Stop buying paper calendars. An online, shared calendar will revitalize your team’s communication and scheduling processes.
We’ve all dealt with the wrinkled, messy calendars before. They’re scribbled over and scratched out, and likely hanging on a wall that’s accessible to just a few.
It’s time to ditch the datebooks and planners and convert your team’s events, meetings, and deadlines to a shared calendar online. It will revitalize your school or district’s scheduling and communications processes by making schedules transparent and available to all.
Our team uses Google Calendar – it’s free, it’s simple, and it integrates seamlessly with Google Classroom and Gmail. Once you create a shared calendar, take advantage of its features to do any of the following:
For professional development purposes...
- Identify scope and sequence in the calendar invite.
- Make updates that everyone can see – you’ll even have the option to email guests the update.
- View potential conflicts.
For observations...
- Provide times for teachers to know when they are being observed as well as when debrief times will be.
For Team Meetings...
- Invite external members to meetings when relevant.
- Share relevant documents before the meeting.
For Field Trips…
- Create a calendar devoted to field trips. Set the permissions so that anyone can see when certain team members will be out of school. You can also link to documents relevant to that trip, like brochures, directions, and permission slips.
For internal organization…
- Teachers can denote their prep periods.
- Colleagues can set aside time to work on projects together.
- Any team member can share their calendar with another.
With a transparent, efficient process, collaboration is made easy through a shared calendar. There’s no better system for a school – which relies on many intersecting and overlapping schedules – to use.
A former special education and English teacher, school administrator, and district leader for Boston Public Schools, Kavita is an expert on teacher training, Universal Design for Learning, and bilingual language learners. In addition to her work at ThinkCERCA, Kavita is a Cadre member at the Center for Applied Special Technology, where she teaches courses on UDL and provides training to districts and universities across the U.S.