The ALT’s Guide to Bullet Journaling
Hey there! I dunno about you, but my desk has been exceptionally warm lately. If you’re in the same position as me, I’ve got an enticing suggestion that is guaranteed to take up all your free time! Bullet journaling.
If you’ve never heard of bullet journaling, I suggest checking this out first! And if you have heard of bullet journaling before, you probably just conjured up a myriad of images in your mind of all the fancy bullet journals you’ve encountered on the internet. They’re quite pervasive these days.
From Pinterest to Youtube, it’s easy to stumble upon creatives who have fully embraced the bullet journal as a gratifying form of self-expression and art. However, at its core, bullet journals are simple, yet highly efficient and personalized, scheduling and productivity tools which don’t actually require any artistic ability. In fact, since beginning my bullet journal in November 2018, the artsy flourishes I once loved have become increasingly pared-down month after month. What I’m left with now is incredibly minimal but perfectly fine-tuned for my day-to-day workflow.
With this article, I’d like to show you how a bullet journal can improve your productivity as an ALT and share with you some of the top layouts in my bullet journal that directly facilitate my job on a daily basis.
1. The Future Log
A future log is typically 2–4 pages at the beginning of your journal that contain the next 12 months of important dates and reminders.
My future log is one of the most crucial parts of my bullet journal because, to be honest, it’s the only reason I look relatively put together. I very rarely forget any events or special dates coming up, as the moment I find out about something, it goes directly into my future log, no matter how many months away it is! Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and school events all go here and I refer back to it every month as I plot out my monthly schedule to ensure I’m not missing anything.
2. Monthly Schedules
The monthly calendar is used to showcase major daily events for the month, such as business trips, holidays, important deadlines — things that were almost all written in my future log.
I like to keep this very clean and simple, as I don’t include too much space inside each box. The picture I’ve included shows it taking up two pages, but usually these days I try to fit my monthly calendar on a single page just to save time.
Instead of cluttering the monthly calendar with detailed information about each event, I save that for my weekly schedules pages.
3. Weekly Schedules
My weekly schedule is, without a doubt, my favorite part of my bullet journal. I rely on this so heavily during my hectic weeks of classes, meetings, and trips.
I have a system down where I list out the periods of the day on the left side page, including the hour I spend after school for ESS on Wednesdays and Fridays. Then, when I have a class, I highlight the period number with the color I set for either first-year or second-year classes.
After that, I’ll write the class number, JTE’s name, class location, and any other additional notes, like what the lesson topic is. This has had a tremendous impact on how organized and prepared I am on a daily basis for lessons and I rarely feel worried about my schedule!
4. Running Task Lists
To the right of my beloved weekly schedule is my also beloved running weekly task list.
On Monday mornings, I sit down at work (with a coffee, of course) and immediately spill out any tasks that I know I have to accomplish that day or that week onto the page.
Then, throughout the week, I start filling in tasks as completed and add any additional tasks that arise and need to be done.
The key that I use for my task lists looks a little like this:
Of course, this is only my preferred method — you can use whatever key you like! I tried a few but I like the look of this one when all the tasks are completed. It looks so clean and feels incredibly satisfying to watch the boxes all get filled in!
My task list keeps me focused on important things throughout the week but also makes it so that I rarely forget those minor tasks I have to do, such as submitting business trip papers or the steps I need to take to finish a lesson plan. Speaking of which…
5. Lesson Planning
This isn’t the most photogenic thing I’ve created, but it’s one of the most practical and useful! When I’m in the planning stages of a lesson plan, I tend to want to jot down ideas quickly just to get my thoughts out and organized. After that, I’ll usually write out a complete lesson outline in my journal.
This proves to be most helpful when I go to my weekly visit school, as I’m often worried about forgetting papers (like a printed out version of a lesson plan). If I have my bullet journal and all my notes are within it, I feel so much peace of mind! I bring it up to the podium and leave it open during the class and it helps me stay focused and feel relaxed. So, I highly recommend incorporating some of your lesson plan organization into your bullet journal.
If you don’t plan your own lessons, you could instead try keeping track of where your classes are in their textbooks and what grammar/vocabulary they’ll be learning at that time. Basically any form of note-taking about the content of your current and upcoming lessons will do a lot to minimize how much mental energy you have to spend constantly recalling that information.
I hope you enjoyed this insight into some of the systems that I use for my teaching-centric bullet journal. I can easily go from spending 30 minutes setting mine up for the month to 3 hours depending on how I’m feeling that week — it really is an enriching mental and creative exercise, so I can’t recommend it enough!
If you decide to start your own bullet journal or if you already have one, please send me some pictures! I love seeing other people's systems and designs and finding new ways to improve my own pages.
I’ll leave you with one of my recent monthly cover pages that I enjoyed a lot — a little minimalist Totoro! Stay safe out there and keep busy this month!
