while to look at the current system and try to find another solution. Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all organizing remedy for anyone! Feel free to contact me for more student organization tips!
