Checklists for all your teaching, reading and traveling needs

Actually, they are for all MY needs. Hopefully these lists will be helpful for y'all too.

Happy New Year! I always spend the last half of December dreaming of my plans for the New Year, writing down all my 2025 goals in my new journals and calendars, and busting out all the sparkly pens and new checklists.

Although usually an analog girl, I did make a few digital checklists and bingo boards for my upcoming teaching, reading, and traveling life. I write a bit about them below and then provide the links and downloads for my lovely newsletter subscribers.

Regarding my writing goals, I’ve been having tons of fun playing with the trackbear app.

Regarding my running life, I plan and record all my runs and workouts in my bullet journal like this:

Photo by Jenna Vandenberg. Sorry this probably makes zero sense to anyone but me

Packing checklists for all my 2025 trips

Despite being a checklist person and a person who loves to travel, I’ve never made a to-pack checklist. Crazy, huh? Therefore, every single time I get on a plane or pull out of the driveway with a packed car, I have a little anxiety attack about all the things that I’m probably forgetting. This year I’m writing all my packing checklists early. I have no illusion that this will take away my pre-trip anxiety, but I suppose it’s worth a shot. This year I’ll be packing for…

• A girl’s trip to Arizona! My three best friends and I try to meet up somewhere cool every year. Preferably somewhere warm like San Diego or Mexico.

• Cheer Competitions: I’ve never been able to turn a cartwheel, curl my hair, or blend eyeshadow, but somehow my daughter is a competitive cheerleader.¹ Even though I don’t understand her obsession, I love that she’s so into it. She has two out-of-town competitions this year, and a packing list will be essential to ensure she doesn’t forget her bow or face glitter or setting spray or all the other accoutrements that competitive cheerleaders apparently need.

Please, please don’t get dropped! Photo by a cheer mom who has a better camera than I

• A baseball anniversary: My husband and I spend every anniversary in the same city as our beloved Seattle Mariners. Sometimes that means we get to spend our anniversary in Kansas City or Milwaukee or Toronto. This year, it’ll be a staycation in Seattle.

• Summertime will mean two family road trips - one with my parents to a cabin on a lake in Idaho, and another one to the Oregon coast. I’ll also be going to Poland with a group of teachers as part of the Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship. Hopefully, something else will pop up this summer as well.

• The year will round out with a trip to see family in Tulsa and (hopefully) the NCSS conference in Washington D.C.

If you are also going on girl’s trips, cheerleading competitions, family vacations, or baseball games, my travel checklists can be downloaded below. Happy Traveling!

Book Bingo

I read 42 books this year, which I was pretty happy with. There were a few years (when I was on the NCSS Trade Book Selection Committee) when I read nearly 100 books a year, but those totals always included tons of MG and YA² books.

So many books! Photo (and stellar bookshelf art, lol) by Jenna Vandenberg

After my time on the committee was over I was craving big ‘ol dense adult books, so I don’t see reading fewer books a failure or anything. Even though I have zero trouble finding new books, I still love a good reading challenge.

My book bingo card incorporates 5 challenges: Read More (e.g. Listen to a book at 1.5x), Embrace Variety (e.g. Read a book from an indie press), Good Vibes (e.g. Read while eating dessert), Tough Stuff (e.g. Read a non-fiction about a topic you know nothing about), and Travel Reading (e.g. Read a book set in a place you rarely hear/read about).

Happy Reading! Grab the link to the Book Bingo below.

A monthly teacher checklist

As part of the ever-elusive goal to get all my teaching work done within my contracted hours, I’ve always looking to refine my systems and plans. The key is to know exactly how you are going to spend your prep period, your 24-minute lunch, and your non-meeting time slots before and after school. I try to follow this weekly schedule:

• Monday: Plan for the next week and send copies to be printed.

• Tuesday: Finish planning for next week: Upload assignments on Schoology, finalize slides and assignments.

• Wednesday: Long-term planning and/or work on monthly tasks

• Thursday: Family contacts and/or grading

• Friday: Grading! Also, finalize plans (copies printed, slides ready) for next week

At least one of these days goes off the rails every single week. Also, the Friday grading rarely gets done and I usually end up doing that over the weekend. Whomp whomp.

The monthly tasks include things like planning for conferences and professional development, writing poems for/about my students, and ensuring that my teaching contract is up to date.

Happy Teaching! Grab the link to my monthly teacher task checklist below.

The links to all the checklists are below. I don’t want them available to everyone on the Internet, so…

• If you have a paid subscription, they’ll show up automatically.

• If you have a free subscription, click below to unlock the checklists

• Alternatively, send me an email and I’ll send you Canva and PDF links to the checklists.

Happy teaching, traveling, and reading! See y’all next Sunday!