I Could Not Be a Teacher Without Sticky Notes

Sticky notes are my lifeline.

A lot of my cohort was at the edTPA
Boot Camp that we had this week, so
before we started working, we had
to document our mini-reunion.

My cooperating teacher has started to notice that as the stack of student papers grows on my desk, so does my stacks upon stacks of sticky notes reminding me that so-and-so needs to take Vocab Test 1 & 2, and that so-and-so has not yet turned in their concept map, and that we need to work on such-and-such skills before this-or-that paper is due.

And then there’s my stack of edTPA centered sticky notes. These ones are reminding me that I need to go back and proof-read Task 1, that I need to grade my students assessments so I can complete that portion of the edTPA, and that I need to finish deciding which video clips I want to use.

I have sticky notes everywhere. On my binders, on my notebooks, on my students notebooks, on my students work, on my students notebooks, on my gradebook, on my lesson plans, on my desk, and even on the edge of my keyboard. The desktop on my laptop screen is even covered with virtual sticky notes. And don’t even get me started on the sticky notes hanging in my room.

Sticky notes are keeping my student teaching world stitched together -- somehow. What may seem like a chaotic system of disorganization becomes an ordered system that is quite effective for me.

Without my mountains of sticky notes, I don’t know where I’d be. I’ve already gone through three packs of sticky notes since school started.

I even give my students sticky notes to practice their vocab words.

This week, I had a day off to work on my edTPA, and I attended an event on campus called edTPA Boot Camp. On my walk there in the morning, I realized that I forgot two essentials: my nice headphones (unfortunately I had my old and broken ones) and sticky notes.

Despite already being on campus, I considered walking the mile back to my apartment just to get sticky notes.

I didn’t make the trek, but I definitely would have appreciated having my sticky notes during the edTPA Boot Camp, as they would have been nice to make small notes on about what I had done, what I hadn’t done, and what I still needed to do.

Needless to say, I don’t know how I would be a teacher without sticky notes.