Make It Pretty and Personal: Erin Condren Planners

Mar 19, 2014

I got to see one of my favorite Together Teachers (and now Together Leaders!), Jocelyn G., in Boston last week. I’ve known Jocelyn for almost five years now, so I’ve gotten to see multiple iterations of her systems over time.

One of her most recent adaptations is this Erin Condren planner. I had seen these pop up in my workshops, and always with a hard-core fan following.

Let’s take a quick tour to see if it could be true love for you, too!

The Cover: You can submit your own pictures and have customized covers created. Jocelyn has pictures of past students.

The Monthly Calendar (aka the Comprehensive Calendar): Color-coded stickers galore! These all come with the planner. There is also room for an Upcoming To-Do List on the right side of the monthly view. If you look closely, you will see the personalized stickers (with pictures of loved ones!) Jocelyn created to go with her planner.

The Weekly View (aka The Weekly Worksheet): Behind each monthly tab are four weekly views. This version has just three sections for morning, day and night, which is probably not enough room for most busy teachers and leaders (Jocelyn has since abandoned this portion.) But hey, we like the idea, and you might, too!

The Goodies: Personalized labels, nifty folders and pouches, notepads and more!

For those that value and appreciate aesthetic, this certainly could be the planner for you. I must say, I was wishing for some of those cool personalized stickers when I saw Jocelyn’s.

The company appears to have time management versions, like Jocelyn’s, and also actual Lesson Plan Books. I do wonder if the attendance checklists and other data collection pages are still relevant given how many schools have some kind of software warehouse for this data now.

Regardless of which planner you chose, I do wish it had pages you could buy separately, like the Uncalendar has recently developed, so you could customize it even more. And ringing in at 60 dollars plus, these are not for the faint of heart—or budget. But an all around solid (and fun!) option! Any takers?