What a mess!

Danny was always a mess. Not Danny himself, but his stuff. He'd walk into class, settle down at his desk and within a minute his desktop was covered with stuff. All important stuff - to Danny, anyway. Unobtrusively, I'd try to help him organize it by pushing some piles together and suggesting he put some of it under his chair or back in his pack. But his pack was worse than his desktop. And I'd visited his locker on a number of occasions: a disaster. I couldn't imagine what his room at home looked like.

There seem to be Dannys in every school. And they're not always the students. (The Wall Street Journal recently focused two articles on "compulsive hoarders" and the serious problems associated with what some experts estimate to be about 2% of the population).

For some, organizational skills just don't seem to be a "natural activity." The result is "lost" homework, incomplete projects and poor grades. Since the beginning of time, teachers have tried to "fix" the problem. What we've learned is that there is no one magic solution. But there are some good ideas.

Here are some thoughts:

Getting your act together: Part 1 - organizing the clutter.

• Colors might help. Teachers can teach effective study skills by organizing the classroom with a color-coded system. Suite101.com has an interesting article entitled "Organizing Tips That Teach Students Study Skills: Use a Color-Coded System With Elementary and Middle School Children." By giving each subject a color students are able to quickly sort and organize the red (math) and the white (spelling) material into their proper folders.


• They've got to set goals. Any website named "getorganizednow.com" has got to have some good ideas. Sure enough, the first in a list of "20 Ideas to Help Students Get Organized" is to set realistic goals. There a plenty of interesting ideas on their list, including one that warrants emphasis: let students know they can and should ask for help. Having a messy room, locker, backpack and desk is not an easy problem to fix. Some adults carry this problem with them for the rest of their lives. There's nothing wrong with asking for help.


• The University of North Carolina (school of education) has published a realistic list of "Guidelines for facilitating organization." Included are two ideas that any teacher of any grade might easily replicate: 1) give students the time to organize their material and 2) show them what you want. "Keep a model notebook in the classroom that students can reference when organizing their own notes."

• The staff at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) have put together a good "tips" list to help: Plan, prioritize, limit distractions, take breaks, etc. All good ideas. All easy to say. Many, hard to do.


• The College Board has developed "Time Management Tips for High School Students." (Which can easily be modified for almost any age student.) First and foremost: Make a "to do" list every day. Stick to it. The importance of "writing things down" and "list-making" cannot be overstated. Simply the physical act of crossing off one of the items on the list is often incentive enough to keep one plugging away at completing the next task.


• Academictips.org has an interesting starting point for their list of tips: Make a Personal Time Survey. This nine questions self-assessment tool should give your students a picture of how they currently use their time. Next, of course, is looking at that Time Survey with studying in mind: how much time is left for homework? For reading? For study?