Tools of the Trade -- Teacher Planner

.


.
I was just sitting here with my morning coffee looking over a school supply purchase I made a while back. I'm not quite ready to plan my year, but maybe you are. I bought for myself and a good friend the Good News Catholic Teacher Planner from Creative Communications. This is the first Catholic planner that I have seen, and I must say I am pretty impressed with the amount of information they packed in these pages. I am in no way being rewarded for writing this post, but I want to share -- this is he kind of thing that brings out the inner teacher in most of us.

Besides being a weekly planner, you will find (and this is just a glimpse):


There are 49 pages filled with chronological "thoughts on Sunday's readings," and liturgical feast days. Each Sunday's readings are listed for reference, along with an explanation of the reading and some contemplative questions. For each saint's day a biography is provided. For other feast days, information is provided and some activities are suggested.


There are 19 pages on teaching about the Doctors of the Church. Also in chronological order (from the beginning of the Church to 1897) Church greats such as St. Basil, St. Gregory, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Therese are listed with a synopsis of their influence on our church's formation.



A 15-page section on November, the Month of All Souls, includes a tutorial of sorts on the Requiem Mass, including the Latin hymns.




Several pages on The O Antiphons, along with pages of reproducible symbols.



A page for every month, with feast days, liturgical seasons, U.S. holidays (official and unofficial) as well as some Canadian holidays.



The planning days include a quote from each Sunday's reading, as well as some explanations (very MagnifiKid if you're familiar with it).


The last part of the book is packed with resources such as this multiplication chart, conversion charts and math symbols chart. There is a Periodic Chart, a list of most commonly misspelled words, "How to Write an Outline," and other resources. I also bought the grade keeper section, because it makes my inner teacher so happy.

My planner was around $11, which I think is very reasonable for all you get. It will not replace my student planners, which I receive from Seton (there are Good News student planners also), but it will help me with master planning. I will likely use it to record events which will impact our school day (like having more than one appointment/event on a day or the big boys' school holidays) as well as keeping track of what week we are on and when we have testing etc. in our own school week. I love its Catholocity. If you decide to buy one -- get together with a friend and share your shipping -- it's as much as one planner.

..