Guess what teachers? We're teaming up with BERTEAU & Co. again this year!
BERTEAU & Co. is a small family-owned business, so their inventory is limited. If you want one of these teacher planners, you will want to order ASAP!
Pre-Orders are now OPEN!
SAVE $5 with coupon GERRY
For more info on what you will find inside of the planner, B&Co has provided a full description below.
As a teacher, you know the value and life-saving qualities that a good planner holds. A teacher’s planner can effectively organize everything from lesson plans to loose memos and handouts from staff meetings to attendance and grade charts. Another thing teachers know to be true is that details matter! The 2021 Teacher Planner by BERTEAU & Co. has overlooked no detail! In this article, you will find a thorough description of this year’s teacher planner.
Size
This year’s planner is just slightly larger than last year’s and that is for a very specific and practical reason. One thing we heard often was that you wanted to be able to fit a standard sheet of printer paper in the pocket of the planner without the top of it sticking out. We heard you, and made the change this year!
Cover
This year's cover has Gerry Brooks' signature quote “Suriously Derdecated Erducator.” Written in the quintessential skinny font with a blue background and classic school days clip art surrounding the words! It probably goes without saying but this is every derdecated erducator’s ideal planner cover … suriously!
Stickers
It’s well-known in education that students, no matter the age or grade level, will in fact go crazy for a sticker. Perhaps less well-known is that teachers will also go a little crazy for a cute and functional sticker to dress up planner pages. As such, this planner has been upgraded from a mere two pages of stickers it has had in years past, to a whopping five pages this year!
Page one is full of colorful banner stickers that are blank so that you can write on them or use them to flag reminders or dates. Page two is full of holiday and personalize-able birthday stickers – enough for a whole class roster! Page three is all about the decorations with fun and cute stickers of varying sizes to dress up even those long full weeks with no half days and no days off. Page four is more banner stickers that are very teacher-specific. There are banners to denote conferences, school breaks, observations, staff development, and more! Finally, on page five, more teacher-specific banners to denote IEP meetings, PLC meetings, 504 meetings, teacher in-service days, team meetings, and more!
Teacher Section
The first section of the planner is sort of a catch-all as you set up your year.
It begins with a page to write your Daily Schedule for the year. On the back of that page is a section at the top for Specials Schedules, and a larger section at the bottom to record your Early Release Schedule in case it differs at all from the daily bell schedule. The next page is a School Directory with Safety Procedures on the back. Following that is a page for Substitute Info for when you find that somewhat rare treasure of a high quality substitute and you want to be able to contact them directly so that your days off don’t lead to a greater amount of stress for you as you worry about what your class is getting away with while you’re not there. On the back of this page is a page to record Class Volunteers – we made this a full page because we want everyone who uses our planners to be blessed with an abundance of volunteers next year…we truly want this for you so we had to manifest it for you in the planner! Next to this is a page for Field Trip Info.
On the back of this is a space to record all of your passwords for the seemingly endless toolkit of online educational resources that teachers use nowadays. Next is a beautiful page to roster up to 40 students. We truly do not want this for you, but we recognize that it is a reality for many teachers that their classes are larger than 30 no matter what we manifest, so we wanted to build this functionality in to keep you neat and organized. Each line of student info is not only numbered, but is a different color, making organization a visual dream!
Student Section
Right after the gorgeous page to color code your student info is a whole section to organize other necessary information about them, starting with the double page birthday spread. Each month is given a box so that you can record your kids’ b-days chronologically by month.
Following that is the same Transportation page as last year’s planner followed by the ever-important Allergy and Medical Info page.
The next spread is for Seating Charts. These pages provide graph paper for teachers to be able to orient and plan their rooms accurately. This year’s planner has two Seating Chart spreads for a total of four pages for seating charts, just in case you want to plan for multiple layouts depending on the class activity, time of year, different classes, etc.!
Following the Seating Charts are four pages for Student Passwords for the websites that you use most in your class routine. There are 10 students per page and the color coding is continued, as is the numbering of each student so that teachers can have that continuity throughout the planner.
Next is a place for basic information about each of your 40 students beyond just name, so that you can record best contact information, etc.
Parent Section
This section begins with three pages for Conference Scheduling to use throughout the year, and the rest is comprised of Parent Teacher Conference Logs. We've redesigned this section to allow for more space to write notes from the conferences! This year we put two log sections per page rather than three so that teachers don’t have to abbreviate as much while writing during and after those critical conversations!
Data Section
This used to be called our Checklist section, but we renamed it this year because there are more than just checklists here. While there are 12 checklist/grading two-page spreads, there are also pages in this section for Assessment Data as teachers track student progress and growth throughout the year.
One thing to note in this section is that the numbering of student names becomes really useful in this particular section. The numbers for each student not only precede each student name, but also appear at the end (on the right side of the second page in the spread) of each student’s row. This is ideal for those times when your planner is open to a single right-side grade page where student names are no longer visible. Having the corresponding numbers visible on the edge of this page suddenly makes grading on this page easier and less prone to mistakes since you can follow the row right to the number and ensure the grade is recorded in the correct spot without having to open the planner to the spread and follow the row back to the student name.
Calendar Month Sections
BERTEAU & Co. is so excited to announce that we have re-designed our monthly landing pages to be more functional! While we have always had a landing page that allows you to take notes at the beginning of a new month, this year we have added to this. At the top of our monthly landing pages we now have a section for Tasks and a section for Goals above our note-taking boxes. We decided to make these additions to encourage increased mindfulness with each new month … and because we know how difficult it is to remember to take attendance every day and we wanted to give you a place to record and check off this task at the beginning of every month!
Our monthly calendars are already dated this year – woohoo! According to our social media votes, our planner users like thinner and bigger numbers, so that is what we gave you! We have also separated Saturday and Sunday this year and each week begins on a Sunday. On the right side next to the calendar are thin boxes for your top 5 monthly priorities and a to-do list.
Following the calendar spread is a 2-page note spread which is great for meeting notes!
Our lesson planning pages this year also got a much-needed, and we believe, much-appreciated facelift! Previously, these pages were set up with the days of the week going vertical down the side of the page, which left the top for subjects. However, this year we left the decision up to the user – something that we had been asked for repeatedly and struggled with finding an effective layout for. We left the boxes pretty much blank so that each teacher can decide if they want to plan vertically or horizontally. There are 5 lesson planning pages per month.
Notes Section
There’s not much to say for a notes section, especially to teachers who know and appreciate the art of note-taking … and doodling during any of the various meetings that take place throughout the course of the year.
Brand new in this section this year is a clear zipper pouch! This is perfect for post-its, more stickers, writing utensils, etc.!
Also in this section is a double-sided pocket folder that now fits a standard piece of printer paper.
Last but not least is a clear page protector for either 1) your Teacher of the Month award or 2) a page that you want to turn into a mobile dry erase board, and a sweet quote on the back cover that we think inspires the right type of ambition for this profession, “Wherever you go, go with your heart!”
We firmly believe that this is the best version of the planner that we have ever come out with and we cannot wait for you to get your hands on one!