I was never an organized child. I wouldn't say I was always late, because my parents had us go everywhere 30 minutes early. I wouldn't say I was a slob, because my room was somewhat presentable, and I didn't have moldy orange juice cups scattered around my room like my brother did. I wouldn't say I was scatter-brained....well, ok, that one, I would, and still will say that about myself.
I don't think I learned the importance of being organized until I bought a house at 29. I had lived on my own in college, but moved back home to start taking chunks out of my student loan debt (45 payments to go and counting!). And even then, I wasn't particularly organized. It really happened after my boyfriend and I started having more of our lives and finances combined that the need to organize finally struck its chord of importance with me. Yes, he could keep track of his own stuff, but we both started becoming aware of what the other needed to do, and it became a co-organization effort from both of us. Even now, looking around our house at the constant organization in progress, it drives me to keep making things more organized. I thought I liked chaos, but apparently, I don't. :)
I felt like I had a decent approach to keeping myself organized at work, but it seemed like I'd fall apart every year, at least 2-3 times a year, about having "so much to do and no time to do it" and being "so far behind that I have to take work home." I hate both of those things, and I started working to do things to help myself with it. I've gotten close, because I don't know that I freaked about about being overwhelmed at all this past year (double-checking with my boyfriend, he confirms it was a calm year). I brought work home twice, both times because a special ed teacher "forgot" until 3:55 PM on a Friday that we had an IEP meeting scheduled on Monday at 9AM. Out of my control, but still had to get done.
Reading through any /slp Reddit or Speech forum, there are tons and tons of posts, especially from newer SLPs, about feeling overwhelmed. Too much paperwork. No plan time. Progress notes take forever. Don't know if they're making progress. Can't keep track of evaluations. Missed a deadline. I'd also heard these over the past two years from a colleague I was charged with mentoring - a very talented young SLP with a passion to work with students and a drive to help them succeed. During our first year, I harped on the importance of staying organized, and had shared all of my materials that I use to stay organized. Not every material works for every person, but these are ideas that help me, a person with decades (ugh) of experience - so learn from my mistakes and start your career on a better foot than I did. During this person's second year, they unfortunately got very far behind on paperwork, to the point that our supervisor asked me to mentor them again for the second half of the year. It turned out that this person hadn't followed through on an organizational routine as I had stressed about and suggested/presented during our first year into the second year, and their world crashed in January when the supervisor found out they had never completed the first round of progress reports or done Medicaid billing all year to date. "Too busy" wasn't an excuse for legal compliance. We went through getting organized, and the rest of their year was a struggle between catching up and staying caught up, but they walked out of their building on the last day of school without a single thing past due.
So, I thought, to give MYSELF some structure for the rest of the summer, and to hopefully help other struggling SLPs, I'd devote a post each Tuesday for the rest of the summer to organization for an entire school year. I'll include links to materials I've created, but, for the most part, it's information and ideas for keeping ahead of the paperwork tsunami. Being organized has definitely reduced my stress, and increased my productivity. Instead of taking work home, I'm doing extra work - like PD - during my paid work time. I logged 18 hours of PD in May/June through self-study, because I was able to use my plan times for PD and paperwork, rather than just paperwork.
Here's what I'm thinking for the rest of the summer:
July 16: Data Logs and the Eisenhower Matrix
July 23: Screenings and Evaluations
July 30: Keeping up with IEPs and Evaluations
August 6: Starting off the Year Strong
August 13: Making the Most of Plan Time
I just kind of depressed myself realizing there are only 5 more weeks of summer. Well...it'll be organized, at least. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment