Organizing Originals

[nafmeadmin]

I have an organizational question for everyone. We’re starting to wrap up the year up here in the Northeast and I’m trying to cut down on clutter.
I have a huge folder of originals, however these documents are also on my thumb drive. I kept my originals folder from last year with plans to save trees and not print song sheets or worksheets which I used last year. However that didn’t work, haha!! Just for lack of time, I printed and copied what I needed and added the additional copies to my originals folder.

Do you recycle originals? Save them? Please share ideas. Thank you!!

[nafmeadmin]

I have a master file that says “MASTER FILE” for all of my originals that I wish to keep for future printing. All of my originals have MASTER written on them in caps using a yellow highlighter. Highlighters do not copy on a regular copy machine. You don’t need any special highlighter for this. That way you always know which one to use. You can also laminate your originals (I have not done this but my PTA has and it worked for them).

You can, of couse, do a MASTER FILE for each grade level, color code, etc. I just never got to that point.

Hope this helps. (FYI–Thumbdrives are great, but make sure to back up in two places–I have had lots of new teachers back up to a thumb drive only to lose it and then have to start from scratch. Redundency is best. Cloud storage is even better.)

Good luck.

Bridget James
Western Division Representative
Council for General Music Education, NAfME

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