Transition notebook – Leaving a classroom and school in good shape!

Hey everyone!

Here is how the end of the school year feels to me!!!!

We are all facing the end of year rush and this year because I am changing schools I get to not only inherit someone else’s work when I go to my new school, but I also get to leave behind a music program for someone else to step into.

The last time I left a school, I also left a teaching partner with whom I had essentially shared a brain, so I didn’t have to remember where the mallets were, or which key went to which cabinet because my former co-teacher already knew all of the things a new teacher would need to know.

In the situation I am currently leaving,  even though I’m not teaching music alone, as the all day teacher who doesn’t have to juggle multiple campuses I have become the keeper of information……

So I am starting a “need to know” book that I will leave behind for the teacher who follows me.

The purpose of this book is purely informational.  I want to include the information that I keep in my brain about what I do that the principal, my teaching partner or the school secretary might not remember.  I want to aide the new teacher in their transition so that as they claim their new classroom and make it their own, they can do so with enough knowledge of what went on before to make their job easier.

Additionally, this notebook will keep me on task as I create it and will help me ensure that I don’t leave anything in a mess, undone, or un-findable.
1. Have a remembered to go into the costume closet and organize it nicely while removing personal items and returning borrowed ones?
2. Have I “summarized” the piano lab in such a way so that someone else won’t spend hours untangling a mess of cords?

Here are some of the things that I will include in my notebook.

I’m hoping that some of you who have moved recently will be so kind as to leave a comment with a suggestion.  When I get a book together that I like I’ll pretty it up and create a free downloadable for everyone to have.

Instruction

1. District curriculum CD – Hard copy is in the classroom library
2. List of performances that each grade level has participated in (including songs)
3. Rhythm systems(ta titi, da da….) that students are accustomed to…..
4. Melodic systems (fixed or movable do, or numbers)
5. grade levels who have used recorder – method book
6. A brief explanation of what my students covered and where I think there might be holes.

Management – STUFF

1. This may be on a CD with important documents
2. Equipment – (where are my manuals?) This list may be important if things are moved over the summer
3. costumes, uniforms, and choir shirts – how many?  .jpeg in case there needs to be more ordered.
4. vendor list
5. Money – what we have, how to use it, how to make it grow
6. What has been ordered for the fall

Resources –

1. Textbook series with resources – most important if these things are moved
2. Magazine subscriptions (Music Express, Music K-8, Activate ) – with the volume
3. Donorschoose.org list of projects

Tips and tricks –

1. Is there a special way to open that cabinet?
2. Is there something hidden somewhere else on campus like a CD burner in the library?
3. pictures of possible room set up – My room is the place where ALL of the furniture in our pod ends up when they wax the floors in July, so providing a furniture list with pictures might be handy.
4. Setting up the DVD player so it will play on the activeboard……
5. What items need attention – I can put a work order in for everything before I go, but it would be great for the new teacher to know what should have been fixed so that if it hasn’t been addressed, he or she can address it in the fall.

Who to call

1. If you need to know who the volunteers are
2. If you need a parent to go on a field trip
3. If you need an accompanist
4. If you need another music teacher

Special projects

1. Upcoming grant initiatives
2. Campus events – planning (i.e. Carnival)
3. After School program

Here is the sad part…. I haven’t created ANY of this yet….. but NOW I have an outline and I have a notebook with pockets so I can at least start making a pile of things to go into my “need to know” notebook.